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By: Steve (Claudette added a few things!!! )
My mother, Jean and sister, Janet arranged to swap houses with Lynne and Russ, who live in Ladner, a suburb on Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They live next to Lynne's mother, Ivy and her husband Jack. We went there during their stay and stayed for a week after they came home.
We left home at 7.45 am and arrived at Heathrow Airport at 10.30. The flight To Chicago (we were connecting there for Vancouver) on time at 13.55. It arrived on time and we cleared Immigration and Customs by 16.30 (Chicago is 5 hours behind London). Then the problems started. The Vancouver flight was shown as 50 minutes late. After a number of queries we were directed to another terminal (but nobody actually knew where it was leaving from). The time on the board continually got later, but with no gate number. Eventually it showed 21.30 from a gate the opposite end of another terminal, so we had to race there. We boarded, but were then delayed because of local thunderstorms. We eventually arrived in Vancouver at 12.30am (Vancouver is 8 hours behind London) after a journey of over 24 hours!
Not surprisingly, this was a day of rest! We did visit the local shopping centre at Ladner (where we were staying) but not much else. We did feed the ducks in the slough (creek) at the back of the house.
We visited the Fort Langley Cranberry festival, the only thing was that there were few cranberries in sight. We did look at the shops. On the way home we visited one of Claudette's favourite stores, Walmart. Apart from that a quiet day.
Up reasonably early and off to church, Sacred Heart, Ladner. My first experience of driving in Canada on this visit.
When we returned we picked up my mother and sister and went to the local bus exchange and caught a bus to downtown Vancouver.
From here we caught the seabus (the modern ferry shown on the left) to North Vancouver where we visited Lonsdale Quay market which has a variety of fresh food, bakery and other stalls plus a number of shops.
This is the view of the entrance to Lonsdale Quay Market.
From here we returned to Vancouver and Ladner by seabus and bus
The 9th October (the following day) was Canadian Thanksgiving (the US one is late November) and it had been arranged that we would go to Lesley's home for a Thanksgiving dinner. We gave Brett an "Ooglie", we think that he liked it!
The background to Canadian thanksgiving is:
" Canadian Thanksgiving traces its roots across the Atlantic as definitively as it is rooted in its own heartland. The original concept of Canadian Thanksgiving is traced to an old European farming custom in which farmers were known to band together to toast a plentiful harvest. The first known Thanksgiving celebration on Canadian shores was hosted by a European explorer named Martin Frobisher who enjoyed an impromptu harvest feast upon washing his ship ashore in Newfoundland around 1578. Frobisher famously gave thanks not only for the delicious feast he was enjoying, but also for his and his crew's good fortune at having avoided the many dangers found on the high seas."
Lesley, who is a wonderful cook, produced an excellent turkey meal with the biggest turkey we had ever seen. The Thanksgiving dinner was absolutely lovely, we both want to thank you, Lesley. After dinner we returned, extremely full, to Ladner.
In the morning we drove to Richmond Centre shopping mall for our first real experience of North American mall shopping since Claudette came to England.
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Later in the day we had another thanksgiving dinner prepared by my mother with the assistance of Ivy.
