Our night in Hong Kong was never intended to be the focus of our 10-day vacation... Headed for Thailand to do some snorkelling/diving and visit an elephant sanctuary, we were looking for a quick place on route to stop over for one or two nights, mainly to recover from the foreseeably long flights through multiple time zones before settling in at our intended destination for a week.

I knew little to nothing about Hong Kong, and was admittedly ill-prepared for this leg of the adventure. Other than exchanging some Canadian dollars for local currency and looking up a bus route from the airport to our Airbnb before we left Toronto, I’m ashamed to say I knew virtually nothing about this part of the world.

I have been (mostly) pleasantly and embarrassingly surprised throughout our little stopover.

The city offers a fascinating contemporary urban architecture against a backdrop of millennia-old geography, infused with a curious combination of ancient and modern cultural quirks. The view from Victoria Peak at night is unbeatable, and the wide variety of food, entertainment and available tourist accommodations is laudable.

But what really interests me is the “real“ life in a city, not what the tourists come to see, but what happens “behind the scenes”, as an almost invisible yet ubiquitous part of the fabric of a place.

As it turns out, I had the opportunity to catch a small glimpse of this on our second morning here.

Still horrifically jetlagged after our arrival from North America the previous morning, I awoke multiple times throughout the night, and eager not to wake my sleeping travel companions, I quietly dressed myself and snuck out of the apartment around 5 AM.

The streets near our Airbnb at the intersection of Nathan and Jordan Roads downtown were quiet, but nowhere near deserted.

In the distance, the golden arches beckoned, as they do now in virtually every city of every country around the world.

Eager for some free Wi-Fi and curious how their breakfast items compare to those in Canada, I wandered inside.

It’s quiet, but already filling up with early morning meal seekers. Several folks sit sipping their coffees and nibbling on globally recognizable fast food breakfast items at a large central table, their faces buried in their mobile devices.

But a second, shocking “sub-population” makes up the periphery of the restaurant: Every bench of every table booth is filled with what appears to be sleeping street people!

A quick Internet search reveals that the 25 or so homeless folks I count at this McDonald’s are — sadly — not an anomaly. With increasing rent prices, the increase in homelessness has also soared, and a study published in March 2018 indicates that the number of homeless spending the night in 24 hour McDonald’s restaurants has doubled in the past three years!

I’m reminded of how fortunate I am to be a visitor here, and how lucky, irrespective of where “home“ is, to have found a path in life that has afforded me a steady income with regular access to food and a decent apartment, as well as the ability to travel. I’m also intrigued by the reaction of the food-purchasing locals. No one seems to bat an eyelash at their less fortunate neighbours, many of whom are still fast asleep on their benches when I leave an hour later, heads resting on backpacks presumably containing all their worldly possessions. (I consider that in Toronto, where both the climate and the mindsets towards such public integrations seem to be much colder, such sleepers would surely have been evicted from their temporary posts rather than left to find a few hours of relatively safe and peaceful escape from the elements.)

Hong Kong is similar to and yet significantly different from how I imagined it.

As I stumble out from my early morning of blogging at the familiar restaurant-come-homeless shelter and back into the street to wander “home” with the sun finally rising in the distance, my mind turns to our afternoon at Kowloon Park yesterday.

Filled with greenery, Asian “kitsch” and some impressive accessibility features for the visually impaired, this urban park tells the city’s story from a different angle.

And as I return to the older building where we’re staying for the night, I realize again how lucky I am, this time with timing: About 20 police officers are milling about with face masks and hard helmets, commuting with one another by radio. I can’t understand what they’re saying of course, but as more of them pull on their masks, I infer they’re preparing for yet another protest, and I’m grateful to have arrived safely back at my Airbnb before that erupted!

How glad I am that we had the opportunity to spend a day in this bustling metropolis. Like all travel, this experience is one that expands the mind and provides opportunity for reflection, both on life‘s big problems, and ones personal contributions to either the problem or possible solutions.

I followed it all the way to the end and saw two beautiful great blue herons.

They wouldn’t let me get close enough to take a photo, but I stuck my toes in the rapidly moving water to assure myself that it was considerably colder than the gently lapping waters of the wide ocean behind it!

