Nuffield Contemporary Scholars Conference - Guelph

Well where do I start, I think I have heard that before somewhere on this trip already.  I will try and summarise what we have been doing for the last few days in Canada.  I arrived on my own having flown Air Canada instead of BA and eventually met up with the rest of the UK scholars at Toronto airport.  We loaded up and headed for the Delta hotel in Guelph where we were met by the Nuffield Canada team!  We were all kitted out in the hockey shirts, checked into the hotel, met our room mates and headed for the local hockey rink.  I am sharing a room with Jason Size who is a stone fruit farmer from Bookpurnong in South Australia.  Jason is studying the flavours and customer preferences for stone fruit.

Whilst at the hockey match a few of us took part in a burger making competition, the only thing was, we were the buns.  I teamed up with Andrew Janaway from the UK, and our Southern hemisphere competitors were Trent De Paoli (Australia) and Natasha King (New Zealand).  The object was to build the full burger with foam cheese, salad, burger and pickles out on the ice, trying to run backward and forwards delivering the ingredients.  The finale was the dive onto the burger by the top of the bun (me).  It was resounding win for the Northern Hemisphere, positive vibes for the Lions later this year?

We had a great night out and continued to make new friends late into the night.  The following morning it was presentation time.  We all had 2 minutes to introduce ourselves, our family and our study topic.  In the afternoon we took part in a scavenger hunt around the University of Guelph, taking photographs and solving puzzles.  We boarded the school bus that evening and headed to the Guelph Curling Club.

The curling was great fun.  We had some assistance from the members of the club who came to teach us the very skillful art of the gliding stones!  A big thanks to Clayton Robins and Blake Vince for their help and enthusiasm for the 60 or so curling novices setting foot onto the ice!  I was amazed at how effective the frantic brushing can make to the speed of the granite stones and ow little power was needed to send the stone on its way.

We were also treated to a lovely meal at the Curling Club before heading back to the hotel and getting ready for the start of the main event on Monday.  I took the role of Daily Lead for the Monday session so I had to organise people to introduce and thank our speakers.