Harriet and I in Madagascar

Quebec City

I wish to share a little more on our trip through Eastern Canada in Quebec City. Quebec is a province in the eastern part of Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level. Quebec City is beautiful, full of history and old buildings. Here are some photographs.






































View from the funicular (see the website)




































Ken & Harriet around some street sculptures
of Aboriginal tribal members ....




























































































Quebec in January 2009 ..... I was sent these by Mandy, a cousin of mine, this year. She was sent them by a good friend in Quebec who they got to know really well when she and Gary, her husband lived and worked in Canada for several years earlier than this time. See the Blog Site on Quebec in January 2009

Part 6. Ontario Pioneer Camp ....Eastern Canada

I wish to share a little more on our trip through Eastern Canada at the Ontario Pioneer Camp. We came back from the week long Alaskan part of trip back to Vancouver. We then flew up to Toronto which was a five hour trip. For those who may be reading this travel blog for the first time, I summarise our itinerary from Part 1:

• On the 8th May we flew from Brisbane down to Sydney which is a one hour flight
• Then we boarded a plane which flew straight to Vancouver in Canada which was a 14 hour flight …. A long trip!! This was a lot simpler than flying to Los Angeles (USA customs etc.) then flying to Vancouver
• We had three days to walk the streets of Vancouver …. taking lots of photos
• On the second day we caught a taxi to the waiting ship for a week long cruise to Alaska and back again. We cruised right up to the Skagway in northern Alaska and back finally to Vancouver
• We then went to Vancouver airport and flew to Toronto …. A five hour trip. One of our old friends, Yolanda actually met us at us at ‘Arrivals’. It was wonderful to see her after 25 years. We were neighbours, living on acreage at Chambers Flat in the mid 1970’s. Yolanda had returned home to Canada in the early 1980’s. Yolanda acted as our personal assistant from getting possession of our hire car and getting us to our hotel.

Then she took us out to dinner. As we said we wanted to see Niagara Falls, Yolanda contacted friends on her mobile phone who lived up there to meet us and ferry us around for the day. See the blog site here to view our Niagara Falls photos.

I wish to share a little more on our trip through Eastern Canada at the Ontario Pioneer Camp. We came back from the week long Alaskan part of trip back to Vancouver. We then flew up to Toronto which was a five hour trip. For those who may be reading thitravel blog for the first time, I summarise our itinerary from Part 1:

• On the 8th May we flew from Brisbane down to Sydney which is a one hour flight
• Then we boarded a plane which flew straight to Vancouver in Canada which was a 14 hour flight …. A long trip!! This was a lot simpler than flying to Los Angeles (USA customs etc.) then flying to Vancouver
• We had three days to walk the streets of Vancouver …. taking lots of photos
• On the second day we caught a taxi to the waiting ship for a week long cruise to Alaska and back again. We cruised right up to the Skagway in northern Alaska and back finally to Vancouver
• We then went to Vancouver airport and flew to Toronto …. A five hour trip. One of our old friends, Yolanda actually met us at us at ‘Arrivals’. It was wonderful to see her after 25 years. We were neighbours, living on acreage at Chambers Flat in the mid 1970’s. Yolanda had returned home to Canada in the early 1980’s. Yolanda acted as our personal assistant from getting possession of our hire car and getting us to our hotel.
• From Niagara Falls, we drove up back through Toronto 2 and half hours up North to Muskokas (the cottage lake district) to pick up our 28 year old daughter Claire. She is a primary school teacher who had been living and doing volunteer working in Canada from June 2007 till June 2008.
• Claire had initially travelled to Canada to volunteer as a chalet leader for Ontario Pioneer Camp a Christian Summer Camp and Outdoor Education Centre which has over 1200 acres of property, five separate camping sites (three winterised) on two lakefronts. Lake Clearwater is several kilometres across. During the summer the camp operates a Boys Camp, Girls Camp, Adventure Camp (for small children), Leaders in Training (LIT) Program, to name a few. Claire volunteered at Girls Camp for the summer and taught Sailing and Wilderness Survival skills as well as bonding with small groups of girls who came to camp for a one or two week session. (6 weeks- 6 days a week)
• When the summer finished Claire extended her visa and was accepted as an instructor for their Year Round Outdoor Education Program. She received a lot of on the job training and was then able to teach canoeing, kayaking, high ropes, low ropes, wilderness survival, etc during the autumn (fall) and then after the joys of experiencing snow for the first time was taught how to cross country skiing, snowshoe, broomball etc. to the many school and weekend retreat groups that utilised the facility.
• See the website for Pioneer Camp.
There is a lot of beauty and joy in life .... I wish share with you a very small portion of this. See the few photos below and see the Blog Site of Photographs of our experience of the Ontario Pioneer Camp over three days we were there.

