Day 1 - Departure Day...A Day Full of Excitement and Anticipation

Ahhh...the luxuries of the airport.  Easy to find us at good ole Charlottetown Airport with our single gate departure and arrival.  Early start to the day.....oh wait what day am I talking about because the last time I slept was Saturday night in a hotel in Dartmouth and now it's Monday morning at 3 AM and I am leaving my house en route to the airport!!!  Oh well, yesterday was a great day!!  Have to give a major shout out to my Wildcat girls who made me a very proud coach and Dad yesterday with their win in the Championship game of the Esso Cup Atlantics and have booked our place to Morden, Manitoba to compete later this month at the National Esso Cup tournament.  Great job girls and I'll be back soon enough to get back on the hockey track!

Where to begin?  The day started at 3 AM as I said and it was great to see everyone at the airport bright eyed and bushy tailed and more than ready for the adventure to begin.  After everyone was passed through security I scooted back down the road to my parents place to catch a couple of hours of shut eye to get ready for our departure later this afternoon.

I should probably continue the opening day with some shout outs to the people that make all of this happen.  Dave Robinson and EF have been invaluable when it comes to the experience in making these tours happen.  To Jeff Clow and the staff at TOSH, thanks for the support and help in getting this large number of kids to Vimy for this most important of celebrations.  To the parents for making the sacrifices and entrusting us with your kids, they will never forget the friendships made and the experiences all while studying history(hard to believe).....last but not least to my own family for allowing me to do this once again and experience this with Mya for the first time.  Max you are next on my list big fella and I know you are disappointed with not being here but we will hang in Europe in 3 years time.  Again thank you to my wife Julie for allowing me to follow my dreams of getting as many kids to the Vimy memorial as humanly possible before I retire!!!  There are probably many others to thank and I will do that before then end of the week for sure!!!

So what is happening so far?  Well I just got a text from one of my players and asked how the trip was going?  I said "We haven't even left the country yet!"...."Lame" was the response...well far from lame!!  These kids are getting the rock star treatment already...haha!!  So that is where we will begin...Rock Stars and Movie Stars....

One of the things I love about these tours are the different kinds of exposures these kids get on a regular basis.  I have been very fortunate to have made great inroads with various organizations throughout my years of student centred learning and travel especially with media outlets in our small community of PEI.  While at the airport for the second go round today I received a call from Nancy Russell from CBC Charlottetown who wants to keep tabs on us as we travel through Europe.  This presents a great opportunity for our students to get some on the spot media training and today's victims were Braden Rodgerson and Kiley kitts, both of whom have different connections to our tour or as EF would call them "travel traditions."  As you probably have already seen this evening if you are a Compass watcher, Braden talked about his relative that is buried in the Vimy region and we are going to attempt to visit.  Kiley's travel tradition started with her brother CJ who has traveled with me in the past, and now she gets to experience what CJ did at Vimy 95, I believe(Sorry CJ, I have taken a lot of kids over the years and like graduating years they all run together but I am pretty sure it was 95th).  It's these types of experiences that has allowed this tour to grow to where it is today and has made me very proud to be a part of.

Our second media opportunity will occur later in the week as CBC evening news out of Toronto attempts to connect with us via Skype or FaceTime as we prepare for Vimy 100. I'm assuming EF has kindly put them on our trail and they were able to connect today during our short flight delay in Charlottetown.  The reporter asked a very valid question about why I/we do this at Three Oaks?  I can assure that with student travel the reasons vary...some that travel to more exotic destinations will often say it is a cheap way to see the world ....others may say that they enjoy the shared experiences with students as they explore new cultures.  My answer is along the lines of answer #2, because I can assure you that there are more exotic places in the world than on a ferry from Dover to Calais in the windswept English channel or at the back of an Air Canada flight sitting right beside the toilet and having to help everyone open the door...seriously i should have wet naps and a tip jar I am that close....back to the real story.

The reason for doing these tour, lies in the fact that I feel very strongly that the real builders of our nation are these veterans that gave their lives so that we could live as we do today. No that is not glorifying the wars of yesteryear, it is simply giving heartfelt recognition to those men and women who felt that their lives were worth a future they may never see.  As I sit here, beside the crapper, I am listening to a song on shuffle whose chorus is "although I'm not afraid of dying"...how cool is that...it just switched to Ed Sheeran and he's rapping about Instagram so that point is now lost, but I digress(by the way get used to it...this is my blog...haha).  

My point is how could someone not be afraid of dying period? Let alone for a cause they may have been unsure of...yes I've taught the courses many of you have taken and they talk about an adventure of a lifetime and they'd be home by Christmas....I get it...but seriously these people were the ones who built this nation and I feel very strongly about that.  That is not discounting one of the main industries on our beutiful little isle that is centred around pre-Confederation and 1864, building towards a growing unification in 1867.  It is based solely on the premise that I feel that the work done at Vimy Ridge was what really built our nation as we see it today.  These soldiers were the crafters and carvers of our way of life, our Canadian way that is deeply rooted in guts, hard work and determination.  

You are given a job and you get it done, a life motto that can never go wrong.  Reverend Eddie will know what I mean by saying "Do your job" and that would be what he and I would call a very "Belichick-Ian" statement(New England Patriots football reference (did you know the Atlanta Falcons blew a 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl?)  I feel that the Patriots coach adapted that statement from the Canadians who fought in WWI and especially in battles such as Vimy.  It is encrypted in our national DNA and for students to see that on the memorial made up of 11,285 names and the cemeteries around the area will give them a very strong sense of what it means to be a Canadian, something that nobody can ever take away from them.  

So in a very large nutshell, that is my answer as to why I've made it a mission to send my life into a spiral of travel and lesson planning every couple of years....it's for the sense of national pride that I so proudly associate with every time I hear our anthem....that I must say was never sung better than at the start of everyone one of our Wildcats games this weekend and I assume will continue at Nationals in a few weeks.  They were loud and off key and they were so proud of it that I had the biggest smile on my face and in my heart every time they sang it!!! They didn't see it because I was standing behind them on the bench and plus they would never believe me because they say I never smile....well Wildcat girls there are many ways to smile.  Looking forward to many more moments of pride throughout this week of travel with these great Canadian people from Kinkora, Kensington and Three Oaks!!! Out for now...needed on bathroom duty again....and getting ready to board for London Heathrow.

chiz