4th Grand Falls Scouts & Venturers2019 World Jamboree and the 2019 European Adventure!

Jul 21st Juno Beach

Visiting Juno Beach was just like any Canadian would imagine it to be – very powerful.  This was Canada’s great contribution to the D-Day invasion, and the beginning of what became a very successful campaign of liberation, salvation and sacrifice throughout Western Europe by brave Canadians.  We marked our arrival with a formal ceremony – our first of many in Europe.

Carl was beginning to figure us out and made sure we had some free time BEFORE touring the museum 😉  

After a chance to burn off some energy, the Canadian volunteers at the Juno Beach Centre split us in to two groups for a guided tour of the beach and the bunkers as well as of the Centre itself.  

The big take away I had from the bunker tour is that the guide was saying that there was a basically a bunker every 300m stretching from Spain to Norway.  It truly was “impossible” to invade Europe, which really made the success of D-Day all the more incredible

The Juno Beach Centre was also amazing.  What I remember best is a video we watched at the end that talked about the battle and the legacy it left on the people of France.  At the end of the video it showed the spirits of the soldiers playing on the beach with the kids and walking with them through the sand.  It was really powerful considering we were literally just there, doing exactly that.  

Jul 21st D-Day (Carl thinks we’re insane)

After the memorial Museum we had a “grocery store adventure” and hit the road towards the Normandy coast.  Arromanches is a beautiful coastal town, and it’s hard to imagine the kind of shear hell that occurred here back on June 6, 1944.  Always conscious of our schedule, Carl whisked us into the museum (kind of like herding cats)

The D-Day Museum was excellent, and went over the landings in great detail.  We all enjoyed looking at the exhibits, but also glanced longingly at the windows and the ocean beyond… 

When it came time for the movie, I pulled Carl aside and asked if we could have some time to actually go out into the water.  Poor Carl was floored, obviously not used to dealing with Scouts, lol!  So as Carl watched a bit stunned, we all left the museum to explore the actual beaches of Normandy.  Eventually Carl started to get us, and laughed to himself as he watched us playing on the beach.

It was a surreal feeling playing and laughing on the beaches with the remnants of the D-Day invasion all around us.   It was a celebration of freedom and a joy in life – perfect tribute in my opinion.

None of us wanted to get back on the bus, but after much encouragement and tapping of his watch, Carl got us back on route and heading towards Juno Beach.

Jul 21st Setting the Stage…

After a brief but comfortable night sleep we enjoyed a breakfast buffet and loaded back on our bus to visit the Caen Memorial Museum.  The Memorial Museum is essentially a walk through of the entirety of the second World War, starting at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and ending with Japan’s ultimate surrender.  This is NOT a celebration of the Allied victory, instead it is a very real, very powerful, and very brutally accurate telling of the story of the war and the unforgivable loss of millions of lives. 

Spirits were high as we entered the museum.  Upon signing in we were each given a cordless “phone” which was to act as our personal tour guide.  The idea is that as you approach exhibits you enter the number into your phone and you are told about it.  I was skeptical at this approach, but the audio tour was absolutely fantastic – truly one of the best museum tours I have ever participated in.  All the Scouts, Venturer Scouts and Scouters were absolutely riveted by the audio tour, and as you can see from the pictures, our jovial mood quickly became a lot more serious.  THIS is what we had signed up for.. this was the beginning of our Battlefields experience… and wow, what a wake up call…

As excellent as the audio tour was, it truly was a lot to take.  I don’t think any of us managed to listen to the full tour.  For me personally, I made it as far as the Holocaust exhibit.  Towards the end of the exhibit my audio guide told a story about a worker at one of the camps.  He was telling a story about these two young kids he had seen at the camp for a few weeks.  The oldest was 12 and the youngest was likely around six.  He went on to say that he later saw them lined up for the “showers”… he knew what was in store for them, but worse yet he could see by the look on the older youth’s  face that she knew it as well.  Despite her fear she comforted her younger brother and they moved ahead in line.  He closed by explaining that the reason he is telling this story is so there would be a record somewhere that these two children had lived.  That their life happened.  I had to put down my phone after that… just couldn’t take any more.

