Planes, trains, automobiles, riots and moodle!



Chuck and Victor at the U Vic Campus

Travellers' yarns from northern consultants are usually about the the three-week layover in Whale Cove, or the forced landing in Kugaaruk, or the twelve day diet of frozen peas at the Co-op Hotel.  So when Chuck and Victor were contracted by Nunavut Arctic College (NAC) to work with the University of Victoria to plan a pilot distance education series for their Municipal Government Programs (MGP), there were more than a few envious mutters rattling through the ivy-covered halls of St. Crispin Towers. A trip to Victoria. In May. Some guys get ALL the cushy gigs. 
And then...well, let's let Victor pick up the story. 


We were scheduled to leave early on Monday afternoon from Ottawa. And that’s where things started to go sideways. Chuck arrives to check in, and is advised that our flight was going to depart about an hour later.  Veteran northern (and southern) travelers that we are, we handle the challenge as a team. Chuck scrambles to re-route us; I arrive, stroll past the  long line of chagrined passengers to join him at the head of the line, and we change both our tickets at the same time.

The delay means we'll have to overnight in Vancouver, instead of going directly to Victoria on Sunday. No problem: Chuck had never been to Vancouver, and we were being put up by the airline at the Sandman Hotel. We don’t think to ask which Sandman we were staying at (did I mention that we are seasoned travelers?), and the shuttle has already left. But as we approach the taxi, I note that the Sandman Suites on Davies Street was one of the shuttle stops. Perfect.

Chuck hops in the passenger side at the rear but refuses to move over. The taxi driver huffs a bit and closes his door, then goes around to get in and clear off the front seat so I can sit in there. I wanted to get in the back seat too, as most drivers prefer to have the front all to themselves - it allows them to concentrate more on the sports page of their Vancouver Sun as they chat at high volume on the cell phone AND ignore traffic. (Mental note: when traveling with Chuck, get in the taxi first!)

As we pull away from the the airport I ask the driver how his day is so far. "Not very good." Whoops. Well, I can already feel the love in here.

We pull into traffic and our driver asks the traditional ‘Where to, gentlemen?’

"The Sandman, please."

Exasperated sigh. "WHICH Sandman?"

Chuck and I exchange a confused glance, like a couple of kids who’ve never been out of Nunavut (I DID mention that we are experienced travelers, didn't I?), and we answer that we weren’t sure.

After an ominous pause, the driver says: "I’ll take you to the closest one". Then my power of recall kicks in, and I say ‘What about the Sandman on Davies?’. ‘There’s no Sandman on Davies’ says the taxi driver. Good old power of recall kicks in again and I say "The Sandman Suites?"  "Ah," replies the taxi driver.

Having established my credentials as a Master of Vancouver Hostelry and Navigation, off we head to the Sandman Suites on Davies Street. (Anyone familiar with Vancouver will see where this is headed.)

As we drive, we finally loosen up the driver with some banter about hockey. He’s been in the country for 18 years and has been a hockey fan for most of that time. He tells us that Vancouver is missing a finisher. He hopes they win the Cup, but feels that the addition of a pure goal scorer as well as a couple more ‘solid D-men’ are what the Canucks really need. Chuck is staring out the window, in awe of some of the neighbourhoods as we drive towards downtown. 

My mind is preoccupied with the banter until we get to the bridge, and a little inner voice suddenly begins to wonder ‘Why would the airline put is in a hotel so far away from the airport?" I voice this concern, echoed by Chuck. "I was wondering the same thing," says the driver cheerfully.

By this time we are on Davies Street and Chuck is enjoying the sites of downtown and our impromptu tour of Vancouver. I pull out my trusty blackberry and bring up the trusty Yellow Pages app (gotta love technology - when it works). I call the Sandman in Richmond.  Indeed, they ARE the location that honours the airline’s voucher! Here we had driven all the way downtown for nothing. "Yeah, they're a LOT closer to the airport", says the driver cheerfully.