Some people who knew I was spending the summer on Prince Edward Island were surprised to hear that I spent part of my three months here living in a tent!

Although it’s true I co-own a house, it is typically in use by my co-owner for part of the summer, and we also sometimes rent it out to help pay for the various expenses that come with owning a home and country property. This year in particular, we had several folks stay, as we had to replace the roof last winter (not a cheap endeavour!)

So, I did get about three weeks in a comfy bed in my room in the house, while spouse and kids were visiting. But at other times, I slept in an assortment of other places!

Last year, I spent a week in a tiny tent behind my music cabin; this year I got a lucky and generous upgrade (thanks to my neighbour whose property I was managing) to a 7 m canvas bell tent! Here I slept for most of June (COLD at the beginning; required warm dog and five blankets!!) and the first half of July.

Sleeping in a bell tent was an interesting experience, and one that certainly brought me closer to nature. I went to sleep each night to the sound of crickets chirping, and awoke each morning to the sound of birds singing and — depending on the month — lobster boats heading out of the bay in the distance.

Sneakers enjoyed it, too, and eagerly ran to the tent’s entrance each night, waiting for me to unzip the door so that she could bound inside for our night of snuggling down under the covers!

Sleeping so far from a flush toilet also meant creative waste management solutions (being in the over 40 club and a birth mother to twins, there is not a chance in hell that I can make it through an 8-hour night without at least one washroom visit, lol!!)

At first I got ambitious and — after much research in the tiny home and off-grid community — installed a compost bin and commissioned a local guy to build us an outdoor composting toilet, which I kept well stocked from a nearby source of sawdust. I even worked in an outdoor shower with a rain barrel and down spout set up behind the music cabin... but honestly, most nights in the tent I ended up using a chamber pot. #lazy. LOL!!

That said, I did enjoy daytime “business” at the back of the property, with the outhouse door open, gazing into the forest.

After some weeks in my house, it was back to the tent for me... and eventually, I moved to the music cabin, as the time came to prepare for my departure from the island and return home to Toronto. Here I experimented with sleeping in a hammock, which has provided many deliciously luxurious afternoon naps, but did not work out so well for a full night’s sleep as it turned out.

In addition to these nighttime adventures, I slept around in the day, too! This included the OG hammock over at my place, under the deck, as well as a new rope hammock at Rick’s, and a cushioned swing inside the dog run.

Each sleeping partner had its benefits and drawbacks, but overall, I’d say that sleeping around on PEI this summer was a relatively safe and fun experience. Though I am looking forward to getting back to my own bed in Toronto, largely because it often includes a cute pilot (when she’s not away on a layover)!!!

I’ve been lucky enough over the past several weeks to find myself with enough time to devote daily sessions to practising not only my drums, but also rediscovering the xylophone (which I hauled with me to PEI, finally, and set up in my new music cabin here), and attending to the trombone, which I started playing last year, in order to be able to complement Alex (French Horn) and Simon (Trumpet).

As my practising has become more consistent, I have noticed a distinct pattern: Spending sufficient time on warm up exercises each and every time I practise, and playing for at least 20 minutes total, have both led to a noticeable improvement in my playing. I know I’m improving with the trombone, because I am now able to hit notes I could not reach a few weeks ago (this afternoon I finally played high F for the first time!!), and also because my teacher recently told me that my tone was “really coming along”. :-)

When working through Stick Control exercises at the kit, my double sticking feels much smoother than it did a month ago. A benefit derived from drumming regularly (at least three times a week now) and for a minimum duration of 20 minutes each time.

My xylophone skills are slowly but surely returning to the levels I was attaining in Grade 13 (yes I am that old!!) when I played Flight of the Bumble Bee for an exam. I know this because I have been working on Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor (First Movement), and am inching my way closer to my desired speed on the metronome, with considerable accuracy. Both my speed and accuracy are also improving with the Gallop Solo, which I still have memorized from some 30 years ago, and which I have also been practising, for fun!

Working in a focused fashion on “boring” warm up exercises for all three of my instruments, and repeating sections to perfect accuracy, speed or tone, is (re)teaching me valuable skills which I hope to transfer to my professional life once I return to work later this month and leave my music cabin behind for another year.

For more discussion on the benefits of different approaches to practising, check out this article (with link to other articles) I found online.