Our 28 year old daughter Claire at home .... she has become an official Primary School with a one year contract at a local school in 2009 .....


















Claire about to stern (steer) a large replica War Canoe across the lake .... in the summer time in Canada 2007 before we arrived in Canada in May 2008-this lake freezes right across it’s surface and it is possible to walk between the different summer camp sites. (not to mention drive a truck across if you so desire!)






























Cedarwood ….. one of the buildings where we stayed for three days …















One of the chalets that the campers lived in during the summer (this was Claire’s home for 6 weeks-the bunk on the left)…..















Camp Farewell to Claire who had been a volunteer at the Camp for a whole year ….. she was presented with a cake and a Canadian Flag …..



















































Winter Time

Harriet & I were down the Gold Coast Park (Australia) reading under trees with our shoes off in February 2008. I had been writing e-mails to Claire in Canada every week and I copied this photograph into the e-mail to keep her informed of our Australian situation. She wrote back and said how she was amazed to see us with our shoes off. There was five feet of snow outside her front door and they had to keep shovelling the snow to get inside. The difference between summer in Australia and winter time in Canada!!



















I trust you enjoyed looking at these photos of the Ontario Pioneer Camp ..... I trust they are a celebration of beauty and joy in life. Enjoying the impact of one focussed detail of life has to be counterbalanced with the big picture of life. Life is a journey and not a destination.
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Canada Part 5 ... Skagway in Alaska

Part 5. Skagway in Alaska ....

16.01.09

Dear Friend around the World,

I wish to share with you some experiences of a recent trip we did overseas in May 2008 through the medium of photography and blog sites or recommended websites. On the 8th May we flew from Brisbane to Sydney and boarded a plane which flew straight to Vancouver in Canada …. A long fourteen hour trip!! However this was a lot simpler than flying via Los Angeles (USA customs etc.).

The next day we boarded our ship for a week long cruise to Alaska. Here are some photos of our week long trip in the Veendam. We stopped at two places for excursions right up in Alaska ...... Juneau and Skagway. Part 5. Is on our day trip in Skagway. See the Blog Site I have made of some my Skagway photos.

Also see David Daward's website of photographs from no. 174 -244 For his White Pass photos and 203 – 244 for his Skagway photos.

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Download from the free Google Earth Website ....

If you the latest version of Google Earth, you can put in our address at 1606 Chambers Flat Rd. Chambers Flat Australia and the Earth will zoom into our address and show even our house roof. Slide the bar down to a smaller size and you will see Chambers Flat in relationship to Brisbane >>>> then Australia as a whole then Australia against the whole earth .... Awesome!!!


Use Google Earth to see any location we have travelled to as detailed in this travel blog site. It is best being on Cable Internet ..... it comes in so fast!!

2008 Canada .... Part 3

Part 3. Northern Alaska in the Veendam

We had three days to walk the streets of Vancouver (two days there initially and one day a week later) …. taking lots of photos see the Blog Sites in Part 2. On the second day we caught a taxi to the waiting ship for a week long cruise to Alaska and back again. We cruised right up to the Skagway in northern Alaska and back finally to Vancouver. Here are some photos of our week long trip in the Veendam operated by the Holland America cruise line. It had 1200 passengers and 600 crew to look after you.

..... Ken and Harriet have just boarded the Veendam
for cruising to Alaska for a week ….

…. A liner similar to the Veendam
moored up in Skagway, Alaska …

The Interior Of The Ship: The ship had
eleven floors on it. You would go up
by lift to the general Ship Restaurant and to
the covered Swimming Pool and outdoor Eating
Room on the 11th Floor. The two photos below
show one of the many halls and the general Ship
Restaurant which was duplicated on the other side
of the ship.

It was very stable as the ship travelled

up the Alaskan Inside Passage .....

This is our Bedroom on the 5th Floor …

.. it isn’t called a Bedroom. It called a
State Room = 516. At night, you would be left
a notice by your room that if you would like
breakfast in your State Room, what time would you
like it and what breakfast selection would you
have from this list? In the morning at your set time,
a man in his catering uniform would wheel a tray
of your special breakfast selection to your room,
knock on your door and when you had opened,
he would hand - carry in a tray of your selection
to your table. He would come back and pick all the
trays along the hall when you left them
outside on hall floor beside your door.

