It all began on a sunny Saturday morning when the Tip of the toes team loaded a pick-up truck with a ton of expedition gear. (In fact, it all started last winter when we selected our first participants, but if we want to get it done in less than 50 pages, we’ll skip a few steps!) The team that drove from Chicoutimi to Montreal that day included our guides Virginie Gargano and Etienne Booth, Tip of the toes’ general manager François Dufour, our intern Shéril Gravel and I. After 500 kilometers on the road and an outside temperature that went from 18c to 36c, we arrived at our hotel located right next to Pierre-Eliot-Trudeau Airport. There, we met with Crystal Cousineau from Orleans Ontario and Francis Durfour from Gatineau that had carpooled with Robert Pigeon, a child services worker from Children Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). We chit-chatted around a plate of nachos and then went off to bed.
It’s an early rise on this Sunday August 5th to get to the airport by 6 o’clock so we can meet up with the other participants: Dama-Rosalie Fonseca from Pont-Rouge, Zoé Trahan-Gingras from Boisbriand, Laurence Yelle from Ste-Thérèse, Dannick Simard from Terrebonne, Samuel Tétrault from Granby, David Mathieu-Desjardins from Valleyfield and Samuel Simard from Terrebonne. We also met Alexandre Chouinard, doctor, and Naila Legault, nurse, that will also take part on this trip. The goodbyes are very emotional, and some parents have teary eyes. The smiles on our participants’ faces convey a mix between excitation and discomfort.
We also live a few moments of uncertainty…Isaac’s flight between Charlottetown and Montreal is over an hour late! Luckily for us, it arrived just in time and Isaac managed to jump on the plane with us to Toronto and, ultimately, Calgary.
We were greeted by open skies and scorching heat when we got off in Calgary….so we could do an extra hour of travel on the road to get to our final destination, the legendary Alpine Club of Canada Clubhouse in Canmore. What a magnificent place! Nested in the heart of the Rockies, this building served as a base camp for a huge number of alpinists, including many whose achievements are now part of history. The walls are a testimony to this alpine past, covered with pictures, plaques and artifacts. I can’t help but think that our young adventurers are also part of the same lineage of combatants that braved storms and conquered peaks. Interior peaks that seemed insurmountable but were nonetheless conquered.
We slowly get settled in our rooms, unpack and start to feel at home. We can feel the tongues loosen and our participants starting to make new connections. The dinner is preceded by a presentation on clothing and equipment on the Clubhouse’s very panoramic patio, in the shadow of the Three Sisters, a mountain we never get tired to look at. The evening will end at sunset after a group meeting. We discuss our personal objectives and even our fears. We learn that our participants want to make a fresh start, meet people that have lived similar experiences, face new challenges, change from the daily routine, distance themselves from technology and media and reconnect with nature. This is also what we aim for, so we’re off to a good start…
A beautiful week is just beginning…