It was a grey, overcast morning. But COPA Flight 57 in Charlottetown, PEI was determined to host a successful COPA for Kids event, and so off to the airport I went, just as determined to make Canadian Aviation Pride’s maritime event debut a success as well!

Canadian Aviation Pride, or CAP for short, is a national organization of LGBTQ+ aviators engaged in not-for-profit work to unite, celebrate and promote diversity in the industry. We count flight attendants, air traffic controllers, aviation engineers and other aviators amongst our ranks, though the vast majority of our members are pilots. Most of our Board members are located in Vancouver or Toronto, and as a result, most of our events happen in these two cities, with more recent branching out to Montreal and a few western cities.

Being able to participate in an event in Eastern Canada was a really exciting opportunity for us, and I was pleased to represent CAP as the board donated 100 of our signature rainbow airplane necklaces and a bunch of other swag to hand out to the kids.

People sometimes ask why we volunteer at events like this, setting up a booth or table, and spending the day chatting with folks, some of whom can become mildly unpleasant or downright hostile when they discover we are a “gay” organization. The main reasons include promoting aviation as a fun and inclusive industry, so that young people, many of whom tend to be more open-minded than their elders, can see opportunities in an industry that sometimes has a reputation for homophobia, sexism and/or racism.

A big factor for us is to be models of what well-adjusted, “successful” professionals who happen to be queer might look like. This helps both LGBTQ+ youth to see themselves reflected in an exciting industry that we want them to consider, and their families, who may not yet know or may still be adjusting to the fact their their child is queer. It provides a standard for straight families to see what a gay person in aviation might look and sound like beyond a flamboyant pride parade. It also helps to normalize an often still stigmatized identity for queer families, those with two moms or two dads, etc. Lastly, it allows us to be open and visible for aviators who identify internally as LGBTQ+ but are not (yet) out themselves. We can be brave for others who are still gathering the courage to bring their whole selves to their work or hobbies.

As a queer woman, I have additional motives as well.

In Canada (and indeed throughout most of the world), flight decks comprise only about 6% women. While there are some exceptions (most notably, Porter Airlines in Toronto), most airlines are still holding steady at 6%, and this figure has been extremely slow to reach. So, I want to promote not only LGBTQ+ inclusion in aviation, but more specifically, WOMEN in aviation, queer or otherwise!

PEI is a particularly challenging environment for this work. The local flight club is made up almost exclusively of men, with wives and girlfriends being included only for things like administrative and other “helper” tasks. (The registration desk at this event was staffed entirely by women!)

And, critical as their organizational help was, I can’t help but struggle with the image this projects to the girls in attendance at such an event: All the pilots are men, and the women stay indoors and work at the desk.

The boys and their families also subconsciously adopt this image. Aviation is for boys and men.

So, as I chatted with the kids and their parents who visited our colourful booth, I made sure to talk about the fact that I, too, am a licensed pilot, and that my partner, a woman, works as a pilot for a commercial airline. This was an important message for the girls to hear, as well as their brothers, and their parents!

I was pleased to see that COPA had adopted a woman-aware approach as well, including a female aviator at the top of their banner. But I was shocked at how few girls were signed up to fly. The overwhelming majority of kids registered for a free flight were boys, and ALL the volunteer pilots were men.

Happily, as the grey skies cleared up, I got to help on the ramp, directing groups of kids to the planes for their free fam flight. This meant that I had a direct hand in working with each pilot to arrange who sat where.

You can be sure that I made certain that for every group I had with a girl in it, the girl got the right seat, up front, at the controls!!!

With 50 percent of the population still being grossly underrepresented in the cockpit and elsewhere in aviation, I feel like it’s my personal duty as a person of some periphery influence in the industry to not only expose girls to aviation, but to also engineer opportunities to make that exposure as meaningful as possible!

I’m happy to have had the opportunity to represent CAP in Prince Edward Island this summer. And while I am grateful to Flight 57 for including us, and for all the volunteer pilots who came out to ignite a passion for flying in the kids whose parents registered, I am also hopeful that as a result of meeting an actual email pilot and being able to spend 20 minutes at the controls of an airplane in flight, future years will include some female volunteer pilots on this still very traditional little island.

