Day 1 (August 23, 2021): NWT goes pouff!

Over a year ago, we set up a Summer 2020 trip to Canada’s north.  But by summer’s end last year, access to Canada’s territories was still prohibited, so we moved the trip to July 2021. But as Summer 2021 was dawning, you guessed it - access to Canada’s territories remained blocked due to Covid restrictions. But as summer set in and with Canada removing interprovincial restrictions, we moved the trip for a third time — this time, to late August 2021. 

A few days ago, one of my team members sent me a CBC link to a story about the burgeoning Covid outbreak in the Northwest Territories (NWT), which prompted me to then check out the NWT Government’s website. To my shock, I realized they had not, in fact, opened up as I had understood. I called Air Canada to try to delete our flights in and out of Yellowknife, but they were adamant we could not amend our overall trip routing. If we skipped the Yellowknife flights, they warned, the remaining flights on our itinerary would become null and void. Long story short, although they would not amend the routing, they agreed to amend the dates. The NWT government agreed to give us a transit exemption to allow us to fly in at 11 PM tonight, as long as we left again on the next flight out - tomorrow morning at 6 AM! So that was the plan when we left Halifax.

But when we arrived in Calgary tonight, an empathetic Air Canada customer service agent agreed that making us fly to Yellowknife and back was crazy, and she found a way to let us drop Yellowknife. Given the Covid situation in Yellowknife, we were thrilled. We ducked into the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge in Calgary Airport to figure out our next steps and decided to book a room at the Marriott In-terminal Hotel, a few meters away. We didn’t even have to leave the airport building!

So instead of a flight to the NWT and a seven-hour stay there tonight, we’ve spent the evening watching planes take off and land here at Calgary International Airport, from the comfort of our hotel room. Downtown Calgary and the Rocky Mountains loom on the near horizon, and we are quite happy to be starting our vacation like this!

Tomorrow morning we head to Vancouver and Whistler for the day, and then carry on to sink our teeth into the Yukon. You are welcome to join us on this weeklong adventure!

The Boeing 737 Max is back in service, after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Boeing swears the issues have been fixed, but we still had some angst as we boarded. We left Halifax this afternoon on a packed flight, as rain from the outer bands of post-tropical storm Henri arrived in Halifax. But at least it was warm! In contrast, it was 8 Celsius when we landed here in Calgary tonight at 7. 

Halifax to Calgary is 5 1/2 hours nonstop. It makes you realize how vast this country of ours really is!

OK, so you know that any blog of mine is going to give detail on the airplane food! I won’t let my blog readers down on that front. 🤪 We had a nice meal in economy class, comprising pizza, a wrap, a rice/bean salad, and great beverages.

Although we flew Air Canada, Calgary is WestJet territory. Here’s Pam, raising a glass to the fact that we don’t have to fly to Yellowknife tonight! We will look forward to exploring the NWT another time, when travel is a little less stressful.

WestJet 737s in the foreground, downtown Calgary and the Rocky Mountains in the background.  As dusk  set in, the sky over Calgary changed colours many times.



The blog writer is thrilled to spend his first night of vacation staring out his hotel window at… airplanes!