My luck when traveling to Canada near major events is quite lucky. As has been hitting the news, the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup and a portion of downtown Vancouver has fallen into a riot. I actually was there this past weekend, and even took in the party scene downtown before leaving on Monday. I missed this riot by roughly 48 hours. However, this was not my first brush with rioting in Canada.
Last summer I was working on a project for a customer in Toronto, and was only able to spend every other weekend at home. For those who follow world news, last summer Toronto hosted the G8 and G20 economic summits. As is usual, I took the weekend I was visiting downtown, and here is a view of the G20 security from my Junior Suite on the 24th floor of the Intercontinental Toronto Centre on the weekend before the summit:
The weekend of the summit was my scheduled weekend to be at home, however due to flight scheduling I actually flew back to Toronto on Sunday night after the summit, and the news was still covering all of the incidents in downtown Toronto.
It is actually quite interesting to be able to watch the news reports and know all of the locations being mentioned in the coverage, even though I do not live there. I am extremely glad that I have been able to avoid the riots, but it is an interesting thing to observe, at least from the comfort of my home or hotel room. As much as I love visiting Canada, especially during the summer, I'm thinking maybe I need to skip going up there next summer. There is no need to barely miss riots for three years in a row ;-)
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