Thursday, May 16th:

Tom Simpson, a friend from Fleetwood days who has recently moved to Chorley, kindly came at 11.30am to drive us to Chorley station where we took the 11.56am train to Manchester Airport. Our flight (Virgin Atlantic 3048) to Heathrow left a little early and was by no means full; indeed, we arrived fifteen minutes early and had to air a few minutes before the stand was vacated for our plane to come in. It was a short ride on the Heathrow Hotel Hoppa bus that took us to the Park Inn and we had a pleasant room (2952) on the second floor. In fact we were impressed with the hotel, despite several negative comments on Trip Adviser! We enjoyed an excellent evening meal at a moderate price and were well served by Manfredi (Italian), Anna and Pawel (Poland) and Istvan (Hungary) whose face lit up when I used the few words of Hungarian that I know and also knew a little about the area he comes from in the north east of the country! He was particularly impressed to know that Chorley is twinned with the Hungarian town of Szekesfehervar. 

    It is to be an early start in the morning. We will need to catch the 6.35am Hotel Hoppa bus to Terminal 3, so we ought to get an early night.

    So now we look ahead to Canada - a country I have visited just twice before: in 1980 when I flew to Winnipeg where Robert met me at the airport and we drove across eastern Manitoba and across part of Ontario  to Thunder Bay on Lake Superior from where we then took the road down the very pretty North Shore to Duluth and on through central Minnesota to Coon Rapids where Robert then lived. My second time in Canada was in 1985 when I flew to Toronto and stayed one night before flying on to Sault Saint Marie and across the border into Michigan where I did a six week ministerial exchange in Gwinn, Michigan. But it will be this trip that will bring home the vastness of the Canada, the second largest country in the world after Russia, extending over six time zones. The United Kingdom can fit into Canada 41 times, but Canada's population at 33 million is well under half that of the UK. Almost half the Canadian population claim British ancestry, a quarter French and just under a million claim aboriginal ancestry. It has an amazing spectrum of cultures and, so guidebooks tend to point out, Canada's official policy is multiculturalism, in contrast to the USA where citizens are encouraged to perceive themselves as American above all else. And, of course, Canada is a relatively young country being a confederation of ten provinces and three territories. It has been self-governing since 1867, though Newfoundland, England's oldest colony, did not move from that status until 1949 when it joined the confederation. The ties to Britain are retained by means of the British monarch being head of state and thereby Queen of Canada. Books often say that it is hard to answer the question "What is a Canadian?". The quip of Pierre Berton, one of the country's finest writers, is often quoted for he wisely ducks the question, saying humorously: "A Canadian is someone. Who knows how to make love in a canoe!"