Politics taken on the road…

A bunch of us loaded up in a few vans and headed East to the Young Liberal Atlantic Caucus. We were hoping for fun times, seafood, and the ocean breeze.

Congrats to the PEI Young Liberals for putting on an awesome convention!

We started our trip with a stay in New Brunswick. Our hotel was oddly damp and at 4am and then again at 5:30am, our fire alarm went off...not funny. Then we were off to Cavendish where we stop at the Anne of Green Gables house! I am not going to lie. I was beyond excited. I have a love of Canadian literature and movies. I own the books and dvds of Anne. We enjoyed a church supper of seafood. I don’t get the appeal of muscles. Then we went to Charlottetown where the convention was being held at UPEI.

The opening ceremonies were held at a race track! It was a lot of fun and we were joined by numerous leadership candidates. After that, we were off to Scott Brison’s suite party before we hit the bars...or I mean bar, one bar. The morning was started with policy discussion that open the floor to ideas and criticism for the future of the party. Scott Brison, Ken Dryden, Gerard Kennedy, and Mark Holland were part of the discussions. Then we were off to the park where we played sports and had a bbq. Some went to the beach while a few of us went to a “ice-tea and pie” event with Shawn Murphy for Scott Brison. The evening was capped off with a dinner with guest speakers such as Dion, a few east coast members of parliament and the president of the provinal PEI Liberals. I was lucky to sit at a table with a Senator. He was giving us his view on how to get more women involved…and I very much disagreed with him so it spawned a conversation. He was suggesting mandatory appointment of women candidates. On side note, I am not for this. We need to reduce the barriers for women and level the playing field. (this could be a whole other post). The evening was filled with traditional suite parties and then the bar again. It was after the bar where our adventures got interesting…

For some reason, Richard decided he wanted hot and sour soup while in Charlottetown. The soup was so bad we couldn’t eat it. I am not one to normally send back food, but this was soup diluted with vinegar. We tried to send it back. We were polite but the waitress just cancelled our order and didn’t tell us. We were served our bill and asked to pay and leave. So we complained to the owner, who was a huge jerk. I told him that I know Asian food and the soup was not edible. We were willing to pay for food we ate, but not the soup. Now…the first sign that this restaurant was not a good idea should have been that there was a bouncer at the door. I kid you not. There was a bouncer at a China Gardens. Any ways, a girl in line tried to get up all in my face and started yelling at me…lol. I told her it didn’t concern her and that she should shut it. Melissa went back up and apparently the girl was enraged and wanted to fight me…lol. The odds would have been in my favor since she was intoxicated and I was sober…who ever said that Islander’s were peaceful…

After PEI we went to beautiful Nova Scotia. We went to Scott Brison’s annual riding BBQ at his home in Cheverie. I am now convinced that city living is totally over rated. It was beautiful out in rural Nova Scotia . After the BBQ we had a huge bon fire and a party at his house. A

few car loads of young liberals drove out and we had ourselves a grand old time. Nothing is nicer than partying on the Bay of Fundy, under the stars, in front of a fire…

Car ride back…we stopped at way too many Irvings. And you know when a car game goes badly when it last for hours. We decided to play- name that city, then name a city with the last letter. It went on for hours. And we weren’t playing no child’s game. Cory wrote down the names so we couldn’t repeat them. 14 hours back home…aside from playing the game for a bit, I tried to rest up.

Okay, maybe I do miss Nancy’s turkey gravy from the Truro Irvings…You’re her number one Richard.