Canada Exchange Report 2015
13 weeks, 11 host families, 5 JFAO delegates (Junior Farmers Association of Ontario), 4 flights, 2.5 time zones and 2 provinces have made summer 2015 one that i will never forget! I had an amazing time and met so many people, that i actually think my facebook friends have doubled
The Canadian exchange covers everything, both agricultural and non agricultural and although they plan things to do with you during the time in each county, our hosts and club members could not have been more accommodating if we asked to go, see or do something.
I shared my exchange experiences with Lisa Marie from Republic of Ireland, Carolin from Germany, Beatrice from Switzerland and Christina from Austria.
I was the first delegate to arrive into Toronto Airport on Friday 22nd May 2015 where i was collected by Jen Van-der Mulen who was this years co-ordinator. I had my first Tim Hortons experience which would be continued throughout our trip. We then picked up Lisa Marie and headed to Peel County, which was about 30 minutes out of Toronto.
Our first few days were quiet so we could settle in to Canadian life and get to know everyone. We became a four on Saturday 23rd when Carolin and Beatrice joined us and then we headed to down town Toronto to watch a lacrosse game, The Hawks (Canadians) V The Rocks (USA). It was an amazing experience filled with roaring fans, beer and popcorn!
During our first week in Peel County we toured dairy farms, went up the CN Tower, visited Ripley’s aquarium, went to a Blue Jays game, toured the city and went to Toronto Zoo. One of our farm visits was to a new dairy barn at Elora. It is linked with The University of Guelph and the government and cost about $25 million to build. This is a new state of the art dairy and is a lot bigger and has newer technology than the old one. They had an open day for the public to go and have a look before the animals are moved in. There was about 5000 people there for the open house and some were active for the barn, but others thought the government money could have been better spent.
Our next stop was to Wellington County. We visited our first vine yard, where we got to tour round the facilities and then try various sample, from dry wines up to very sweet wines. We got to go tramploining, a tour of the current research dairy barn and beef barn, repelling (absailing), a tour of a goat farm where they milked the goats and also reared some for meat. Goat parmesan....not a fan! One of our afternoons was filled by meeting a menonite. He is a modern day menonite so he has a telephone and electricity in his workshop but that’s all. Depending on where you go in Canada, will depend on the kind of menonite/amish folk that you’ll find. The one that we spoke to made wheels for the horse buggies and after a short demonstration, he then took us out in his buggie and i was surprised when the horse was able to go 25kph! My favourite part of this week was going to Grand River Raceway. This is where they have their horse racing but instead of the jockey sitting on the horse they ride along on a small buggy behind. We got a tour of the stabling area, a ride in the start car and then up to the directors box to watch where they look for any faults or problems and broadcast the races.
After a great weekend at leadership camp we headed down to Durham West County. This week involved a tour of a mushroom factory, seeing the Panam Games torch passing through the town, met the Mayor, a tour or a herb factory, and much needed chill out time at the cottage. This was bliss as we were able to go canoeing, have a few drinks and chill out after a busy few days. During this week we also a chicken farm and they have 25,000 chickens over two levels of the barn. The chickens are kept at 30⁰C for 35 days where they are then taken away to be killed. To finish off our time in Durham West County we had a wing night where they cook the chickens in a big pot filled with oil outside in the garden and have various salads and other accompaniments as well.
Week four was spent in Kawartha. My host for this week had been a delegate to Scotland in 2012 and it was a nice surprise when we met up as we had lost contact after she stayed in Perthshire District. Trip to go walking through caves, an Indian Museum, winery tour and trip to the beech made for a great start to the week. We had our first tour of an anaerobic digester. These are still very new in Canada and in our trip we saw two. They get left over food scraps from a few restaurants in the area to help feed their digester as well as manure from the farm. Kawartha County is famous in Ontario for their dairies where they are big supporters to the farmers and make and sell ice cream, using locally sourced milk. Needless to say, we were big supporters of Kawartha Dairy that week as well, especially since temperatures were between 25⁰C -30⁰C each day. We had a trip to Redneck games at the end of the week where we all have to dress like rednecks and take part in various competitions as a team, a bit like our field day or rally. The day finished with a massive waterslide before cracking open a few beers and learning to two step at the dance at night.
