A Cold Christmas in Canada

(Note: I get a lot of shit from my Canadian friends – you know who you are! – about the lack of detail or photos on my Canada page.  All my photos from the trip are on film and presently boxed up in storage in Melbourne.  You’ll just have to wait until I get them out of storage and scanned in!)

For the Christmas of 2000 I flew to Canada to catch up with a bunch of friends I’d made in Europe in 1999.

My first stop was Edmonton to catch up with Sloane and Steph.  I couldn’t believe how cold it was in there, even with the sun out during the day it was a freeeezing minus 30 degrees Celcius!  It even hurt to breathe – honestly!  I spent a few days hanging out with Sloane seeing the sights of Edmonton, including the West Edmonton Mall (largest in the world!) and also had a skiing lesson.  We then headed into the Rockies for a few days around Jasper, which I really enjoyed, especially the snowboarding at Sunshine.  Small world story: we drove into the mountains to stay at a youth hostel way up there in the middle of nowhere, and completely out of the blue bumped into James Bellett, and Aussie guy I met in Turkey in April 1999.

We returned to Edmonton for Christmas with Sloane’s parents.  Sloane also took me to my first ever ice hockey match – Edmonton Oilers vs. Montreal Canadiens – and we had some wicked seats.  We then drove down through Calgary and into the Rockies again, this time to Canmore, Banff and the sights around there.

I left Edmonton and flew to Vancouver to catch up with Kerri Gamble, another friend from my travels around Europe.  I had a couple of days to see Vancouver, and Kerri took me to see a local band play (Matthew Good Band, very cool!).  We then drove up to Whistler along the beautiful coastal highway and we had a few days snowboarding on Blackcomb and partying the nights away in the village.  Heaps of fun!