BC Travel Gems
Your guide to extraordinary people and places of coastal British Columbia
BC Travel GemsBC Travel Gems!
Welcome to BC Travel Gems, your guide to extraordinary people and places of coastal British Columbia, my favourite stomping grounds! You’re in luck, because this is NOT your typical travel site; it’s a new, more intimate approach for intelligent, discerning explorers; those who are thrilled with the process of discovery and want to relish taking in all the nuances—the sights, scents and sounds—that deepen the experience of travelling. BC Travel Gems is filled with remarkable images, interviews, stories, reviews, news and conversations of the real people and places that make this beautiful place so special. If you want to go beyond the basics to find out what’s truly unique, outstanding, and beyond the ordinary, come join me, and watch us grow: I can’t wait to get started!
Interview With Suzanne Tremblay
February 2012
Sylvia Hotel dining room
Vancouver, BC West End 
I met Suzanne Tremblay at Hollyhock Retreat Centre on Cortes Island in the summer of 2010 where we were both attending a writer's workshop. Despite my continued teasing when I found out that she works for Canadian Border Services (something like, "Please Suzie, just sign a few papers and let me move to Canada!" and always a "No, sorry Ginger, afraid I can't do that"), we enjoyed getting to know each other and have kept contact ever since. A wonderfully caring person and involved world citizen, here she talks about her experiences moving to Vancouver and working in the world of Immigration.
Tell me who you work for, what is the organization called?
CBSA, the Canada Border Services Agency, and we're Customs and Immigration all in one at the border crossings. I coordinate training, but we, as a team, do leadership training for upcoming supervisors and managers. The Baby Boomers are getting older and a lot of people are retiring, so we're trying to do some succession planning. We're doing Leadership Training, things like self-development, how the organization works, how Ottawa works, and how does that all fit in. And then another section of our unit is Operational Training, which is all arming, hand-cuffing, use of force, officer powers and things like that.
Sounds like it sometimes gets exciting.
Well, what I do is coordinate, so I'll say how many courses like this do we need in a year, and I'll plan it out and then I'll tell the other coordinators, "Ok, this is how many seats you have," and we'll fill them up and then get the trainer and the location. So it's like planning an event.
Now That’s Canadian
"I appreciate Canadian society every day. I feel at home with Canadian values. I believe there is a democracy worth fighting to maintain in Canada. As an American, I see so much worth protecting here, from the vast tracts of boreal rain forest in the North to the good policies that provide health care for every Canadian. After nine years in Canada, whatever illusions I held that Canada is faultless are gone. But I feel lucky to be here." from Why I Love Vancouver: Reflections On A City, by Linda Solomon, 2010