My Big Adventure - Part 1

About five minutes before I was due to be picked up on Friday afternoon, bees started dropping from the ceiling of the Nature House.
How very Ridley Scott.
The beekeeper had come and filled our hive on Thursday evening, but this is a tricky operation and a few had escaped. Friday morning was fairly warm and sunny, but there must just have been a point where they had all had enough.

Transport to the conference was a bit of a moot point. I think transport as a subject right now is a moot point for Canadians in general. For the sake of argument, if I ignore Alberta, my experience is that Canadians are a fairly green bunch of people, so the lack of public transport systems here concerns them a lot. And now here were we, all working in the field of, if not environmentalism then at least the environment, and all travelling a fair distance to a conference.

The usual argument. Something like two thirds of the population of BC lives in the Coastal regions of Vancouver Island and the Greater Vancouver Area, so those who live further inland feel that everything is geared towards Vancouverites. And yet, and yet..... can we really justify NOW moving everyone from Vancouver to the interior, especially given that for many the only option was private vehicles, rather than a few people travelling to the coast?

I was fortunate enough to be able to hitch a ride on a minibus coming from Vancouver Island, but there was little of this kind of organised transport.

As we got toward our destination, we got caught up in a bear jam. On the side of the road in the mountains, a bear, just standing there, but every car, including us, had to slow down or stop to take a look or a picture. By now it was starting to snow, sleet at first, but by the time we got to Manning Park, flakes of snow. Even so, I think I had been overwarned about the cold, it really didn't warrant the number of jumpers and blankets I had taken.

Then the whole experience became annoying. We were staying in cabins, but the key to mine didn't work, nor did that of another woman in the same cabin. In fact, when compared with the one key the hotel found that did work, they were clearly the wrong keys. The hotel were not only unwilling to do anything about this, but weren't even very polite about it. I was not very polite back, not rude mind you, just not very polite, not shouting, but quite loud.
I was moved to another cabin, but was then expected to share a key with the other occupants. They were all very nice people, but that isn't an acceptable position to be in. A letter will be sent.

The first night we had a speaker who had been involved with Interpretation Canada from its inception, but although he was a good speaker, there was little content, no insights, no vision, no food for thought.

There was a campfire, but I needed my bed. I was luckier than one of the other occupants of my cabin. At three when she came back, her key wouldn't work because the last person in before her had put the deadbolt on. It was pretty damn cold at that time in the morning and she had to knock on all the cabin doors before she could find someone still awake and kipped on their floor.

This was what was outside when I opened the door in the morning.