Travel: Home and away again… | Sybaritica

Well, no real post today; more of a brief rant and an announcement…

This past week, I don’t mind telling you, was the court circuit from hell. Last Saturday, my colleague and I, along with two Crown Prosecutors, flew up to Hall Beach, and then, later in the week, decamped for Igloolik for the regular court sittings. It was grueling work with long hours and a great deal of frustration.

The gentleman with the hat pulled over his eyes is my co-defense counsel, Christian Lyons. He is pictured here deeply absorbed in mentally planning his cross-examination in one of the many trials we each faced in the upcoming week (at least, I think that is what he was doing). The woman behind is Delinda, a ‘fly-in’ Prosecutor from Ottawa and she, and Christian and Barry (the other Prosecutor) helped to make the very trying week somewhat more bearable…

Anyway, the rant portion of my post today is more about the return home rather than the difficult circuit itself. All four lawyers were scheduled to fly home at 10am yesterday aboard the ‘Canadian North’ flight, and my wife (who will be travelling herself very shortly) took the afternoon off so we could spend it together. Unfortunately, the rest of the Court party, who were booked on a flight leaving at 5pm changed to my flight after we discovered, due to the poor turn-out rate of accused persons, that we finished earlier than expected. This would be fine, but a blizzard the day before meant no planes landed and thus there was a backlog of people flying out. As it happened, instead of bumping the newly booked court party members, my co-counsel and I got the axe. This little fact was not known to me until I had risen early and schlepped my baggage to the airport in anticipation of lunch at home. Thank you SO much, Canadian North!!!

As it happened, the 5pm flight didn’t materialize either. For reasons unclear, Canadian North could not muster one of the usual aircraft and, instead, chartered a small Beechcraft from Kivalliq Air, to come and fetch the four of us who had been so unceremoniously bumped. That flight did not arrive until 6:30 and, what with refueling and so forth, we didn’t get into the air until after 7pm with a result that I finally walked through my front door some nine hours late. My suitcase, sadly, did not arrive and I am at loss to understand how, on a flight with only four passengers,, and less than 8 pieces of luggage total, Canadian North managed to mess up that simple operation. I am told that my bag will arrive some time later today…

Well, enough ranting… The announcement part of my post is that, in less than 48 hours I will be on my way to Ottawa once again. I have a whole list of restaurants to visit and will be scouring Chinatown for interesting things to bring home. Usually, I only bring dried goods but, since I will have a fridge in my hotel suite, I am hoping to bring some fresh produce to experiment with. On a happy note, I will not be travelling on Canadian North…

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