“It feels good to be lost in the right direction..in a different world and space.”

Well, this is our last full day in Vancouver before we head further North East.
We have ventured around the shops and seaways…and even though we have gone literally the same way each day, I still get lost. I really have no sense of direction … just ask Marc. Even something as simple as walking from the lounge to the hotel room all looks the same to me and many times, I have walked in circles along the numerous corridors on our floor counting the numbers on the doors to find my room. I did offer to go shopping on my own, but Marc was a little afraid that I would not find my way back! I have to admit, he would be right. There would be this lost female alone in downtown Canada looking very forlorn and lost! He would have to come and find me!  It is quite ridiculous but my north and south and east and west have all gone berserk! Just hope I can find my way back to Australia!

Today being our last day, the two best parts were the FLYOVER CANADA we participated in and the Shopping!!! Both great in their own ways!
Flyover Canada is a simulated ride for approx. 9 minutes of a scenic ride which leaves anything at Dreamworld or Disneyland LA behind. You are herded into lines that go all different ways, not the usual walk in one door, sit down and walk out the other door in a horizontal line,  no this one was definitely like a hopscotch patterns where people were placed on various dots and numbers and then you followed your leader to your row/seat. But each area was different … some were above you, some below you, some beside you, some at an angle beside you on your right side. Then the music began, the blackness totally engulfed you, (oh it was black as!) the flaps open, chairs slide forward and you are literally flying through the air, complete with wind, water, and smells. We discovered various parts of Canada from our flying seat – an absolutely amazing visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory experience! Well worth the money, so much that Marc and I wanted to go back and do it again. Not your usual 3-minute ride of forced simulation and bumpy chairs, this was a truly lifelike experience !

Then, of course, was the shopping! Discovering small things, we could take back to our home like the Royal Canadian Mountain Police Moose that would sit quite well beside ‘Husky” from Finland on my grand piano at home … as a reminder of where we went in January 2020! Of course, we bought some Canadian motif socks for Marc to slide up and down the surgery corridors. Couldn’t forget that! Some practical warmer clothing as well for me as we venture further into the mountains and colder areas … and now they are all packed away ready for our departure tomorrow.

What was interesting though in our travels these past few days was amazingly and quite regrettably, we have learned that Australia and Canada had almost identical viewpoints on their policy on indigenous people.

You know that we had the ‘stolen generation’ of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed from their families by Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions between 1910 and 1970 through a policy of assimilation. Well so did Canada!  However, the system in Canada began much earlier in the 1890’s and only began to be wound down in the 1970s, though the last residential school didn’t actually close until 1996. During this period well over 100,000 indigenous children were forced to attend around 139 residential schools. Basically, because the government officials and churches believed it was impossible to assimilate indigenous people unless you removed them from their families and communities and that ‘Children had to be caught young in order to be civilized.’ Run through the Government and churches, they were intentionally situated a long way from their indigenous homes and communities as the idea was to basically take these children away from their families, communities, culture and their language, to basically isolate them and ‘ try to beat the Indian out of them’, to make them more like ‘whites’ now controlling their country. Very similar thinking lead to the ‘Stolen Generation’ in Australia!

Isn’t that so sad, that two British colonies had the same viewpoint of their indigenous society – both with rich cultures of their own that was not appreciated at the time as being worthwhile preserving!

No, I have not ‘enthralled’ you with humour or stories in this blog but just to say that we have loved seeing this part of Western Canada and have relished in the people, the landscape and the short amount of Northern Indian culture and canadian history we have explored so far!

I wonder what tomorrow will bring!
Where we will go…….?
…I’ll let you know!