Homeward bound

It's such a long way

The West Vancouver Seawall walkway from Dundarave Pier, an early crossing point for ferries from the north shore to Vancouver city.

Tomorrow we leave Canada and head home to New Zealand.

It’s been a strange trip. We were scheduled to leave NZ in late May for a three-week trip, but the sudden death of Cathie’s mother changed all that.

Wilma seemed as if she’d make it to her 99th birthday, but by Easter Monday it seemed clear that this wasn’t going to happen.

It was a flurry of changed flights and altered plans. We changed our three-week insurance policy to start on Cathie’s departure. We had no idea when we’d be getting home.

After that, nothing went quite right.

Cathie made the funeral with a few hours to spare after being held up by unnecessary entry formalities in Los Angeles, missing her onward flight and having to wait half a day for the next available flight. Not the best preparation for an emotionally draining occasion

I followed on a week later. We had a plan for a few days later to take an overnight train to Nova Scotia and spent most of a week in and around Halifax.

On the eve of that trip, Cathie was admitted to Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington with chest pains. The stress of the past two weeks had caught up with her. Needless to say, the train journey was cancelled.

During the discussions with the insurance company they reminded us that our cover expired at the end of April - would we like to extend it until we got back to NZ?

Well, just as well they reminded us. However, they pointed out that for the last 12 days of our trip, heart issues had now become an existing condition that wouldn’t be covered in the extended period - how kind.

With everything that had gone on, we decided to keep a low profile for the remainder of our Canada trip.

In my last post I talked about some of the nice walks we’d had.

Joe (Cathie’s brother) and Deb took us on a day trip to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

It’s a wonderful building, set in beautiful forest surroundings about 40km from Toronto.

Guarded by fierce bears.

There were some thorough historic collections, which gave an insight into the art of a century or so ago, but what I found really interesting was the work of Norval Morrisseau of the Anishinaabe, an indigenous people of the Great Lakes region.

The gallery space was astonishing.

The art vivid and distinctive.

Reading his story later revealed a lot about the cultural deprivation the indigenous people of Canada suffered until quite recently. Find out more here.

We had some nice family experiences - a beautiful dinner with Mark and Diane, when we absorbed some night-time experiences in downtown Toronto.

On another day we met with Mary and visited a textile museum.

Later we walked past a celebration of World Falun Dafa Day, where endless charming acts swirled across an outdoor stage.

On to a great Chinese meal, where despite our best efforts we couldn’t manage to eat everything.

On Thursday our flight to Vancouver was to depart at 8am. We woke at 5am to emails announcing that our flight was cancelled - seemed pretty par for the course on this trip.

Instead, we’d fly to Edmonton at 5pm, stop over for a couple of hours and then arrive in Vancouver sometime after 10pm - the equivalent of 1am Friday in Toronto.

Our friends Bruce and Bernie had sailing plans for us the next day.

During the morning, Cathie had some twinges. It seemed irresponsible to be out on the ocean if we were to need a mercy dash to hospital, so we chose the cautious option and stayed put in West Vancouver.

We’ve had a couple of very nice walks along the sea wall towards the Lions Gate Bridge.

Today (Saturday) we looked across the harbour towards the yacht regatta we could have been part of.

We admired the old ferry building.

And the sculptures.

And so we’ve arrived at Saturday evening. Tomorrow night we’ll be on the 14-hour flight back to Auckland. We’ll lose a day, so it’ll be Tuesday when we land in Nelson.

In a rare piece of good luck, we’ve travelled so much in the past year that we can now access airport lounges and have been able to upgrade to business economy on the long flight across the Pacific. That all makes a big difference on these cruel flights.

We’ve had more than a week of daily walks and long periods of reading books. We’ve tried to put future plans out of our minds, but we’re not good at that, so we’re ready to do things.

We’ve learned a few lessons about mortality. We’re the next generation to go. Do we have 20 years, or five minutes? That’s fairly morbid, but it’s no use being in denial. We’re determined to make every minute count. And to do our best to stay healthy.

With those cheerful thoughts - goodbye Canada and hello NZ, we can’t wait to see you.