Welcome to our adventure! We’re so happy you have decided to join us on our blog. We will use this platform to allow you to follow the participants’ episodes in the Foundation’s sea kayak expedition. As you probably know, we will spend the next few days on Georgian Bay, West of Lake Huron. Technology permitting – (failure is always around the corner with very low speed satellite connexions, and a lap top forced to navigate from one wild camping site to the next…) – we will update the blog daily. It will be our travel log, with photos. And you can log in to flickR to see the full photo album. So, without any further ado, here we go!
The On the Tip of the Toes Foundation team left Saguenay for Montreal on Thursday afternoon with our first participant, Sébastien Allaire, proud resident of the Saguenay Region, born in St-Fulgence. We arrived in Montreal in time for a social event. A press conference was set up to mark the start of our expedition on this, the fifteenth anniversary of the Foundation. Many media joined us near the Lachine Canal to meet François Veillet, the Foundation’s Chairman, François Dufour, one of the Foundation’s Directors, actress Amélie Grenier, the Foundation’s spokesperson, but most of all, Sébastien and Marie-Soleil Monette, one of our valiant participants from Val David. They were treated to a kayak practice session with none other than Caroline Brunet, triple kayak Gold medalist and ten times World Champion, in front of all those microphones and cameras.
Late in the afternoon, Brennan Curry of Dartmouth, Nova-Scotia, Taylor Robinson of Duchess, Alberta, and Jerry Zang or Fredericton, New Brunswick were all smiles as we picked them up at the airport. Saturday morning, three more associates will join our wonderful gang of adventurers.
Georgian Bay is a few hundred kilometers west of Montreal. So, it will be an early start (5: 30 AM on Saturday morning – ouch!) as we will congregate in the hotel lobby at 6 AM to prepare for departure at 7 AM. Indeed, it’s now “really real!”.