Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Ottawa CLEE Weekend



Last Friday we decided to take up the Ottawa chapter of CLEE's invitation to attend their end of year dinner. We left Kingston and made the two hour trip, arriving at our hotel at about 4.30pm. Dinner was at the Emerald Buffett - an all you can eat Chinese Buffett. The boys were in heaven. They took the "all you can eat" invitation literally and indulged, indulged and indulged.

Afterwards, we went to the RCMP Barracks to watch the famous Sunset Ceremony ride. Here dozens of highly trained riders and their horses performed a variety of precision moves and dance routines to an appreciative audience. Apparently, this only occurs for several days once a year. We were very lucky to be a part of this event considereing there was a two hour break between thunderstorms whilst the performance was taking place.

On Saturday, before returning to Kingston, we decided to visit the Canadian War Museum. This was interactive and interesting. The Museum traces Canada's historical involvment in warfare from the earliest times of the First Nation's People, to the battles between the French, English and Americans on it's own soil. It also chronicles Canadian involvement in large scale warfare. In many ways, the story of Canada at war mirrors our own Australian story. Apart from Iraq in recent times, Canadians and Australians have fought along side each other in both world wars, Korea, Vietnam and more recently, Afghanistan. In many ways, Canada and Australia may be considered closley related. We are both Commonwealth countries with a very similar political structure and we both consider key battles during WW1 to be watersheds in our coming of age as nations,

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