Thankfully tonight I remembered to close the sun-roof on my car and that the seat will not be damp when I go to get in it tomorrow morning to drive to work like it was this morning and probably should have been the day before that when it was again left open during a downpour. The weather is a joke this summer except for a few days here and there but pretty soon that will not be of any relevance to me. For sitting beside me right now is my passport and stamped into the passport is my permanent residency visa for Canada which I acquired just a week ago officially. With that all in place the only thing left to do now to rubber stamp it all is to book the flights and that is the plan tonight. That then officially engages the journey west, into the known in my case, or maybe in certain cases the unknown and the start of this blog. Before I get on with it all, maybe I should give a little background as to why I am doing what I am doing though I suspect everyone knows that by now, but what the hell. . . .

So it’s now 11:07 P.M. and I still haven’t got any further on the flight booking business. The excuses are valid though. I gave Kim a call and also was getting messages from a friend who had access to the Liverpool pre-season friendly game on Sky Sports. The game ended 0-0 but it was purely experimental for Liverpool as Rafael Benetiz changed up the line-up at halftime taking NINE players off. Two more and he surely would have set some kind of World Record, or at least definitely tied the world record. All reports were positive however and it bodes well for the start of the new season that a lot of the young players impressed regardless of the score. Only two weeks to go until it all kicks off again but much more on that a little later.

I have kind of went off on a bit of a sports tangent which I tend to do sometimes but I’ve dragged myself back to the booking of the flight and why this is all happening to be exact. These tangents and drifting into another subject is probably the reason why the flight hasn’t actually been booked yet since the in-depth search began at about 6 P.M. this evening, and even the casual searches all week.

So yes. Canada: The land of the Maple Leaf, the home of Hockey, the Great White North. My destination on August 31st. But why?

Well there is the simple, obvious story and then there is the more interesting story. The simple, obvious one is more in line with the truth, the interesting one makes for better reading I would say.

Have you ever heard of the Butterfly Effect?

According to wikipedia, the Butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. So this is sometimes presented as esoteric behavior, but can be exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

A lot of big words there and don’t worry, I did indeed copy and paste from this article.

Pretty much that theory that if a Butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil it causes a tornado in Florida? Or in wikipedia’s case, “A butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location.”

So for me I suppose it all kicked off in 1997 when I first set foot in Canada and fell in love with the place. I was only 15 at the time but we went there as a family for a two week holiday to travel around Ontario and Montreal and I enjoyed every single part of it. To this day it remains one of the best holiday’s I ever went on. In fact, in theory you could push the whole reason for going to Canada at the end of this month all the way back to my first back-to-back holidays at Disney Land, Florida in 1993 and 1994.

I guess the butterfly really flapped its wings way back then.

Those trips to Disney gave me an up-close look at theme parks and how amazing they were out in North America and although I have never rode a thrill rollercoaster to this day and likely never will, I still loved the whole idea of these parks and never got fed up visiting them, even if I did spend half of my time waiting for the others to line up and ride some insanely fast, incredibly high structure with a narrow little cart hurling people around a 3000 foot metal track!

In 1999 we visited Disney for a third time and by 2002 I was sitting in a Software Engineering class in Bangor Technical College chatting to a few class mates when one said that he was looking into spending his summer working and traveling in the U.S.A. Having always enjoyed my times in America I decided I would look into this as a good way for a 20-year old to spend his summer, instead of standing behind the till in the local Spar garage. I got my visa and the job guide book for students working abroad. The first job I came to was at a theme park in Ohio and within a day of e-mailing them I had a reply saying I started in mid-June. That summer I got a proper look at the running of a theme park as well has the chance to travel around parts of the U.S.A. by bus and train. By the time I got home I had my mind made up I would be doing something similar the following year.

That following year of 2003 I sent off the visa application again but this time had left it too late and was rejected because the program was over subscribed. I wasn’t put off, I just simply wanted to go somewhere and so a similar visa in Canada was applied for. Within weeks I had it and within a month I was off again on another summer working and traveling abroad, this time north of the border from the States.

And so the initial visit to a theme park and Canada in the 90’s turned into working in a theme park in America in the 00’s, the big travel bug and then a summer working in Canada in ’03.

That summer I met Kim and the following summer on a return holiday this time, we started going together. Ever since then Kim has spent time in Europe and living and working with me in Belfast while we continued to holiday 2-3 times per year in Canada. Finally the decision came to move to Canada, to find work, a place to live and make a go of things out there. Standard of living was as good, property was cheaper, jobs paid as well and petrol prices were half the price. What was not appealing?

And there we have it. What had planned to be a visa application for the States again in 2003 was rejected but thanks to the prior summer I pursued and my second application, this time to Canada set me on my way.

It is still raining outside, and it is getting heavier on my window: 11:57 P.M. I need to get some sleep and so I will leave the publishing of this post until the morning. At the very least it gives an idea as to why I am going to Canada for the very few that don’t already know.

Oh, and for the record, in the midst of writing this I took a break to make myself a cup of tea and book the flight. Yes, on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 I will head out to Canada.

~ Richard Blayney

On the subject: Cedar Point, Severn Lodge, Work America, Work Canada | ALL SUBJECTS |

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