The Interior Of The Ship

• The Interior of the ship ….. see the photographs here
• The Veendam on the 11th Deck ..... you come up by lift to the General Ship Restaurant and to the covered Swimming Pool and outdoor Eating Room which looks over the water .....…..see the photographs here
• The Veendam Auditorium ……See the Photographs here
• The Veendam Formal Dining Room ……See the Photographs here
• The Veendam Ken’s Birthday Dinner (May)……See the Photographs here
• The Veendam Library ……See the Photographs here




The Exterior views from the ship ….. see the photographs here

• Bob Silverman’s photos …… the man above in the red coat …. See his many photos through Kodak Gallery. We got to know Bob and his wife Elaine on the ship in a close way over the whole week we were on the ship. He appears in my photos above section: The Veendam Ken’s Birthday Dinner (May)……See the Photographs here ‘ His photos are wonderful and show scenes inside the ship, on the ship (including several of Harriet and I walking around on the timber deck for exercise). He shows photos of two places we stopped for excursions right in Alaska ...... Juneau and Skagway. I will focus on these places in our Blog Sites in Part 4 and 5 which will come out as later date. Bob and Elaine are now on my worldwide e-mail friends list.

I cannot organise things very well or drive due to my severe brain injury twelve years ago. I used to do this very capably in my former business. I ran a small business in upmarket landscape design and construction for wealthy clients around Brisbane for twenty years. It was called ‘New Earth Systems P/L’. I was an Outer Gardener concerned about Outer Sustainability. This Outer Sustainability was fragile and easily eroded, dependent on my performance and people's acceptance of my work. Two specific blog sites of my past gardens are these:

• Greenmount Beach Resort … 28 years on from when I did the garden in 1980
• Sheehan's Garden in October 2007 .... House and Garden in West End, Brisbane … 23 years on from when I did the garden in 1984

I thought of a landscape as a three-dimensional piece of space that people walked through. This space changed with time as it grew and changed with the time of day: shadows vs. sun patterns, boulders, colour, plants, trees, earth-forms, solid structures and water. These were the ingredients in a subtle flow of landscape design and construction. Rather an intangible product to sell and run a business with!! Out of this stage I built a structure for my life: my marriage with Harriet, business and our house plus we had a family of two children.

Now I cannot do these things. I am in a new season of life where other people are very important. One thing I do now is that I now facilitate The BRAIN INJURY SURVIVOR NETWORK around the world ….. there are hundreds of fellow survivors all linked by the blog site as given here. The BRAIN INJURY SURVIVOR NETWORK is about HOPE and RESTORATION.
Hope and RESTORATION: that by following the fundamentals of the Sustainable Life, you will again be a valued member of the community again. Such a life has the ability to be continually and maintained everyday. From my personal belief and experience there three important components in recovering from a brain injury and maintaining an ongoing life. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sit on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod of your life will fall.

Hope and RESTORATION : that by following the fundamentals of the Sustainable Life, you will again be a valued member of the community again. Such a life has the ability to be continually and maintained everyday. From my personal belief and experience there three important components in recovering from a brain injury and maintaining an ongoing life. These are: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. Each of these components act like legs on a tripod which sit on large rock near the ocean. When the storms and waves of life come (as in brain injury), if the legs are strong, the waves will go over you but you will sit firmly on the rock of life. If one of the legs is weak, the tripod of your life will fall over in what you could call an Unsustainable Life.
Now Harriet does all the day to day organising and the daily driving. I instead focus on visually recording the experiences through photographs ….. all the places we go to. I came back from Canada with 3000 ++ photographs from our 3.50 weeks in Canada on three 2 GB chips. When I came home, I then downloaded them onto my home computer into many folders and many subfolders. Then I can use them in blog sites of photographs and word explanations. I can then communicate with many associates and friends around the world by sending a few e-mails.

Regards,

Ken Aitken (B.Sc.)

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Juneau in Alaska .... Part 4.

Part 4. Juneau in Alaska ....

Copied from an e-mail broadcast 28.12.08

Dear Friend around the World,

I wish to share with you some experiences of a recent trip we did overseas in May 2008 through the medium of photography and blog sites or recommended websites. On the 8th May we flew from Brisbane to Sydney and boarded a plane which flew straight to Vancouver in Canada …. A long fourteen hour trip!! However this was a lot simpler than flying via Los Angeles (USA customs etc.).

The next day we boarded our ship for a week long cruise to Alaska. Here are some photos of our week long trip in the Veendam operated by the Holland America cruise line. It had 1200 passengers and 600 crew to look after you.

We stopped at two places for excursions right up in Alaska ...... Juneau and Skagway. Juneau is the capital of Alaska and Skagway was the dropping off point 500 years ago for the Klondike Gold Rush. The overall excursion was very stable as the ship travelled up the Alaskan Inside Passage. The Inside Passage of the Alaska Panhandle and coastal British Columbia is a coastal route for oceangoing vessels along a series of passages between the mainland and the coastal islands. Ships using the route can avoid some of the bad weather in the open ocean, and visit the many isolated communities along the route. It is heavily travelled by cruise ships, freighters, tugs with tows, fishing craft and ships of the Alaska Marine Highway and BC Ferries systems. The name Inside Passage is also used to refer to the ocean and islands around the passage.

