User Story

By John McLaughlin

I love entertaining and serving as a tour guide for visitors to Edmonton. The further they are from home the better. But I'll never forget the 10-day visit from my folks – Ted, my Dad, Uncle Harold and Aunt Eileen, and 11-year-old nephew Ben. They arrived via Air Canada on a warm, beautiful Canada Day.

In the evening, we parked lawn chairs at the Leg grounds where they saw the most spectacular fireworks and waterfall of their life. What a welcome! The trip was planned around a large family reunion, but this turned out to be secondary. Their jaws dropped when shown choice river valley vistas – they could hardly believe we were in the middle of the city! Of course, there was the obligatory MALL trip followed by Fort Edmonton, Provincial Museum and Science Centre, and attractions.

For the last 4 days the whole gang bonded during a Winnibago tour of the Rockies. For these rural people, seeing and feeling the raw power and beauty of the mountains was special. And they just loved "roughing it" in our national parks. To top it all off, they went home with the hardware from the reunion's horseshoe tournament.