Today we left Quebec City, gathered everyone together and reached our new playground, the Saguenay. We discovered our outdoor equipment for the coming days and faced the reality of climate change: even in March, winter already seems to be slipping away from us.
Ice
“I like the idea of leaving my daily life in someone else’s hands, of letting myself be guided for a few days,” says Camille, gathered in a circle with the twenty other members of our team. In fact, from the very first day, we all accepted that things might not necessarily go as planned, but that whatever happened, everything would turn out fine. I would have liked to be writing to you from a lodge nestled in the heart of the Monts-Valin, but instead I am writing from a large common room on the ground floor of the foundation’s offices in Saguenay.
Our challenge of the day? Ice. The rain over the past 24 hours has turned our route into a real, impassable skating rink, forcing us to retreat to another territory that we will discover tomorrow. Throughout the day, our entire guiding team (eight people in total!) worked tirelessly to come up with a plan B (and even a plan C!) to adapt our itinerary to the new weather reality.
The Meeting
So it was gathered in a circle that we finished getting to know each other. The accessory for our meeting? A volleyball. It is a ball that has been part of many expeditions. A ball covered with questions such as “What’s your go-to karaoke song?” or “What animal would you like to be?” Above all, it is a meeting ball that helps start conversations where everyone shares their motivations and their doubts. Among those doubts, some admit they have never skied before, while others fear the cold, against which their bodies no longer fight as easily after cancer treatments. Yet none of them doubt the reasons that brought them here: “It’s the first time I’ve been part of a group of young people my age who have gone through the same thing as me,” explains Laury, a participant from Quebec. Max, who came from Vancouver, adds: “Even if my loved ones told me ‘I understand what you’re going through,’ I knew it wasn’t really the case, but here it’s different.”
For Kiran, who lives in Ontario, the expedition is also a way “to learn to trust his body again,” while for Annie-Rose, from Winnipeg, it is also about not forgetting this cancer, which is part of her life story, in the flow of everyday life. As you can imagine, this trip brings together people from across Canada and, as I write these lines, the shouts from a bilingual dodgeball game echo between the walls. In addition to the participants already mentioned, we have Camille, Elizabeth and Gabriel, three Quebecers, Hannah from New Brunswick, Ian from Winnipeg, Ryder from British Columbia, and Sierra from Calgary. Tomorrow I will tell you about the team of guides and volunteers who are accompanying us.
Getting Properly Equipped
As part of the introductions, the day was also devoted to discovering our equipment. As soon as we arrived in Saguenay, we were welcomed by a Radio-Canada television crew waiting for us at the foundation’s equipment hangar. Inside this true Ali Baba’s cave, we said goodbye to our city clothes and put on our new outdoor outfits: winter boots, base layers, waterproof pants, fleece jackets, windbreakers.
The idea is to bring everything needed for every possible situation while taking up as little space as possible. During the day, we will carry the essentials: lunch, water and thermos, and extra protective clothing. In the evening, we will find our duffel bags where we have carefully compressed all the other gear I will tell you about later. We even spent part of the afternoon learning how to set up the prospector tents, complete with wood stoves.
In short, we are ready, fully prepared to finally catch up with winter.
Valérian
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In pictures