 Another moment that sticks with me is that I walked up to a couple of our Venturer Scouts standing in front of a huge mural depicting three youth being hung in France during the occupation.  The crimes they had commitment included delivering resistance fliers, helping Jewish people hide from the Nazis, and feeding the hungry…  basically they were Venturer Scouts dangling in gallows for doing exactly what we teach our Scouts to do – as in stand up for those who need your help.  These kids were publicly executed for doing what our kids do on a regular basis – what we insist they do…  the museum was an intense experience for everyone, but without a doubt, it was the perfect and really the only way to start our Battlefields experience.

Jul 20th Our “Tents”, Adventures at the Ticket Machine, Stop shooting me we’re on the same team!!

As we finally arrived in Caen we braced ourselves for the sub-par accommodations we all secretly (or not so secretly) expected, but were blown away by lovely hotel and spacious and comfortable rooms.  Although a bit rushed for time, we made it to supper on-time-ish and enjoyed a delicious buffet.  We had been worried that with the late arrival we might have to call off laser tag, but when we told the kids the tram was leaving in 15min they all scrambled, grabbed what they needed and met us outside in no time.  Based on earlier conversations, we were expecting about 12 kids to come out, but in the end everyone but two gathered outside!

We made our way to the tram station and were faced with our next major challenge… how on Earth do we get tickets?? After pacing a bit, staring at the machine in dumbfounded confusion, and pacing some more, a nice local girl took the time to walk us through the steps despite the fact that she couldn’t speak English and our French speaking Scouts were conspicuously silent…  With tickets finally in hand the tram arrived and we were faced with our next challenge… how do these silly little cards get into the machine???  After a few attempts our local “guide” politely took the ticket out of my hand and correctly inserted it.  We gave her a pin and a loonie in thanks, lol!

The tram ride into the heart of Caen was one of the highlights of the day, which says a lot considering our day started in Paris! Allowed us to see more of the beautiful historic city

Dec 7, 2018 – So that is the end of the blog postings from Europe… to be honest, the trip was a whirlwind and we just never found the time to keep up with it.  We’ll try and do better next time 🙂  So now it’s 3½ years later and I’m going to do my best to remember what happened for the remainder of trip… forgive me for getting things wrong, lol!  At least we have the pictures and videos to tell the real story!

I remember the tram ride ended at a huge train station and crossing the road involved several lanes of traffic and also several lanes of tram rails… fortunately it was late at night and their wasn’t many people around.  The area of town seemed a bit… colourful… though, so we kept together!  With some effort we managed to find the laser tag place.  Turns out none of the staff could speak English (which is fair enough seeing as we were in France), but we learned from our tram ticket incident and shoved Steven and Devin forward to use their French skills to save us all.   Devin managed to stay out of it, so it was all Steven.  

We played at least three games I think, and I remember it was HOT!!  Can’t remember what they were charging for a bottle of water, but it was considerable.  We realized that they actually make their money off of water and that the laser tag was just a front.  There was a moment in the last game when someone (I think it was Nathan) called out that there were no teams this round… it was a lie… there were still teams… and a “blood bath” ensued.   It was past midnight by the time we finished and made our way back to the tram (last tram of the night) and to our hotel after a very, very long day!

Jul 20th Vive la Paris!

Despite the short flight, I think just about everyone had a nap.  Personally I only stayed awake long enough to find out that the coffee wasn’t free, lol!  The Paris airport was about as insane as Pearson, but we all managed to work our way through and eventually find our tour guide Carl.  It was pretty cool seeing the Scouts Canada sign at the Paris Airport!  

Carl and our Bus driver Etienne (aka Steve) are both from Belgium.  They picked up a local Parisian guide in the shadow of the Arc du Triumph… wow, still can’t believe we were there!!  I won’t go into Paris too much as the pictures will tell a much better story, but suffice it to say it was incredible!  Not sure who was more excited, the Scouts or the Scouters, but everyone was excitedly shouting, gasping, and frantically snapping pictures in every direction at once.  I’m sure between us we took well over a thousand!

