En route à Montréal

(Written Tuesday 15 January)

From the back seat of a rental Chevrolet mini-van, in front of the soft glow of a dimmed laptop screen, listening to conversations of development murmured in the front seats and the undulating hum of highway beneath our wheels.

The EWB National Conference 2008 begins in Montreal tomorrow. As one of the eleven LTOV08s (Long-term Overseas Volunteer 2008) I’ll be part of a forward-looking meeting with other LTOV past and present, along with EWB management. The meeting begins at 9 AM tomorrow and there are still documents to review and responses to write before then.

Shea and Sarah are fast asleep in two of the four front bucket seats. Levi drives and talks with Russ, while Jeremy taps away on his MacBook next to me. It’s two more hours until midnight and we’re at least that far away from Montreal.

This is only the second day of my formal pre-departure training quarterbacked from downtown Toronto. Something struck me at 10 AM this morning while returning from a Tim Horton’s coffee break to our second morning session. Chatting with John-Paul, a chemical engineer employed only weeks ago with Syncrude the insight materialized: this training group is, for all intensive purposes, the most potent learning environment I’ve ever inhabited.

We are diverse, bright lights of thought illuminating issues from many different perspectives. We are passionate and interested and eager to make learning our business. It’s an open environment full of challenging questions, of probing, or thoughtfulness and reflection and even insight. When we return home at the end of the day we make a stop to pick up groceries to cook a house dinner, we clean-up together, we sip tea and talk and revisit with new questions and new angles all the issues we just spent hours trying to wrestle to the ground.

I think we’re almost in Kingston now. The highway is full of long-haul trucks carrying their payloads or empty trailers up and down the 401. Their red and amber running lights illuminate Russ’ face as we slip them by. The dim outlines of jagged rock walls can be made out just beyond the shoulder of the highway a sight seen in Jasper, but not on the plains of the Peace country, Edmonton or Calgary.

Today and here is a time and a place that it is good to live in, good to learn in.