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This page is mostly targeted towards Gap Year students and presents two great opportunities to experience Canada. Firstly I can recommend participating in voluntary work on a farm in Ontario whilst also visiting Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. Further down this page, Tim Lesnick has provided an extract from his diary whilst on a Ski Instructor course in Quebec.
Voluntary work - Organic farming in Eastern Ontario
If you choose to participate in voluntary work during your gap year, your input will not only be appreciated by those you help but also by those who process your UCAS application and more importantly those who will hire you after your 3+ years of drunken madness. It shows that you are proactive; willing to be a team player and that there is more to your life than just money!
Aerial view of Aubin Farm, Ontario, Canada
In 2004 I was given the great opportunity to spend some time in Canada with the Aubin, family friends whom I had not met since my voice broke! After recommendations from Canadian relatives, Tim and Roshan Aubin moved from Kenya to Eastern Ontario to start their own organic farm. The farm is located in a village called Spencerville, within a beautiful rural pocket of countryside 40 miles south of Canada’s capital city Ottawa and 10 miles north of the U.S. border.
There is an extreme contrast between summer and winter. Ontario barely witnesses a summer day below 25 degrees Celsius and winter would not be a winter without two feet of snow and minus 25; I opted to visit during summer!
The Aubins’ work entails the following: A box with a selection of vegetables delivered to Ottawa weekly. Grass fed beef & lamb, chicken and eggs. Beautifully scented roses & other seasonal flowers from May to Nov. Woolen blankets made from their own fleece. Pickles, chutneys & jams made from organic produce, along with Indian cuisine cooked to order.
A rare moment when the cows were not attempting an escape! The family dog ‘Wenjack’ supervising in the background.
Every Saturday, 8am to 1pm Roshan takes the produce to the weekly market 15 miles down the road to Brockville, a picturesque town along the banks of the River St. Lawrence, which marks the border with the U.S. Brockville offers boat tours to the nearby “Thousand Islands” (visit the following link for more information on this unique attraction: http://www.visit1000islands.com).
The busiest months are from May to September. Please see below if you would like to contact the Aubins regarding potential voluntary work
Address: Tim & Roshan Aubin, Aubin Farm, 3015 Country Rd. 21, Spencerville ON Canada, KOE 1XO.
Tel: 001 613 658-5721
A Ski Le Gap Diary – Quebec
Written by Tim Lesnik, Colchester, ENG.
"Ski Le Gap" is not for the average gap year student; for a start most
will struggle to afford it. Ski le
Gap is a well kept middle-class secret, and those who take the trek across
the pond to snowy Canada come to party, ski and generally have the time of their lives.
Don't worry parents, we're well fed and only a handful have so far
contracted a sexually transmitted disease, but to extend the theory that
Ski le Gap is not for average Joe, one only needs to look at the staff.
Our resident bus driver, Gaston, is a moustachioed yodelling French
Canadian ex-Rally driver and he revells in travelling down narrow, icy
roads at break-neck speeds before plunging round the corner in an handbreak
turn. Exciting stuff, paricularly when drunk, although Gaston's copybook
was recently blotted when he beached the bus in the snow, with rather
terminal results. Norm the Chef keeps us entertained with his controverstial jokes, and on
Monday nights serves behind the bar with devastating effect. Two of Norm's
drinks even makes the prospect of a French lesson appealing - which is
clearly why their schedules coincide - and it has been known for
over-exuberant gappers to wake up on Tuesday morning tied to the bedposts
in a fairly naked and provokative manner by their tights. Super.
And so to the skiing. We're taught by the best instructors in Canada,
become instructors ourselves after an average of 5 weeks, ski all day
everyday, then get drunk every night, time's running out and no-one wants
to leave!
Biarritz ; Monte-Carlo ; Las Vegas : all have, in varying epochs,
established themselves as the gaming capital of the world. But there has
been a seismic shift ; a lurch of the tectonic plates ; a great schism to rival that of the Catholic Church circa 1378. For it seems that a
gambler's paradise has been created in Canada ; a paradise to rival that of
the three aformentioned empires. Some call it Quebec's answer to Caesar's
Palace; others simply call it the Ski le Gap restaurant.
The Ski Le Gap restaurant was barely recognisable, apart from it being almost exactly the
same. Norm oversaw developments. Lean, mean and newly waxed (for charity) he
strode his former stomping ground like a colossus. The poor man was, of
course, clearly perturbed; one can only imagine the agony of having to
supervise the destruction of one's own domain; insiders say that he hasn't
been this stressed since the "Spatulargate" incident of Gap 2002, when a
favourite cookery impliment was lost. Norm's mood cannot have been helped by the unannounced exodus of Richard Lee, rumoured to have visited hospital
for a teeth-whitening operation.
The great and good of Tremblant society were all there : headed, of course,
by one J. Moran, fresh from his truimphant appearance at "Gap Idol" the
night before; Hey Jude has never been performed like it, and never will be
again. Also present were George Meacher, astronomer ; the esteemed
countor-tenor Harry Sutton with his latest beau; serial socialite Rosa
Lowri ; NGD (Nice Guy Dave) the rapper; Noel Edmunds; and even Anthony
Hutton, who somehow contrived to get his name on the guest list, although
he was shunned throughout the night - even by that chap on the Gap whose
name nobody knows. The talking-point of the evening, however, was the
continued absence of Gaston. Various theories have been floated, but the
story with the most credence is that he has embarked on an illicit affair
with a Cuban lap-dancer, and is away on a dirty weekend. Sources close to
Gaston say that, when the scenario was pitched, he gave a Gallic twitch of
the moustache, a twinkle appeared in his left eye, and there appeared to a
slight rouging in the cheek area. Case closed.
Nobody knew why they were there ; nobody was in the least concerned. A
lone voice mentioned it was for someone called Charity, and urged those
present to "think of the children", but she was quickly led away and a
medicinal brandy was prescribed by the local Doctor, Joseph Joyce, to calm
the nerves. The evening was, of course, just another reason to shake the
dust off the tux and get dressed up to the nines. It appears that pink is
the new black, which is confusing as last year black was the new pink, and
black has been the new black on numerous occasions. Still, everyone was
adequately - or barely in the case of the female form - covered, apart from
the counter-tenor, who continues his one-man crusade battling for the
reintroduction of the kilt. Harry : the garment in question's vogue has
been lost. There was, unfortunately, no sign of the luminous-green bowler
hat talked so highly of by Adam Fenwick-Symes in the most recent and
outdated fashion periodical.
As well as Tremblant's Bright Young Things, an elder demographic deemed it
acceptable to appear. In a demonstration typical of her peers, one lady -
perportedly suffering from senile dementia - asked a Gapper whether he was,
in fact, on the Ski le Gap programme, seemingly unaware of the
extraordinary set of coincidences that would otherwise have placed a young
Englishmanin in the Ski le Gap restaurant on casino night ; the chances of
this occuring, I would have said, are about as slim as Fern Britten's
chances in the Commonwealth Games long jump.
The evening was an unprecedented success, especially as for the majority it
was unprecedented. Even the appearance of ageing Canadians failed to
dampen Youth of Britain's spirits, courtesy, one would think , of a
well-rounded public-school education. Yet it all ended on a sour note:
at 12 the casino was irrevokably and unceremoniously dismembered - at least
for another year - and the trestle tables and benches returned to their
habitual places. Only Norm was pleased, along with a pensioner who
discovered his dentures lodged down the back of the wheel of fortune.