The Next Best Thing to Being There. July 8th 2023

 I was very fortunate in choosing a career that allowed me to retire at a fairly early age.  Of course the whole police universe is pretty much a young persons game,  and I won't lie, there are many many times it would have likely been healthier for me to have moved on to a different career fourteen or fifteen years before I did.  But I joined the police force in part because I was not much of an academic and any attempt at a University education would have meant more years of an already prolonged grade school career to (lets face it) blow a bunch of money on what would have likely been half a  semester of skipped classes, late nights, questionable hygiene, and all the things that make a great spring break movie.

My mother was a war bride from Glasgow.  My dad was a farmer from Manitoba.  My dad's first experience with travel was in 1939 when global war broke out.  Dad saw it as a way to get off the farm.  So he signed up, and took his first trip out of Manitoba via train to the east coast of my home and native land where he boarded a ship with thousands of young men to Britain.   War time isn't a great reason to travel.  And pretty much all my dad thought about in those days was home on the farm with the crops and the animals and the safe and familiar surroundings and without running water and pavement and central heating.   Mom became a model Canadian,  and except for the odd lapse into whatever that language they speak in Glasgow fit right in.......eventually.   My mom got pretty homesick from time to time.  Plane travel wasn't affordable or easily accessible back in the day.   She was over 20 years away from home when she finally got back.  By then she had missed her parents.   She saw her brother and sister again.  

As a child, I thought Birch River Manitoba was a tourist destination.  We took holidays for the last two weeks in August every year so Dad could go home for the harvest.   We got a new set of clothes for holidays.  At noon mom dressed us up and we sat inside on a lovely August afternoon and waited for Dad to come home.  The car had already been loaded with everything but us.   At the end of his work day Dad virtually moved from his company vehicle into the 1959 Chevy Bel Air and  drove all night across Alberta and Saskatchewan to arrive at Grandma and Grandpas in early morning hours.  Mom unpacked the car while Dad headed out to the farm on Grandpa's wagon pulled by Fritz and Comet, his loyal work horses.  Dad spent all day that day and a couple after feeding stooks into the thrashing machine.    And that pretty much constituted the McLean family vacation until I was about 10 or 11 or so.  

I am not complaining.  When you're a kid you really only know that to which you have been exposed.  When teachers asked kids in my class what they were doing on summer vacation,  I would say "Were going to Birch River"  and expect everyone to know where that was,  just like the kids who were going to the Okanagan, or Toronto, or Vancouver, or California.   Lots of kids with whom I attended school never went anywhere.    We did take one trip to Minneapolis to visit Grandma's family when I would have been six or so.  But when you're six,  that is a long long time to sit in a car with five other people.   

Growing up in a brand new town in the middle of a rain forrest did leave me with a hankering to see other places.  Live in other places actually.  I couldn't imagine a single place that would be less glamorous than the mud bowl that was my home.  There were miles of bush and poplar forrest in every direction.  The camping was great if you liked that sort of thing.  We had horses and I did get to do quite a bit of horse back riding, so that's cool.  But I was pretty convinced I was really a city kid who had somehow been misplaced through no fault of my own.   I was also pretty hyperactive.  I was loud which as bad enough but I also had bright orange hair which made me easily identifiable at any scene.  It also made me a pretty easy target for the bully.  I was convinced that if I only lived in exotic places like Winnipeg or Edmonton I would just be the captain of cool.  Yeah,  I know.

When I was 17 I got my first taste of travel.  My parents sent me to Scotland for the summer with my sister.  Now there is eight years difference in our age,  so you can imagine how that went from time to time.  We did get to do and see some cool stuff.  Spent a week in London, and traveled up to the Highlands of Scotland and the Hebride Islands.   Funny that.  I finally got to do something exciting.  To see Scotland which I had been desperate to see all my life,  and that was the year I grew,  lost some baby fat, met a girl or two at the figure skating school,  and actually didn't mind being in my home town.   I really didn't want to miss the summer.  Teen agers!  Can't live with em......pass the beernuts. 

But that little venture did give me a hankering to travel.  Luckily I met a girl in my Twenty first year that liked the idea of travel as well.  We've seen and done some things in our adult life.  Made sure our kids got to see and do some things too.  They have been to Britain.   That happened with the help of my parents who took the family there for their 50th wedding anniversary.   My inlaws retired on the east coast,  so the Kids have been across Canada a few times.  They have seen some states.  More than we have actually.  By the time I retired, travel was a big part of our dreams.  

As adults, my cousin in Glasgow reconnected with me via social media.  Shortly after we reintroduced ourselves,  she brought her husband and two of her children over for a three week visit.  As it turned out,  my cousin, her husband, Carol and I became fast and close friends.  We had a wonderful time hosting them and showing off the Rockies,  and life at the lake we call home.  It wasn't long before they hosted us and showed us a most wonderful scenic and family time in Scotland.    

Now we live at a lake resort.  In fact, I would describe it as the most desirable lake resort in our Province.  I have related before that our lake is the summer gathering point for thousands of new Canadian families.   That is cool.   But no less cool is the draw our lake is for grand children every summer.  For a couple of golden aged travellers,  we find it very difficult to leave our home town in the summer months.   We travel in the spring,  mostly in the fall,  and lately more and more during the winter.   

Travel is an education.  Maybe the best education.   It teaches you about cultures that have influenced who we are,  what we do, what we eat and drink.  It makes us appreciate sounds and aromas, and colours and styles.  It gives you insight and understanding.  Unless you're one of those very few who expect everything to be exactly like it is at home.  And that is the last word they will ever extract from me. 

There is some expense to travel.  And for that reason we need to kinda bucket list (if you will) where we want go and what we want to do.  This year we have a family wedding in Vancouver.  Lucky for me it is one of my favourite cities in the whole world.  And a brief  few day western excursion will give us time for our next international adventure.   We are currently looking at a hiking tour of the isle of Corfu.  We have been discussing a bicycle/barge tour of Belgium.  Something's coming.   And that excitement,  that planning phase,  those discussions and the hours of staring at maps?   It makes some of the best parts of travel happen at the kitchen table.   You may say it's the next best thing to being there.