This was an eventful weekend for my eldest daughter. She was going to Mission, BC to take part in the BC Ukrainian Cultural Festival for the first time. We had planned to go over on Friday night and spend it at the hotel visiting with her friends, socializing and hanging out in anticipation of a whole day of dance on Saturday. But it didn’t quite turn out that way. We had an uneventful ferry ride, but when only 10 minutes away from our destination, we came to a grinding stop on the highway. Thankfully Lili had fallen asleep in the car, and stayed asleep for about 3.5 hours of the 4 hours that it took for the Mounties to set up a traffic diversion.
Had I brought hubs’ Jeep instead of my little Prius I might have found a way to cross the meridian. But instead I was just stuck there. Had I known the area, I might have understood that the radio announcer saying that highway 1 is shut down between 253 and 274 street meant I was going to drive right into the melee. But I didn’t know that those streets were ahead of me on the highway, until I was stuck with the other cars.
And for 4 hours it was like a scene out of a Hollywood disaster flick. All the engines were off, cars were scatted between lanes and onto the shoulders of the highway. People were getting out of their cars and walking towards the hold up to see what the heck was going on. I was half expecting to see Simon Pegg or Nick Frost run past in a horror. The only thing that made it feel less panicky was the occasional teenager and pet dog running to the side of the road to pee. Somewhat amusing for me, but not exactly how my sweetie had planned to spend her night before her first competition.
We got into the hotel at 11:30pm, and we were up at 6:30am to get her into full hair, make-up and costume to be at the theatre by 8am. Even with a miserable night’s sleep, and on a sprained ankle, she got a silver medal for both of the dances she performed.
So worth it just for that smile.
Alina C Fisher 
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