Prime Ministers and French explorers

It's been quite a hectic and fun couple of days. My friend and colleague Tim asked me to do sound on his film crew for the 400th anniversary of the first known permanent settlement in North America. Didja know that the founding of Port Royal in Nova Scotia predates the landing at Plymouth Rock? I didn't.

So it's been a big deal. Thursday night we were heading out to Port Royal to go to the dress rehearsal of the meeting between the Frency and the Mi kmaq, and we were driving through Annapolis Royal, which is where the Fort was later established. And we saw the Prime Minister just standing there on a street corner.

So then we went to the rehearsal. After the rehearsal we heading back to Annapolis, mostly at the urging of Simone, allegedly to get ice cream for the boys. Of course the real intent was to see if we could spot the PM again.

One of the funnier moments in an evening filled with funny moments was when a teenager on a park bench said to us "the prime minister is here, you know". He then proceeded to tell us "he came up and talked to me and shook my hand. I didn't even know who he was". Further conversation revealed that he wasn't even Canadian, he was from Florida. Then he said "so, that would be like me shaking the hand of George Bush in my own country. Wow. That just SO wouldn't happen".

We finally found the PM .. or at least we found his two security guards. They were pretty good sports. Memorable line #1 - Simone saying "hey, if he needs babies to kiss, I have three of them right here .." Then the security guard saying "there's no election" and Simone responding "are you sure ...?"

Tim then went back and schmoozed the security guard and got us in to the media scrum the next day. I'm running out of steam right now and I haven't had coffee yet. So I'm going to quit for now. Later on I will continue with the story of what it's like to scrum the prime minister (sounds sleazy, doesn't it? Let me tell you, that's not far from the truth).