It aint half hot mum.......

In my opinion British Columbia must be the best all round of the 12 provinces and territories what make up Canada. That being said, I've only visited four of them, but I can only offer an opinion based on what I know, so maybe I should have said BC is my favourite of all the provinces Ive been to. 

We arrived in Toronto on April 24th taking two months to drive along Highway 1 also called the Trans Canada Highway, clocking up just over 5000 km. At the start I decided not to keep track of how much fuel we bought as the 6.7 litre truck pulling 3 tonnes of trailer adds up to about 15 mpg! Diesel costs between 50 & 60p per litre, so work it out......but please don't tell me!

Did I enjoy the trip? Absolutely.   Would I do it again?  No way!

We saw a lot of extraordinary things, met a lot of wonderful people but never found a Canadian who didn't want to know our story or help us in any way they could, especially when we had problems with the truck & trailer. We got many invites to their homes, their food & drink or whatever we needed including advice on every subject. 

The sales team at Canadream in Toronto, the fleet manager in Calgary were fantastic. We had huge problems with licensing, vehicle registration for a non resident and insurance issues which were all eventually sorted out by inventing a "unique to us" temporary buy/lease category until the end of July by which time we have to re-register both vehicles in BC. In order to get licence plates for the truck I first had to get a drivers licence, insurance package. Now, one has to be a resident of BC, so our old friend Cory agreed to be our "landlord". Next, armed with a landlord/tenant agreement I opened a bank account. With a copy of the agreement and the bank account details I then had to go and subscribe to the BC healthcare scheme.                                                            Once I had a social insurance number, I could apply to exchange my UK driving licence for a BC licence. So far so good. The truck now has to go through a 90 point safety check (mot) and I have to take the trailer to the insurance office in the middle of town to be "sighted".                                                                                                                Almost there....I then need to produce original bills of sale for both plus the original "proof of ownership" (log book, registration certificate) which are all with Canadream in Calgary. A promise to courier said documents was made today so maybe, just maybe we can have all this legal before we fly home in ten days or so. Almost forgot, the trailer has to be placed up the mountain on Corys farm while we are away to qualify as resident, the truck is being stored by Canadream in Vancouver so all in all, its looking good. Poor Lyn has just about had enough of phone calls and form filling plus every step has a fee.............

On a lighter note, we were so grateful to the guys in Toronto, at huge expense, we had a photo of them and us put onto 4 coffee mugs which is just one of many services offered by the global retail giant Staples. Ginelle at Staples Toronto branch took our digital photo assuring us that sending two mugs to the guys at Canadream and sending the other two to Vernon for ourselves to collect on arrival would be a piece of cake. The Toronto mugs arrived within a week of our departure. Top service!

About 2 weeks later Lyns phone rings at 1am by a distraught Helena from Staples Vernon branch saying she was sorry but didn't understand the order. After Lyn had pointed out the difference in time zones she might want to call Ginelle from Staples Toronto branch, preferably during daylight hours.  Some 6 weeks later we waltz into Staples Vernon branch, approach the only sales assistant not busy. Lyn managed about 3 words before the assistant pointed at Lyn and exploded "You're Lynda Thomas!" It was Helena the phone caller herself. Apparently the order had caused all manner of problems and dear Helena had spent hours phoning the manufacturer, the digital team and anyone she could think of to get the mugs instore before we arrived. Guess what? No mugs.......but they did arrive next day and the relief in Helenas face when we collected was immense. Customer service is second to none.

Tomorrow for us is another day of admin in temperatures of 30 plus. Forecast for the weekend is in the 40s!  I see  England is expecting a heatwave next week, it will be nice to get back to cool down................