On July 8, 10 4-H members and two chaperones from the Ormstown 4-H Club, Quebec arrived in Alberta to participate in a youth travel exchange with the Winfield & District 4-H Beef Club.
We had 10 fun-filled days in Alberta. We visited the Royal Tyrell Museum and took a hike learning the “Seven Wonders of the Badlands”. We had a free day to show our Quebec friends our farms and do a family activity. We participated in the Buck Lake Parade and watched the Rodeo. The Quebec kids had never seen anything like this before! We traveled to Calgary to visit Canada Olympic Park where we toured the Sports Hall of Fame and tried the summer-time luge course. The next day we traveled to Banff to tour the town and take the gondola up Sulphur Mountain. What a great view!
We also visited Leduc #1 Discovery Centre and learned about Alberta’s oil industry. We toured and shopped West Edmonton Mall and swam in the waterpark. We visited the local attractions, Ponderosa City and Em-Te Town, where we had a steak supper and watched the Alberta Mounted Shooting Club demonstrate their great skills. We visited the Reynolds Museum and took some great group pictures at the Battle Lake 4-H Centre. We all got a true camping experience – huddling around a smoky fire in the pouring rain! We enjoyed fishing, games, square dancing and a pancake breakfast.
At the end of these 10 days, many friendships were made and the Quebec members sadly returned home to anxiously await the reunion when the Winfield 4-H participants and chaperones traveled to Quebec on August 5. We toured Quebec farms, museums, Old Montreal, a hydro generating station, Calypso waterpark and the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. We sampled the great local cuisine, zip lined, rode the metro, and even did a haunted tour in Montreal!
Our Alberta / Quebec exchange has been a trip of a lifetime - fun, adventurous and a knowledgeable experience. Thank you to all the families, friends, businesses, county, and community members and organizations for your amazing support. And thank you to 4-H Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage for making this opportunity possible.