By the time we arrive at the right Sandman we're best buddies with the taxi driver – it turned out his initial "not very good" response had to with concern for the health of a family member - and he gives us a deal on the fare. Chuck got his privately escorted tour of the city for only $60.

Up at the crack of dawn for an extremely early flight to Victoria to meet with Jason Brown of Nunavut Arctic College. No rest for the wicked, as the saying goes. Jason meets us at the airport in Victoria (it’s quite a hike into town), and we whip over to our B&B to drop off our luggage and check in before we head off to our meetings.

Now this B&B was found online, and was my last alternative provided to the people who put together the RFP. We don't want to get sued, so I'll just refer to it as La Dive.Upon arrival, we realize that it may not be the optimal place for us to stay. Our clues?

• Greeted by a very elderly person wearing a surgical mask;
• Rooms appear to be about half the size shown on the website (they must have used a miniature camera to make the rooms seem bigger);
• We couldn't tell when the bedding had last been washed.

We drop off our bags and spend the day working through program details with Jason the entire morning and some tech wizards from U Vic. We finish, retrieve our luggage from La Dive, and gratefully check in to a Four Points Sheraton. It's early evening, but both Chuck and I are firmly committed to the Aarluk Principle of Work Life Balance, and manage to squeeze in a round of golf before nightfall.

Jason, Victor and Chuck at Bear Mountain

We have a meeting scheduled for the next day in Vancouver with a tech company that hosts Moodle platforms and provides support. Our original plan was to take the ferry to Vancouver in the morning on Wednesday, meet with the tech company, then take a ferry back to Victoria for the evening. But that will mean turning around and flying from Victoria to Vancouver to Ottawa on Thursday.Inspiration strikes: hey, instead of returning to Victoria, we could stay in Vancouver during GAME 7 OF THE STANLEY CUP FINALS!!!  We'd actually save money on both flights and the vehicle rental! What a great idea! What could possibly go wrong?


We pre-book a ferry ride for the 7 AM ferry but had to get there by 6:45 AM in order to guarantee our spot. So we rise before 6 AM for the third day in a row and successfully make it to the ferry, the mainland, and our hotel. We check in before noon and we hop aboard the sky train downtown for our meetings.

Our meeting with the tech company wraps up in late afternoon, and we are Free Men In Vancouver until we catch our plane the next morning to return East. We hop on the sky train again and meet a friend of my wife's, who has patiently waited in line outside a restaurant/pub in Yaletown to get us seats where we could watch the game on TV in downtown Vancouver. The atmosphere is boisterous and electric: everyone is cheerful. We settle in, and the game begins.

And the mood slowly changes.

When Boston scores the empty netter that guarantees their victory, we realize that we had better get out of town as quickly as possible. Nothing has actually happened in our pub. But the mood has gone sour, and it's quickly getting worse. Chuck and I pay our bills, bid our dinner companions a hasty goodbye, and head out to the closest sky train station, one block away.

The streets are getting crowded, and the crowd is not happy. We push our way on to the first train that was going in our direction. We learned later that just minutes afterward, the transit authority shut down the sky train out of downtown: if we hadn't left when we did, we would have had to fight our way through the crowds that eventually rioted. We arrive back at our hotel just in time to see the riots breaking out on television. It was a surreal feeling, watching at a distance as the mood of the city changed from electric excitement to sour grapes and finally to outright mob rage.

While the memory of that last strange night in Vancouver has not faded, this NAC project is going to be an amazing step forward in northern training. The ability to put complex courses on desktops via the internet right across Nunavut is going to change the way we learn, teach, and work from now on. It will be exciting, and a privilege, for both myself and Aarluk as a whole to work on a project with such ground-breaking impact. We look forward to working with NAC to improve multiple training initiatives across the territory, which will hopefully lead to greater things for all Nunavummiut.