After a late night i drove with my new hosts back to their house for the next two weeks. We all had a brilliant time in Renfrew County and it was nice to stay for two weeks and let ourselves feel at home for longer than a week. We clipped cattle, visited a sale barn (market), hemp farm, had a radio interview and white water rafting all within the first week. The rafting down the Ottawa River was fantastic! We had a really good guide and although it was really overcast and cloudy we all had an amazing time. In our second week we had a few more agricultural tours with their being a bee farm, cash cropper, dairy tour, black angus farm visit and also to a grain elevator. The cash crop farm that we visited belonged to a man called Larry Raeburn. He had also been a delegate to Scotland in 1971 and stayed at Dunkeld so was nice to speak to someone who knew the area i was from. We spent Canada Day in the capital itself, Ottawa! It was an amazing day and everyone was so proud to be Canadian! Most wearing white, red or a mixture of the two. We walked round the city and spent time on Parliament Hill where they have a concert and various things on stage for folk to join in with then a big fireworks display at night which was fantastic! These fantastic two weeks finished off with a ball (baseball) tournament. This was great fun although i still prefer rounders!
With the days and weeks flying by it was hard to believe that it was then break week already and i was jumping on a plane to go and visit friends in Nova Scotia. This week was fantastic! With Nova Scotia meaning New Scotland in latin, the landscape and people were very much just like here. I hired my car at the airport then drove three hours north to Cape Breaton. I got to take in all the landscape and scenery, stopping every few miles it felt to take more pictures. I visited the Alexander Graham Bell Muesum, drove the Cabot Trail, listened to music sessions, went kayaking and even made it to Inverness Beach which is something i’ve always wanted to do, even if it was only a few hours from my home in Scotland!
After a very fast week I flew back to London. This confused a lot of folk back at home as I was still in Ontario. My week with Middlesex County started on the Saturday, with the others arriving on the Sunday, so I gained an extra day of chilling out and a very much needed long lie! During this week, we visited a farm called Stanton’s. This was one of my favourite farm tours of the whole trip! It was a dairy with a heard of 2000 and they milked 750 three times a day. Laurie was the farm owner and he gave us the tour, answering all of our million questions and showing us round the barns. It was great and finished off with an ice cream sandwich, which topped it off perfectly! We shopped, had camp fires, plenty of pot luck nights where we got to bring lots of diferent dishes to supper. Going to a tractor pull, tour of a rabbit farm, chicken farm and also where they grew christmas trees which was something totally different. We got to meet someone called Kurtis who is the mayor for his area and the youngest mayor in Ontario. Kurtis took us for a tour of a wind turbine farm. The sight we went to has 45 turbines that are 80m tall with a blade length of 50m so it’s slightly taller than the ones we have here. On the tour we were able to go out and see one of the turbines and up the inside of them as well, it was a great experience.
Our next stop was Perth County where we spent one week on one side of the county and the second week on the other. In our first week we had a tour of the muesum, kayaking, water buffalo farm tour, and my first taste of Irn-Bru in 9 weeks as they have a British Store in the town we were near. We also went to a play called Seeds. It was a true story based on GM crops from Alberta and a man called Percy Schmizer and was really interesting. The second week consisted of a goat farm tour, visit to Pioneer Seed, and a Nuclar Power Information Station. We didn’t go over to the Nuclar Plant itself but spent a lot of time looling round and finding out information about it. Wine tours, a day at the beach and visiting a few farms were added in to the mix and I also got to drive a 9R Series John Deer. This was a massive tractor and the biggest I had seen since being in Canada.
