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My Canadian Experience
Canadian Election and Media Interest

Quite a night for Canada (23rd Jan) getting a new Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. The outgoing Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin, bowed out with grace and announced he would be stepping down as the leader of the Liberal party. I am told that Paul Martin did an amazing job as Finance Minister and turned Canada from running annual deficits to actually running a surplus and managing to pay off a significant chunk of the national debt.

The Conservatives made good gains in Quebec against the Bloc, whose leader is Gilles Duceppe, who were net losers on the night in Quebec. Jack Layton of the NDP made a 10 seat gain on the night and may well hold the balance of power.

Below are pictures I took from CTV at 1am on Tuesday 24th giving the state of the parties.


And here is Stephen Harper, the new Prime Minister and his wife giving his victory speech

On 24th January I got interviewed by the Chatham Daily News...


On the left is the journalist, Daniel Schwab, who is in his third week with the paper and on the right is Sarah Fraleigh the photographer


This is apparently one of the photographs that might be used but as all Sarah's pictures are copyright she took this shot with my camera. Looks like I need a haircut :-)

And here is the article and they did use that photo...


Click on the picture and get a larger image where you can read the article
See their web site at http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/

I also received a letter from Andy Mack of The Sounds of Scotland radio show and as it has some interesting content I'll include it here...

I don't currently have the kit to record the cassette that Andy sent in but when I do get it I'll post it up for you to listen to.


And while the interview was progressing the Fed-Ex wagon turned up to collect the first of the Scottish Clan Maps going out to customers :-)

I made a late change to the pricing of my Scottish Clan Map and it will now sell for US$16.95 + post & packing.  I had intended to just sell it direct from the site to our visitors but was persuaded that bulk sales to Scottish shops would likely make up 90% of the sales. For this reason it was suggested that I make the price profitable for shops to buy the map.

I wasn't really happy about this and so at the last moment decided to bite the bullet and change the price to make it much cheaper for visitors to purchase.  So... it was back to doing refunds again.  Thankfully I am now happy with the price and believe it is a good deal for everyone. The maps are due to arrive on Thursday although I did get a few maps in and the picture above shows the first 6 orders being completed.

The Fed-Ex system allows me to book the pickup online and I can simply fill out a web form and they produce the way bill and commercial invoice which I just need to print out and put into a Fed-Ex supplied pouch which is then stuck on the tube. By shipping this Fed-Ex I am able to provide a tracking number and this is emailed to the purchaser so they can track the shipment.  I also get a notification of delivery and of course there is insurance in case anything happens to the shipment. All and all it's a well streamlined system.

As I use PayPal they send me a notification of payment received in my email so I can just store those in an "orders" folder in my email program. When I dispatch an order I simply move the order to the processed folder. Once I get confirmation of delivery being made I simply delete the email from the processed folder.  So there you have a typical online order system that any small business can implement very easily.

And on 25th January I got a phone call from the A TV Channel, which is channel 6 on cable TV. A Rick Walker turned up at noon and did an interview which will end up being a 1.5 minute clip on the news at 6.00.  I will try to take a wee video clip of that if I can.


Here is Rick Walker with his camera


And here is his car that he uses on assignments

And later that night I found myself on the news.  You can view the wee (around 1 minute) video clip below...

Return to my Canadian Experience Index Page