The flight to Whitehorse was uneventful, but it seemed over before it began. Air Canada told me at 7:30 this morning in Ottawa that I was on stand by on the first leg of the journey. I said, “No. I’m not.” It worked. But the indignant check-in clerk punished me by jamming me into a centre seat. Try reading the Saturday Globe and Mail with your elbows on your belly.
Vancouver was sunny and 8C. I felt like busting out of the airport to run in the green grass.
On the short hop to Whitehorse I met a Tlingket First Nations woman who runs a film company in Teslin, Yukon, a small town of 350 people east of Whitehorse. She said she’d love to get a free bulb.
Yukon MP Larry Bagnell met us at the Whitehorse airport. He said we’d recognize him in the red parka; there were also a lot of people chatting with him — local star! Larry’s been a Liberal MP since 2000. He met us at the airport because he flies back to Ottawa tomorrow morning at 6AM, a trip he makes every week. We took his photo with our bulb pamphlet outside the airport as the northern sun slowly set. Then he offered us a ride downtown. In his two seater pickup truck. We were three, with six bags. I felt like Rick Mercer, practically sitting on the lap of the MP for the Yukon, squeezed onto the gear box of a Toyota pickup between Suzanne Boileau and two laptop bags en route to deliver 10,000 bulbs in the north. I’ve got an awesome job.
