Few days Vancouver

This past long weekend we visited Hilary who lives & works since October 2018 in Vancouver. Mark and his girlfriend Carly joined Mary and me. We flew with SWOOP Airlines from the regional airport in Hamilton to a similar airport in Abbottville an hour outside of Vancouver. Hilary lives there in a very nice condo near Stanley Park overlooking the harbour area and works in a hospital across from there in North Vancouver (just for six months but what a view for that period!). On Saturday we rented bikes (and one tandem bike) and went all over the city....

I copied these photos out of a message from Hilary. My lack of technical skills can't get them in this blog-post the right way, but who cares. It was exhausting business all this cycling around....

We had a nice lunch and dinner with our friends Val & Steve who live already a long time just south of Vancouver (see posts of May 2018 when we stayed a few days in their home). The next day we drove to Whistler where we stayed one night. On the way the youngsters walked up a mountain...

Hilary and her boyfriend Shayd are already real mountain goats, but Mark and Carly did a good job keeping up with them (while Mary and I waited for them at the top....)

The next day (Monday, a national public holiday in Canada) we checked out Whistler a bit more and had a nice walk around one of the local lakes. We flew back overnight. Tired on Tuesday but with a lot of nice memories of a weekend with the six of us......

Odeyto, Kenya & Brazil

The new learning center for the First Nations students at Seneca is called "Odeyto" which means in the Aniskinaabe language: "the good journey". It was opened recently. Today we showed some visitors from Kenya and Brazil around at the campus and we stopped by in the Odeyto for a brief explanation of the center and its programs and activities. A meeting of the peoples of the world...

CICan in Niagara Falls

My favorite conference during the past 25 years. This year hosted again in Niagara Falls.....

In between some of the events walked to the falls for a moment; never stops to impress....

Spencer graduates

The oldest of Marcy & Joe graduated from grade 12. Looks like he will try to step in his father's footsteps as a technologist from Lambton College in Sarnia.

Opa Vandenboom

Mary's Dad moved in a retirement home where he has his own apartment with a small living room (see photo above), a bedroom, washroom and kitchenette. The meals are provided to all 50 residents and the staff also takes care of the daily medications (mostly taken during the meals). The building is just five minutes walking from where we live (and where Susan & Ralph live). We can all stop by a lot which will be nice for him. It was not so easy for us to stop by frequently where he lived in the city of St Thomas which is a good two hours by car from where we live. It will take some getting used to for Opa Vandenboom but he will turn 90 in February 2020 so it is probably good timing.

Seneca promotion activities

During the periods of January to April + September to December, our team has 10-12 international business development managers on the road whose primary task is to market the "Study at Seneca" options to interested prospective students around the world - from Ukraine to Lebanon, from China to Indonesia, from Russia to India and all over the Americas and the African continent. This week I am doing some travel with our new student recruiter for Spanish speaking Latin America. Here is what he did today in Bogota with representatives of a few agencies with whom we have business relations in this city to market our programs and who then guide prospective students making the right choices for their overseas study interest as well as assisting with the student visa applications.

With old SENA friends

Such a privilege to be able to get together again with Colombian colleagues I worked with for a full year during 2013 (see my posts from that year). Juan Guillermo (on the left) has been an incredible leader in the SENA organization; now retired and living the life of a (hobby) farmer. He really should write a book about his years with SENA! Anyhow, he came to join us for lunch which was great! Before we "earned" that lunch together we did some forward looking work with some of the folks who continue the amazing work of the SENA organization at the regional HQ in Medellin. I really love working with these community developers offering training programs to 7 million Colombians each year both in their big cities as well as in some of their smallest communities...

I almost got away with one of their trophies but they frisked me at the exit..... In the evening Alfredo did another good job promoting the "Study at Seneca" options at one of the study abroad agencies with whom we work. Tomorrow we will make our way back to Bogota....