ENGAGING FIRST NATIONS

Early in our time in Canada, we knew we needed to get to know some of the people and the geography of the province of British Columbia if we were to truly understand what people meant when they talked about ‘remote’ and ‘rural’ and ‘travel / distance’ to get services. So, naively the team looked at a map, set aside a week, made contact with some Canada-based Maori whanau who had already connected with us (to plan cuppa tea and mimi stops and help connect us to the locals), and booked a van ready for a road-trip!

We soon learned that the map does not truly represent the true distances in this large country. While often the motorways are multi-laned and well maintained, we didn’t really understand that you shouldn’t travel in February when the northern parts of the province are covered in thick heavy snow. We had to learn about “snow tyres” and that every car in the province has two sets of tyres that they swap for winter and summer. We didn’t know that huge long-haul trucks would overtake you and splat huge amounts of sand-laden, wet soppy snow on your windscreen so you couldn’t see a thing! We also came to know that most First Nation reserves are in some of the remotest parts of the world! On islands only accessible by boats and float planes or down 4-hour forestry gravel forestry roads or over 5hour mountain range trails. What a learning! We began to understand what REMOTE really means in Canada-speak.

And yes we did need the entire week to travel from Vancouver to Kamloops and Prince George on the one main highway that heads north in the province, and out west to the coast to Prince Rupert. Our big plan was to catch the ‘inside straight’ ferry back to Vancouver Island and on to Vancouver. Well as it turned out our navigator got a bit lost on the check in time for the ferry and we missed it (and of course there were no more ferries for another 3 days). So, we ended up driving all the way back … sore bums, sore heads and sore wallets from eating lots of fast food and “Timmy Hortons” (which are everywhere). But the trip achieved its goal – we truly got to appreciate distance, time, remoteness, rurality and driving conditions in Canada. So when the local indigenous people explained these issues as barriers to access – we completely understood what they meant and didn’t need to nod in agreement with absolutely no clue at all!

We also got a lot of cudos from the locals for taking the trip and investing that time to learn. Many said they hadn’t even travelled that far across their own province. A worthwhile investment of time and expense to gather huge knowledge, appreciation and understanding. The lesson – if you are doing to work somewhere – get to know the landscape, as this helps you to appreciate and connect with the people.

Imagine now doing this across all the other Provinces and Territories of Canada! That story next time …..