On the Road Again 2013 #9

I stayed on Salt Spring just for a day or so. My two travelling companions got a job for the day while I spent much of my time trolling the net looking for information as to where the World Gathering was going to be. It was frustrating reading on Facebook  conflicting information about where the Gathering was going to be and even more frustrating to read the resulting comments. There are some real dangers in information being circulated on social media such as Facebook. The primary danger is that anyone can say any thing and it is virtually impossible to validate that information. On the the BC Rainbow Facebook page there were conflicting reports as to where the Gathering was going to be - some said it was going to be somewhere in the mountains or others said it was on the north west coast of Vancouver Island. Even more disturbing some of the comments were, quite frankly, less than kind.

At one point I was quite convinced that they had found a site in the mountains and I spent some energy trying to find a way there. I was tempted to go back to the mountains in part because there was a sense that having a Gathering in the Kootaneys might draw attention to the fact that the Sinski First Nation, who had been declared extinct and who were clearly not (they still had their own distinct language) needed some help to prevent a mine from being developed on their traditional territory. On the other hand, I had wanted to go to the north west part of the Vancouver Island. As one person said, the camping there would be epic.

Other writers, who perhaps know more than I, have written much about the World Gathering in BC and all of the issues that arose. It was a flawed process from the very beginning in Brazil when people who had never been to BC decided to have a World Gathering in August - a month in which,  for most the past decade, there has been an almost total fire ban. The fact that the world family offered little assistance if any in terms of scouting, financial assistance or even useful advice only confounded the problems. In addition the local scouts who recommended the two sites that were suggested, while there is no doubt that they were sincere, were perhaps a bit too driven by their convictions that they had found the best site. Neither of the scouts did their homework properly -they forgot to check things out and as a consequence both sites became untenable when the local residents made it clear that they did not want the Gathering.

I did not know what I wanted to do. So I went back to Duncan and played with my grand kids. For anyone else who has a complicated issue to think about - I highly recommend playing with ones grandchildren. It really helps to sort out the priorities.