april 07, 2009 11:59pm
June 28, 2008 Gananoque, Ontario
June 28, 2008.
Gananoque, Ontario.
The F.O.V. has been invited to set up our information booth at the River Rats weekend bike show. I arrived Friday at 9:30pm at the arena in Gananogue after a six hour drive through rush hour traffic in Toronto. The word rush must be an oxymoron because there is no rushing to the drive through Toronto on a Friday afternoon.
I parked the “Blue Bomber” (our tour bus) in our spot behind the arena and settled in for the night. Saturday morning the day looked dismal, cloudy and grey. The day was slow but I met a couple of local veterans that had some interesting stories.
I talked with Glenn Wilberforce, a WW2 vet of three years who also served in Korea on the H.M.C.S Huron. Glen told me about the time the Huron ran aground in Korea and the trouble the ships crew had to get her off the beach. I hope to gather more details of this story and others when I attend the national conference of the Korea Veterans Association of Canada meeting in Kitchener Ontario September 12-13-14, 2008.
I also met Doug (I cant mention his last name) who had an interesting story of his time in Israel and Lebanon with the C.F. He told me about the injuries he sustained as a hostage of the Palestinians and would not go into details, but lets say he was not treated well. Doug also showed me some of the nerve manipulation moves he learned in the Canadian special forces and as he applied pressure to the nerve at the elbow of my left arm it almost brought me to my knee’s. Doug was an interesting man with a great story but he could not go into to much detail while standing in the middle of a bike show but I hope to meet him again and get his untold story.
On Sunday we had a rally around the thousand islands and "wow" is all I can say about the scenery in this part of Ontario. The afternoon ride was a big success and the rest of the day’s festivities went well. I hit the road for Ottawa about 5pm and was invited to park the Blue Bomber at a fellow venders property in Constance Bay. I arrived Sunday evening and Kevin was manning the BBQ and invited me to join in on his dinner. We had a great supper with a good conversation and I turned in around 9pm.
