The 4th & 5th day in Canada

Today was the fourth day in Canada and the agenda was full. We woke up pretty early, because we were going to travel a lot back and forth. We had planned to go to the world’s tallest totem pole, and so we did. The sun was shining and on our way there, there was this beautiful view as far as the eye could see. It took us about two hours to get there. The totem pole is 53 meters tall. It’s located in Alert Bay, a small village just outside Victoria. The totem poles in Canada were made by the Indians and they were made because they meant something to the owner. The village has about 550 citizens and over 50 percent of them are First Nations people, mainly Kwakwaka’wakw people.

 

After a new cultural experience we didn’t have more time to spend in Alert Bay if we were going to catch our plane to Montreal, Quebec. Therefore we got in the car and drove back to Vancouver and the airport. 

We ate on the plane because we planned on going to bed right away when we got to Quebec. It was really late when we arrived, because the flight from Vancouver was about 7 hours long. We also got up early, so we were really in need of all the sleep we could get.

We are now in Montreal, the capital of Quebec. Quebec is one of twelve provinces and three territories in Canada.

(Sorry about my bad blogging by the way. It’s just that I haven’t really had the energy to blog every day, so that’s why all these days are in one blog post.)

After a long night sleep and a fair enough breakfast at the hotel, which is named Hotel & Suits Normandin, we got a tip from a really nice Canadian couple with some kids sitting in the lobby. They told us about the Celine Dion concert that was tonight! They also offered us their tickets, because they couldn’t go as planned, due to a sick relative of them. We thanked them and wished for them that their sick relative recovered as soon as possible.

We were so excited about the big concert and that’s when I got my mind on one particular question: what do we really know about Celine Dion? Our answer was that we didn’t know as much as we maybe should have. So we took the elevator up to our hotel room and googled a bit about Celine Dion. There is a lot that I didn’t know about Celine Dion. Did you for instance know that she’s actually from Quebec? She was born in Charlemagne in 1968, which means she is 48 years of age. Celine Marie Claudette Dion first got known international in the 1980’s when she won two song contests, but her real breakthrough was in 1991 when “she duetted with Peabo Bryson on the title track to Disney's animated film "Beauty and the Beast .“

We had been thinking of going to a hockey game, as it’s the most popular sport in Canada. However, we didn’t because we were too lazy. The rest of the day was spent mostly in our hotel room. Frankly, all we wanted to do was just lying in our beds watching TV and eating lots of Maltesers. You know the chocolate covered crisp balls in the red package, right? Well, that’s Maltesers and they are Canadian. We all love them!

Lying there in my pajama I decided to stay a bit updated, so I turned on my laptop and browsed some local newspapers. There was one thing that actually caught my attention: an employee in a men’s clothing company got fired as a cause of his terrible action. Last week a 15 year-old girl from British Columbia (a province), Amanda Todd, took her own life after years of bullying. The employee wrote this on her memorial page: “Thank God this Bitch is dead.” A mom and an anti-bullying activist saw the comment and traced it back to the man’s Facebook profile, where he had listed his occupation. The mom emailed the company about what he had done. The man luckily got fired right away. I can’t believe how a human being can be so idiotic and cruel. Whatever he says, he can’t have a good reason for his awful action. That this one mother, who most likely didn’t know Amanda Todd, neither her family, didn’t ignore the comment, but took care of it even though it wasn’t her responsible, says something about the Canadians. This shows that they are caring, loving and responsible. Even though this was just one woman, I think most of the Canadian people are like this.

Before the Celine concert, we ate at a local restaurant just outside the hotel. Nothing special to say about the food really, but the dessert was amazing. They waiter told us about the Canadian specialty: frozen wine! How cool is that? It’s (obviously) made of frozen grapes and it has been made since 23 AD. It’s a dessert wine and another name of it is ice wine. About 75 percent of Canada’s ice wine comes from Ontario. There are both still and sparkling frozen wines and we tasted them both. It was good experience and quite different from all the other wines I’ve ever tasted.  

Tomorrow we're going to visit my auntie! I'm so excited, because I miss her so much! <3 

Written by L.T.