Reservations

Here's how it all started.
We were travelling to Vancouver Island on Bank Holiday Monday, so it seemed prudent to make a reservation.
BC Ferries' website also offered hotel and motel reservations, so I went ahead and booked rooms for us.

The population of Richmond, where we live, is more than 50% Chinese, so that now, I realise that I don't really notice Chinese people, because that is the norm.
The nearest ferry port to us is Tsawassen. When you get there, there is the odd effect that there are fewer Chinese people, some, but not the same percentage. Then after a while, you start to notice that most of them aren't Chinese at all, but First Nations. Tsawassen is the name of the place and of a band.

When we arrived at my cousin's, she asked about the motel.
'I don't know,' I said, 'there's something about it, I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it must be owned by First Nations,'
'Were there First Nations people on the desk?' she asked,
'No, just some grumpy Hispanics, hmmm...that's odd, huge generalisation of course, but Hispanics are normally quite cheery...oh....oh, I see....'
'Well you are on the reservation,' she said.
I'd booked a motel on a reservation. Of course there was no knowing when booking online, you have to actually see the area to be able to tell.
First Nations land can usually be identified because of the billboards. They are the only people in Canada who are allowed to put up these giant advertising signs.
So it turned out the motel was on a reservation, so what? Well, exactly, the so what was just that. I think I thought you couldn't go on reservations or that it would be different, but that wasn't so. Yet it is confusing.
Sometimes police aren't supposed to go on their land, so there is an area in North Van where junkies go because the police don't, but then the bands complain about them and their paraphernalia, on the other hand, some bands own casinos, where presumably they want people to gamble, so I'm not sure what the boundaries are.

Coming back today, we were glad of the ferry reservations. The electronic infoboard told us that the five, six and seven o'clock ferries were all full, bad luck if you didn't have resos.