The word “Trail” by Cambridge Dictionary is “a path through a countryside, mountain, or forest area, often made or used for a particular purpose”. However, to us as a family “Trail” represents a very special note to our migration adventure to Canada.

Trail is a small town in British Columbia with a small population of a few thousands, 7 to 8 hours of car drive east of Vancouver with the US border to its south; a place we have never heard of before.  

Our family of four, daughter, son and parents headed east from Vancouver early in the morning that day, along the way negotiating rivers, lakes, mountains, national country parks and cities. We stopped for lunch in a beautiful lake city with a name not easy to pronounce correctly – “Osoyoos”.  From there on, our car started to climb up the mountains and the road got narrower and our eardrum compressed due to altitude. Nothing but colossal pine trees we saw as our car sped on. You really had to bend your head so much backward in order to see the apex of the tree pointing to the blue sky. Seldom were cars coming the other way. We were really in the wilderness that we caught glimpses of bears and moose from time to time. At the end of our long journey as we were making our final decent to Trail on the long and winding road down the mountain we had to step on the brakes very frequently. Burning smells warned us of brakes overheating which would result in a breakdown that we might have to walk for miles to our destination. Thank heavens, car and passengers managed to survive the long journey in the end.

We asked the front desk of our hotel for a street map of Trail and some recommendations for a restaurant.

“No need, sir,” he said, “Trail just is a small town with only a few streets that people mostly walk around!”

We found Colander a few blocks from the hotel, a traditional Italian family restaurant with checkered table cloth of red and white. Meat ball spaghetti was excellent. They came with a free second serving. By the time we were back to the hotel, it was well past ten in the evening. You may wonder what on earth we were up to in Trail.

The next morning around nine, the sun was hiding and the sky was not bright. We took a road up a small hill. The buildings I beheld ahead of us were something I could relate to in some James Bond movie-a huge Specter site with several gigantic plants and dirty chimneys looming against the grimy sky. It was not a very pleasant sight to city people like us. We parked our car in the open car park and went into a building with a large sign that said “Cominco”. We presented ourselves to the receptionist who told us to take the stairs to the mezzanine floor. At this point, it would be unfair to the readers not to disclose what we were doing there.

Would you believe it, this family of Hong Kong origin was sending their dearly loved daughter to report duty to work in a mining company situated in the wilderness a few hundred miles away from metropolitan civilization.

We waited for her outside of the Manager office where she was received by her boss who was so big and tall that when they stood next to each other Joyce seemed like a miniature.

She was hired as an engineer trainee in one of the world’s largest mining plants. I was so proud of my daughter being brave and adventurous willing and capable of adapting to new and harsh environments with the good spirits of an immigrant. She came a very long way from Hong Kong to live and work in Trail. She needed to put on a hard hat most of the time in the plant and her colleagues were mostly men. That was 1998 when the father was 52 and the daughter was 26.  With a blink of eyes, 26 years have lapsed. Our dearly loved daughter has turned 52 and is still enjoying her work life very much. I believe she would from time to time remember her time there in Trail.