Before we knew it, week 10 was here and we moved to Rocklyn in Grey County. This was also the first and only week that we stayed together as a five. It was a chilled out week staying with Hilary who was secretary of the club. She has a dairy farm so we had to be there for morning and evening chores. We did trips in the surrounding area to Blue Mountain Resort for a walk up the hill to look down over Gerogian Bay, had my first Beaver Tail which is deep fried batter with various toppings on it. I had chocolate spread with peanut butter cups, tasted good but very sickly-sweet! Trip to water falls and a small hike make for a nice peaceful day. The next few days we spent at the farm, helping to erect a fence, 660ft in 2 hours between 6 of us was pretty impressive to be honest. One of the provincial events is a golf tournament. We were dropped off and split in to teams of four. I was with some of the sponsors for the Junior Farmers and we had a really good time and were all about the same abality golf wise so made for more fun. At the weekend we moved again but went to a rodeo for the afternoon/evening first. It was great and plenty of people there as well. I found it all so different and all the competitiors took it extreamly seriously with most of them travelling all over the provence and country to take part in various rodeos throughout the season.
Our first trip with Niagara County was to African Lion Safari where we got to go and see round all the animals in the comfort of a bus. They have the buses there as the baboons will climb on your cars and have been known to pull off wiper blades and ariels before. Our next place was to go and ride the elephants! This was amazing and although we were only on the elephant for all of two minutes it was still a fantastic experience and they were so big but so gentle and slow. This was definitly a highlight!! As it was getting near to home time, the Scottish weather paid us a visit and it rained for the rest of the afternoon but that didn’t bring our sprits down. A cattle show, shopping trip and a few social nights in continued the rest of the week and then we made it to Niagara Falls! This was a great experience and I can now say that I’ve seen one of the seven wonders of the world! We bought a pass that allowed us to see the aero cart over the whirl pool, the horn blower cruise to see the falls up close, going down under ground to take us down behind the falls and also a walk to go down beside the white water. This was an amazing day and despite the fact that it rained again we didn’t mide as we got wet anyway. We went back to the falls at night and were able to go in the sky wheel to see everything lit us and managed to see the fireworks going off over the falls when were up there.
After an amazing few days we were off to our last host in Waterloo County. We started the week by going down the river on floaties which was so relaxing in the sunshine and drinking a few beers. The week continued by going to St Jacobs for a farmers market and to visit the town, going to a butterfly conservatory, the vet college for a tour and to a brewery for some tastings. This was a great week to finish on as we got to see a lot of people that we had met in our time travelling throughout the provence. The weekend then finished with an Ambassadors Banquet where we had to give a presentation of our time in Ontario and our experiences whilst having lunch and some last group photos. In the evening we attended a dinner to celebrate Waterloo’s 100th anniversery. This was a fantastic night as we got to have a look through old scrap books, photos and speak to people who has been in the club over the years. We disco danced, square danced and two stepped throughout the night before saying out final goodbyes to everyone. Our last day we travelled to the airport and had a last time hortons before we went through security one by one.
I landed back in Glasgow on Monday 24th August where I was greeted by my sister and then home to surprise my friends and family as I wasn’t due to be home for another few weeks so this was both a day of being sleep deprived, surprises and family reunions.
I had a truly amazing summer and I could not think of a better way to see Ontario. Being a delegate has so many advantages and you get to see so much more of an area than if you were just to go there on holiday. I met however many people, pushed myself to go out of my comfort zone, and had countless new experiences. I wouldn’t of been able to do it with out the help and support of the following companies, Young Farmers Ambassadors, International Trust, United Auctions, G Reekie Group, Lawrie and Symington, Strathearn J.A.C, Perthshire District of J.A.C’s and Braco Show. Thank you to the afore mentioned companies, you have helped to give me experiences that I wouldn’t of had otherwise.
Gillian Stewart
Canadian Delegate 2015