We enjoyed one brief stop at the Eiffel Tower so we could get a couple good pictures.  Our Scout uniforms served as a giant flashing arrow screaming “HEY, WE’RE OBVIOUSLY TOURISTS AND LIKELY TOO POLITE TO TELL YOU TO GO AWAY” so the street vendors came a running!  There are now a great deal of replica Eiffel Towers on our bus…

After an amazing tour of one of the most incredible cities on the planet we said goodbye to our Parisian guide and began our trip to Caen (pronounced “con” by the way).  Due to driving regulations our awesome bus driver had to stop at a rest station for a mandatory 45min break.  The rest stop served as a reminder that we are still fish out of water, but together we figured out our Euros, found a bank machine, and even found William some milk-free frozen treats.  The allergy situation is not nearly as dire as we expected; most labels that contain milk or nuts put it in bold in the ingredients list.  I continued my quest for a decent cup of coffee… in vain… apparently coffee that is dispensed from a vending machine into a plastic cup is about as tasty as it sounds :S

We’re now about 20min from Caen and have been thoroughly enjoying the incredible countryside of France.  Carl went into great detail about to expect for tomorrow, and even summarized both World Wars… only about half of us were awake to hear it though, lol!  Looking forward to supper and our laser tag adventure!

Jul 20th Good Morning Dublin!

Our WestJet flight from St.John’s was delightfully uneventful and got pretty quiet pretty fast.  Most of us got at least some sleep; I for one enjoyed at least a solid two hours which is already WAY better than CJ’13 🙂  The morning started off just right as I woke up not even 30 seconds before the coffee cart reached my seat.

As we descended through the clouds we were greeted with the emerald isle in all her glory; Ireland is a beautiful place!  The Dublin airport is MUCH larger than St, John’s, and was about as hectic and frantic as we imagined it would be.  Almost immediately after getting off our plane we had to clear Irish customs.  The customs agents were super courteous and even opened an extra lane just for the Scouts.  After a good hike we found our baggage and actually recovered all 33 bags quickly and easily.  So far so good…

Well for kids that were nervous about the hikes at the Haarlem Jamborette, worry no more as the hike through the Dublin airport was likely twice as long!  We managed to follow the signs to the tunnel to Terminal 2 (we arrived in Terminal 1).  We had to take the “lift” down a level to check in, before taking the “lift” up two levels for departures.  The Aer Lingus staff were awesome, and also waived the fees for our extra bags; gotta love traveling as a Scout!

By the time we finally arrived at security we were all soaked with sweat and about ready for a break.  We had to remove pretty much everything, place anything resembling a liquid in a clear plastic bag, remove our electronics, etc, etc before screening.  Eric was once again “randomly” selected as were more than half of us, lol!  When we finally gathered our belongings and redressed we continued on to the “Loop”.  Scouter Amanda and I dashed for the “Coffee Express” with our Scouts in tow, but were rewarded with a pretty “meh” coffee… it scratched the itch though, lol!  When we located our gate number we noticed a sign beside it warning of a 15min hike *sigh* and off we went.  We rode escalators, lifts, moving sidewalks, went up ramps, down ramps, winded here and there until we finally found gate 307A.

With our gate found we proceeded to our next priority: breakfast!  Gotta say, the breakfast selection was awesome, and we all walked away VERY satisfied.  Scouter Rhonda and I scored the best quiche of our lives, and the kids gobbled up the bacon, sausages and hashbrowns.  Paying was a bit of a struggle as I tried (in vein) to figure out which coin was a dime…

With full stomachs and sleepy but excited faces we lined up to board our flight to Paris after a 15min delay.  We taxied for what felt like driving to Gander until we finally parked and got to watch a Delta Air flight land right in front of us – pretty cool!  The Aer Lingus plane has a bit more character than our WestJet plane did and made all kinds of “interesting” noises during taxiing and take-off… but it got us off the ground, so no complaints 🙂

Passing now over the rest of the Atlantic Ocean we eagerly await meeting our tour guide “Carl” and beginning the next leg of our great adventure.