The Alaskan portion of the Inside Passage, in the north, extends 500 miles (800 km) from north to south and 100 miles (160 km) from east to west. The area encompasses 1,000 islands, 15,000 miles (24,000 km) of shoreline and thousands of coves and bays. British Columbia's southern portion of the route is of similar extent, with up to 25,000 miles (40,000 km) of coastline, and includes the narrow, protected Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, the Johnstone and Queen Charlotte Straits between Vancouver Island and the mainland, as well as a short stretch along the wider and more exposed Hecate Strait near the Queen Charlotte Islands, though from Fitz Hugh Sound northwards the route is sheltered via the various large islands in that area such as Princess Royal Island and Pitt Island.
The Juneau mining district is a gold mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska.In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris the presence of gold in what is now named Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin. The city of Juneau was founded there that year.

The strike sparked the Juneau gold rush which resulted in the development of many placer and lode mines including the largest, in their time, gold mines in the world: the Treadwell complex of lode mines on Douglas Island (across a narrow sea channel from Juneau) and the AJ lode mine, in Juneau itself. The steep, wet, timber-covered, seaside mountain setting provided water power, transportation, and lumber such that, "extraordinarily low costs of operation make available low grade ore that under conditions only slightly different would be valueless."
The first claims of what was to become the Treadwell complex were staked in 1881. Mining the Treadwell site began by sluicing residual placers over the lode deposits. Underground mining began with a five-stamp mill operating in 1883. In the mid-1910's, with 960 stamps grinding ore and tunnels reaching as far as 2400 feet below the surface and extending under the sea, Treadwell was one of the most technologically advanced mines of its day. Up to 2000 people worked at the mine before a collapse allowed the rising tide to flood the tunnels in 1917. All operations at the Treadwell ceased by 1922.

As the Treadwell mines declined and closed, the AJ mine rose in prominence. After years of losses and labor problems, the mine became profitable in the mid-1920's: with 600 workers it was setting production records. Through the decade, it was the main economic engine of Juneau. In the 1930's, with 1000 workers, it was an important factor in softening the impact upon Juneau of the Great Depression.

Economic pressures of WWII lead to the closure of the AJ in 1944; this was the end of the dominance of mining in the Juneau economy.

Although those two mines are long-since closed, as late as 1980 one of the hydropower plants built to power the AJ was still in use. [5] Fires and time have destroyed most traces of the Treadwell complex; the AJ mine buildings still tower over the Gastineau Channel south of Juneau.

The Juneau mining district; comprising the area between the Canadian border, Lynn Canal, Admiralty Island, and Frederick Sound, has produced over 7 million ounces of lode gold and 80,000 ounces of placer gold.

See the following website on Alaska as one of the states of the USA. This website gives an overall view on Alaska. Our goal on the excursion were one day stop offs at Juneau and Skagway. 1200 passengers were assigned into several groups. Our group was going on a nature walk to be to teach us about to take better digital natural camera photographs. There only 14 people in a our group led by Brandon. See the photographs and detail below.

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...... The ship docking at Juneau ....

...... Harriet with our group walking through the
National Park on the track to the Mendenhall Glacier ....


..... Ken and Harriet at the mighty Mendenhall Glacier
in the background with the surrounding snow covered mountains.
The Glacier is a moving mass of ice with rugged crevasses.

.... Brandon, the leader of our group ....

was there to teach us about to take better
digital natural camera photographs ......
I am still on an e-mail connection with him in
Alaska from Australia. Brandon had done digital
camera course in the USA and had come up to
Alaska to be and apprentice to Mark Kelley.
See Mark’s website ...

I just had an e-mail from him in January
2009 where he said:

I completed my work in Alaska at the end of
September and returned to New Hampshire to
be with my family. Before I left I made a contact
with a National Geographic Photographer named
Flip Nicklin. Now I am living in Maui and working with
a non-profit whale research company called Whale
Trust. I will be hear until the end of April and will
then return to Alaska. I have recently updated
my website if you would like to view some shots
from Alaska and around the USA.

..... The Boat we went to see whales in the Bay .....

See the following websites on Juneau:

• Bob Silverman’s photos …… the man above in the red coat …. See his many photos through Kodak Gallery. We got to know Bob and his wife Elaine on the ship in a close way over the whole week we were on the ship.
• See the Juneau photos I took of the ship coming in, the walk we did to the inland lake, the iceberg which formed the lake and the surrounding snow covered mountains
• See this website for more detail on Juneau.

...... One of the whales seen our boat trip .....

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See the Blog Site on Juneau which is in number of sections:

• Juneau Wharf in the day

• The Walk at Juneau ..... Mendenhall Glacier ..... the goal of our walk in Juneau ....

• The Boat Trip to see whales ....

• Juneau at Night ....

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