Air travel in a huge small town

Horseshoe Bay, BC

This has been a most interesting day.   On the one hand it has been the worst day of travel I think I have ever had, trying to returnt to BC from Ottawa by way of Toronto through a terrible winter storm.   Bu the way Air Canada got me home was absolutely superb.   I was impressed beyond belief at the efficiency of things today.   It meant that truly the only thing that wasn’t cooperating was just the weather.

So my day began early as a storm rolled into Ottawa, winds coming up the Valley from the east cold and bringing snow and, later in the morning freezing rain with it.   I left early for the airport, hoping that my plane would leave at 9:00 on time.   Toronth had suffered from the storm on Thursday so I knew there would be backlogs and traffic jams so I thought getting to the airport at 7:00 or so would be prudent.

I awoke to freezing rain mixed with snow and it didn’t look good.   I resigned myself to the fact that I might spend the whole day in Ottawa waiting to get out so once I got to airport I went and bought a couple f books to get me through the day.   Dave Bidini’s “The Best Game You Can Name” was my constant companion all day, a series of anecdotes and reflections on the gritty, human inner life of old style and amateur hockey.   It kept me laughing all day.

Looking for breakfast I wandered into Nate’s grill at the airport and had the first of several interesting encounters.   Canada is a huge country but we’re small town in many ways.   As I settled into a booth to eat breakfast I heard a voice calling behind me “Chris Corrigan!”   I turned and saw my friend Bob Turner, the mayor of Bowen Island where I live and a geologist with Natural Resources Canada.   He was coming back from a meeting in Ottawa and we chatted about using dialogue practices on Bowen Island.   It was kind of surreal, talking with Bob about Bowen in the airport restaurant in Ottawa half fretting that I might actually not see home for several days.   He was heading home on Westjet through Winnipeg.   I said I’d race him, confident that my plane would leave on time.   He had been delayed to 1:30.   I think he must have got the last laugh in the end.

In Ottawa there were several planes that hadn’t arrived from Toronto, so the standby lines were full and people were seething.   I have never understood the immature reaction of people who shout at customer service staff when the weather conspires against their plans.   From what I could tell, the staff were doing a good job getting everyone set up on alternate flights, but the fact that several people took a few extra minutes to share their frustrations with the counter staff didn’t help the lines get any shorter.   I had a confirmed seat on the 9:00 flight so I was sitting happy enough, although I was wondering where my plane was.

Turns out that my plane was late leaving Toronto and the time started getting pushed back.   I ran into another friend as I was waiting, Chief Shane Gustafsson, who is Chief of the Kamloops Indian Band.   We chatted for a while about the economic development meeting he had been at in Ottawa.   Other planes came in from Toronto and left again but mine ran into problems on approach by starting to ice up 30 miles west of Ottawa.   They did a couple of circuits but then had to make the call to return to Toronto to fuel up again and try a second time.   Meantime, all the folks whose seats had been shuffled around were busy leaving on the planes that were starting to arrive from Toronto, but I had to wait, because I was confirmed.   Luck of the draw.

We finally got airborne around 1:00, two hours after my connection had left from Toronto to Vancouver.   Nothing to do but sleep on the short flight to Toronto.   I was bagged, and I awoke with a start when we were on final approach as the plane was coming down through high winds and sleet and we actually got struck by lightning on final approach.   That woke me up.   We landed safely, to scattered applause throughout the cabin, but I was wondering now if I was going to get home at all or whether I would have to stay overnight in Toronto.   Several other people had already stayed overnight in various places as the storm battered Ontario and Eastern Canada.   The ground staff in Toronto looked like hell.   I’ll bet they had been shouted at for 24 hours.

I headed to Customer Service to rebook my connection and stood in a line for a few minutes until we were told to head down to a bank of phones to rebook our flights and then return to the Customer Service desk for boarding passes.   This appeared not to make much sense at the time, but it turned out to be a smart move.   There was a bank of eight phones and everyone patiently took turns waiting on hold and then reworking their itineraries with booking agents.   I spoke to a lovely woman who was relived and appreciative of my tone of voice and patience, proving the golden rule is most important when things are going screwy: treat others the way you want to be treated.   She got me a seat on the 6:00 flight from Toronto to Vancouver and I returned to the Customer Service desk which was by now moving very smoothly.   A very friendly agent handed me my bo$arding pass with a smile, and I had time for lunch before heading to the gate to await boarding.
I was early there and the area was pretty empty so I pulled out my juggling balls and started playing around, trying to get my stiff and tired body moving.   A young Quebecois kid came up and looked at me.   I tossed him the balls and he started juggling.   I stole them back and he stole them back and within a few minutes were passing and doing dimwits and making up some patterns.   We hardly said two words to each other the whole time, but we passed the time together for about a half hour until his plane to Montreal boarded.   It was great.   Just as I packed up I ran into another colleague, Darrel McCleod, who ws coming back from yet another national meeting in Ottawa, but who left later in the afternoon after things had stablized in the capital.

As soon as I hit my seat on the A330, I conked out.   I awoke as we started our approach a mere four hours later – the first officer has a heavy foot, I later learned, due to the fact that he lives in Clinton, seven hours north of Vancouver, and he wanted to get home just like everyone else. Four hours and twenty minutes is a personal record flying east to west across two-thirds of Canada.   We arrived in Vancouver at 8:20 and I had some hope of making the last ferry to Bowen Island.

Alas it was not to be, as my luggage had not had as good a day as I did, and it missed all the connections.   It wasn’t in Vancouver at any rate, and I had to wait until all the bags had come down before getting in line to get a tracking number.   It had been a bad day for the whole Air Canada system, and there were lots of lost bags and irate people.   I still might have made it out in time if I hadn’t been stuck behind people who thought it was their duty to berate the baggage staff for the fate of their luggage.   When I got to the counter I looked my agent in the eye and invited him to take a breath and close his eyes for a second.   He sat back in his chair sighed a big sigh, opened his eyes and smiled.   He said “Thank you…now how can I help you?”   I was touched by his friendliness at the end of a long day for both of us.   I was on my way in three minutes, tracking number in hand and relaxed now that I didn’t have to rush to get home anymore.   After supper and a leaisurely cab ride to Horseshoe Bay I pulled up here at the Troller, to write, suck back a Guinness and head home.   It will be 1:00 am when I get in, 21 hours after I left my hotel in Ottawa, and I feeling pretty good.

Air Canada did a good job caring for me all day, got me home safely and promised to get my bag to my door this weekend.   I have no complaints for them today at all, and that surprises me as I have had all kinds of strange experiences with them over the years.   Today however, credit where credit is due.   My big learning for today is when you are stuck in the winter nightmare of storm bound air travel in Canada, stay away from the other travellers whose expressions of outrage, righteous indignation and dramatic superiority complexes seem more about a tabloid TV influenced public performance rather than a resourceful response to the chaos around them.   Just plug your earphones in, crank up The Tragically Hip and cuddle up with a Dave Bidini book and be thankful you live in a big small-town country where you might run into friends at any turn and where people are, at their core, decent and helpful in the end.

[tags]air canada[/tags]