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!!!

Jul 19th Lemons, Moosibou, Jungle Grub and the Glove

Wow, a full day of pretty much sticking to our schedule… wild!  After a few tears leaving the church we hit the highway and everyone’s spirits were high.  The Scouts spent most of their time singing (as per normal) and carrying on like this was just a normal bus ride to a normal camp.  Hard to believe we were in the first moments of a trip we will remember for the rest of our lives.

For the first time EVER we have no bathroom requests in Gander and managed to keep slightly ahead of schedule through to Clarenville.  We gave everyone 20min to get what they could in C-Ville and I have never seen the kids run so fast… well, it was nothing compared to how fast Scouter Amanda ran to Timmies for her coffee though 😉

As we neared the Goulds Charlie and I realized that we really had no idea where we were going, so we ended up taking the “scenic route” with an assist from Google Maps before finally finding Naveah’s Lemonade Stand.  The parking lot of the sports arena was BEYOND packed, but Charlie once again proved that he’s the best driver on the island as he wove between cars and pedestrians.

This was certainly like no lemonade stand I have seen before, it was more like a full blown carnival!  There were easily thousands of  people there, all out to support a brave little girl who, when faced with death, decided to spend her remaining time helping others.  The Scouts made us all proud by donating generously, and it turns out that the lemonade was pretty awesome, so all in all a great experience.  As we gathered outside to board our bus Naveah and her mom came out to personally thank us for coming.  What a sweet, lovely little girl – truly an honour to meet her 🙂

The next stop in our adventure was Bowring Park… and once again, none of us had a clue where we were going, lol!  Fortunately our map reading skills are at least adequate and we found our way to the Caribou Memorial.  This memorial is an exact replica of the memorial at Beaumont-Hamel and is the first of six that we will visit on our pilgrimage.  

As Devin called us to horseshoe and the Ode to Newfoundland was sung it all suddenly became very, very real; “Better than the Best”.  Before dismissal we all reaffirmed our Scout Promise and our commitment to peace and fellowship.  Being members of the largest peace movement in the world is a pretty powerful thing as we tour the remains of the “great” wars.

Despite an earlier locked-washroom tragedy we found an open washroom… and a HUGE playground, so life was generally good!

After some fun and one injured Scout (nothing serious, just battered pride) we made our way back to the big blue bus.

It was about this point that we all collectively realized that we were STARVING and VERY excited to pull in to Jungle Jim’s in the Goulds.  The staff at Jungle Jim’s were awesome and the food delicious.  To top off an already awesome experience the manager offered us all a 15% discount discount.  Jungle Jim’s in Grand Falls-Windsor has always been a great supporter of Scouting, and it was great to see the Goulds location be just as generous.  Huge thanks to Scouter Lawrence for making the arrangements!

With bellies full and excitement high we boarded the bus for one last ride, this time to the airport.  Checking in was a LOT smoother than expected, even though Zack M somehow missed the 300 times we mentioned that you could only take ONE checked bag :S  Once again though we were shown the generousity of others as the folks at WestJet waved the fees for Zack’s bag as well as for the two bags of troop gear.  Every bag (including Scouter Tracey’s!) were underweight (seriously Scouter Derek, she even took a picture to prove it!).  Since luck seemed to be with us we decided to head straight to security to get the last hurdle behind us.  The kids were awesome and efficient and we passed through in no time (despite some random swabbing…)

With a fresh coffee in hand and the kids in tow we boarded our flight after a short 20min delay.  After finding our seats we had some fun discussing the various ways in which we could crash and what we would do about it… (seems Eric has been doing his research, and Steven spending a bit too much time watching Mayday).  As the plane taxied towards our runway the flight attendants repeated the safety speech in french… this only served to reconfirm that I am totally screwed in France!  Thank God most of the kids in my patrol have their French Language Award!  Before we knew it the plane stopped… and we waited…

Then we were off!  Like a rocket the plane jumped to motion to the cheers and applause of the Scouts (and Scouters)!  After 19 months we were truly on the way.  I cannot even begin to describe the feeling when the wheels left the runway.  It’s finally real.  Bring on the adventure!