A few of the unforeseen opportunities that have arisen: A week in, I got my criminal record check (in 24 hours; unheard of in the GTA!!) and was able to volunteer in a local school for a week. It was the first time I’d been in a classroom in two years.... AND the first time I’d been in a classroom where I was not in the cultural minority. It felt very strange to be surrounded by children who looked and sounded like me. But it was fun, and I appreciated learning what a classroom experience can be like in a rural school, since the vast majority of my own teaching career was fostered in urban and suburban settings.

I also got to participate in the inaugural lighthouse beach bonfire, to celebrate the lighting of the recently restored local lighthouse lamp!

And I have been volunteering at the local library (developing and facilitating a course on how to use instagram to connect with friends and family and promote your small business).

Finally, I have availed myself of the opportunity to take a few Argentinian tango lessons in town. Milonga!

Soon my kids and partner are coming. I hope to have enough systems and routines in place by then and I can take some actual “time off“, and really just enjoy the island for a few weeks!!!

I’m amazed... shocked, really, by how quickly a gift of three months can evaporate.

Being partner to a pilot who frequently flies to Newark as part of her job means I get to tag along on the odd layover, taking advantage of a cheap flight, free hotel and a chance to discover a few more corners of this famous city as I add another 5-6 hours to my New York tourism experience. While I must confess that so far I’ve been more disappointed than impressed (just seems overly loud, busy and materialistic to me personally), I do see the value of familiarizing myself with such an iconic place.

This was my third visit to the Big Apple. It was a warm spring weekend in April; this time we brought one of the kids along for the adventures.

Each brief sojourn has provided another piece of the puzzle for this somewhat reluctant traveler. This time, we got to visit the site of the former twin towers of the World Trade Center.

I remember exactly where I was when 9/11 happened (a Grade 1/2/3 Spec Ed classroom, as it were), and the complexity of emotions that plagued me both on that day and in the weeks that followed.

Having attended Come From Away (the musical), and read about both the Canadian side of the events (i.e. in places like Gander, NL, that rallied to support so many unexpected and emotionally overwhelmed short term visitors) as well as a book written by a journalist who covered some of the Afghan history and general world political and historical context as well as sharing minutes details of the terrorists’ organization and preparation to intentionally end their lives and so many others, I was eager (if such a word is appropriate here) to visit an American site and see some of the artifacts from this horrific day.

As I had been warned, it was a tremendously emotional experience, even for someone who did not have any personal connection. (I know no one who worked or lived there, and truth be told, I’m generally not a fan of the type of work that such a place represents.) The Americans have done an excellent job of finding a way to impress upon visitors the magnitude, while respectfully honoring the victims and survivors, of 9/11.

It did not feel right somehow to take photos on site, and it is difficult to really capture the whole experience with words, other than to say that it was quite visceral for me.

Surprised by my tears, my partner noted that under any other circumstances, I would not be likely to have a lot of time, emotionally or otherwise, for the sorts of people who typically would have worked at the WTC. (Other than maybe the cleaners.) True as that might be, I could still appreciate that everyone who worked and died there that day would have been someone’s parent, child, aunt or sibling, someone’s friend or neighbour. This context allows me to feel an incredibly strong human connection with them and with those who would have been looking for them, waiting anxiously and increasingly hopelessly as the horrible hours turned into endless days and eventually — for too many — dark weeks and months. And then there is the thought of all those who lived or worked or happened to be walking their dogs in the surrounding area on that fateful morning when one of the most incredible achievements of humanity - a flying machine - was used as a most deadly weapon.

From the accounts of first hand witnesses, the physical/geographical/climactic effects of two massive planes barreling into two giant towers lasted for weeks. The psychological and other impacts would of course have lasted much longer, and the way the site is set up now is a tribute to both that and to the desire for recovery, collective strength and determined progress.

Instead of photos at ground zero, I snapped a few pictures later, at Battery Park and out towards the Statue of Liberty.

Can Americans remember what that iconic symbol once stood for? And can we Canadians find ways to be good neighbors, encouraging and supporting our partners to the south to find new hope, and let this hope and vulnerability— rather than fear and hatred—drive their vision for a more humble and collaborative future?

As we near the end of the second decade after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, and pause to consider the ways in which travel to America (and indeed across the world) has changed since then, one can only hope so.