Hi everyone, I’m Hugo writing this week’s blog. This is the first week without the teachers around as they have left for their academic duties in Singapore.
The fall colours were starting to reach our area in Markham.
This week is an exciting week as we had volunteered to plant trees. IBM has an initiative called Employee Charitable Fund, ECF for short. ECF was established in the mid 1930's to give Canadian IBM employees a convenient way to support communities through payroll deductions. Employees come together each October to celebrate giving and pledge support. Over the 81 years of ECF's existence, employees have built a strong legacy of giving back to the communities where we live and work.
ECF is run by employees, for employees and supports over 80,000 not-for-profit Canadian charities currently registered and in good standing with the Canada Revenue Agency CRA.
Wednesday was IBM Volunteers Day at Milne Dam Conservation Park and we spent the morning planting trees. In total all the volunteers planted more than 800 trees in a few hours!
We looked forward to the weekend as we would be going on a 3-Day Tour to Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec for the Thanksgiving long weekend.
On Saturday morning, we had to reach First Markham at about 6.30am. Our first stop is Kingston, the old capital of Canada for 3 years. It is very near America and hence the location made it vulnerable to American attacks.
We stopped there for a short while and had a quick lunch before going to Ottawa, Canada's present day capital.
Our first stop at Ottawa is the Parliament. We spent some time taking pictures of the Parliament and the Centennial Flame. The Parliament is beautiful and majestic.
We then headed for the cruise next. Below is the view of Parliament from the cruise.
After the cruise we headed to the Canadian Museum of History where we saw various things such as totems poles crafted by indigenous people.
We departed Ottawa for Montreal. We reached Montreal in the night. We had our dinner at McDonald's and the signs here are in French!
We crossed into Quebec province, not to be confused with Quebec Old City. After checking into our hotel, we went for a walk around Downtown Montreal. We went to the Old Port of Montreal and also other parts of Downtown. We happened to pass by a Chinatown in Montreal and went to explore it. We also saw many Olympic structures, given that Montreal held the 1976 Olympics.
The next morning, we went to Notre-Dame Basilica and the St Joseph Oratory.
Thereafter we visited the Olympic Tower (Tallest leaning tower in the World).
Qin Yong and I joined the rest of the tour members for buffet lunch. After lunch, we headed to the Quebec Old City.
After we checked into our hotel, we decided to head out for dinner. We bumped into our guide at the hotel lobby and he asked where we were going to eat. We wanted to go to McDonald's, but he was kind enough to recommend us to go to St Hubert for dinner, although we didn’t join the tour dinner as it is optional and we need to pay for the dinner too.
On the last day, we were heading back to Markham. There was one last attraction before reaching home, which was the Thousand Islands boat cruise. Along the way, we saw the shortest international bridge in the world, with 1 island situated in Canada and the other in US. We also saw a castle, called Boldt castle.
After the Thousand Islands Boat Cruise, it was time to go home. Unfortunately because it was the Thanksgiving long weekend, there was a traffic jam as everyone was trying to get home too. As such we reached our place at almost 9pm. This marks the end of another week and another trip. Look out for the next post soon!