God guard thee Newfoundland!

Jul 19th And We’re Off!!

After a surprisingly good night sleep it was go time – 19 months of planning and hard work and there I was putting on my uniform and getting ready to leave. I of course made a quick stop at Timmies on the way to say goodbye, lol!  As Scouter Erica and I walked to the church for 10am, Eric was already waiting – seems someone was excited to hit the road!  The kids (and parents) were awesome, and we had everything tagged and organized in no time.  Devin, our Troop Leader, called us in to horseshoe for a last minute pep talk, and then it was time to parade into the Sanctuary.

While we waited for our turn to enter, Rev. Kim asked the congregation if there was anyone special that should be included in their thoughts and prayers (as she does every week); Devin turned to me and said “How about us?”, lol!  Couldn’t have put it better myself!  Devin led us into the sanctuary with our heads held high and our hearts heavy with emotion.  We lined up at the front looking ahead at some of the people who made this trip possible, and Shanlee, our Youth Spokesperson, bravely took the microphone and delivered a heartfelt thanks to the congregation.  As we led the congregation in the “Ode to Newfoundland” I think each of us choked up at one point or another (I know I did!) but together our collective voice stayed strong and proud.  “God guard thee Newfoundland!”  Before we left Rev. Kim offered us a blessing, and as we walked out humbled and grateful the congregation offered us their applause and well wishes.

Without wasting a moment everyone quickly emptied the gym and dragged our 1000++lbs of gear to the lawn.  When our good buddy Charlie arrived with the big blue bus he was greeted with cheers and shouts.  “Holy crap – it’s seriously go time!”.  Scouter Rhonda arranged us all for one last picture (as only she can do!) and we boarded the bus with some tears.

After 19 months the planning was done; the training was done; the packing was done; and all we had left to do was start our journey with style => “Every where we go – people always ask us – who we are – so we tell them – we  are the Scout Group – NEWFOUNDLAND SCOUT GROUP – and if you can’t hear us – well that’s too bad!”

Jul 18th Expedition Europe…A Poem

‘Twas the night before Europe
And all through the town,
All the Scouters were panicking
Not one had laid down!

All the bags were packed,
Left in the church with care
In hopes that nothing
Would be forgotten there

The Scouts were all nestled
Snug in their beds
With visions of the Eiffel tower
Dancing in their heads

The morning arrived
All lovely and bright
Not a single Scouter
Had slept through the night!

Down in the parking lot
While waiting for the bus
All of a sudden from no where
There rose such a fuss!

“I don’t want to leave home!
I’ll miss you so bad!”
Said one little Scout to
His mom and his dad.

“Don’t worry, you’ll go
And be happy!
Now get on that bus!
And make it snappy!”

When everyone was loaded
Who boarded all bossy?
It was Scouter Jason
Holding a coffee!

He checked all the passports
And I.d. With a tick
And then nodded to the driver
“Close those doors, quick!”

More rapid than eagles
In those doors came
And he whistled and shouted
And called out by name

“Now Dan! Now Gerry!
Now Lawrence and Amanda!
Now Tracey! Now Erica
And the amazing Rhonda!”

His arms swung around
Spilling coffee with the gesture
“Let’s go! Step on the gas!
Bring on the Adventure!!”

Jul 16th 1,007lbs and Counting…

So with 27 of 29 bags accounted for we are at a total of 1,007lbs of “stuff” packed and ready to go!  Some youth (and even some Scouters) did an incredible job with their lightweight packing skills with our lightest bag at just 20lbs!  …well, they either did a great job… or they forgot some things, lol!

Tomorrow we’ll be packing the group gear into a couple extra bags, as well as our gifts for our friends in Europe, the supplies for our “Newfie Night”, and some extra “just in case” food… and that’s it, all done! 

By 8:30pm tomorrow everything that can be done will have been done, and after more than 18 months of hard work all that will be left to do is wait.

BRING ON THE ADVENTURE!