Although Canada Day wasn't the day we left, this was essentially the start of our tour. We'd spent ages getting ready for this tour; doing recording sessions and extra practices, so we figured besides our pre-tour concert we should get in the swing of things by doing a set of Canada Day concerts at the Devonian Gardens that are just outside of Edmonton.

  A bit of background here, I sung in EYC from 2005-2009 and then I moved to Victoria. This was my first year back in Edmonton, and of course I joined again because I'd loved it so much before. Surprisingly, it was a tour year, and even though I'd been to Russia-Estonia-Finland with EYC before, I was excited to go with this group. There were three of my friends that had been in the choir with me before that were still there and we'd talked before and decided to stop off in Iceland together on the way back.

Zach was nice enough to drive me out there as it was a lovely summer day to go walking around the gardens. Unfortunately we were singing pretty close to the time that we arrived, so we had to arrive dressed in our uniforms and then take a 15 minute walk through the blazing summer sun in our long hot dresses. The gardens are lovely, but not when you're draped in dark polyester. I felt bad for the men too who were in their tuxes. They at least gave us time to cool off in the shade for a bit. Amy had a motorized fan with a water bottle attached that was a lifesaver. And Clair had peppermint oil, which sounds weird, but if you roll it on the back of your neck it not only smells fantastically invigorating, it leaves a cooling sensation that helps to make you feel cooler.

We took a bit to figure out where we were standing under an awning-type thing. Half of the choir was still in the sun anyway. We sang one set of mostly our tour pieces plus a couple more patriotic ones. Thankfully we were allowed to cool off in the shade again and have a bit of cake. We lounged around the the shady grass for a bit. It wasn't long enough between sets that we had time to go wander around the gardens, and it certainly wasn't a good idea to go out into the midday sun with our dresses.

We watched a group of performers before us, and then filed back under the pavillion awning. The sun was even worse at that point and half the choir was stuck in the heat. Luckily, no one fainted. The set sounded good despite it being outdoors and using a couple borrowed mic's. Luckily we had Cosette to keep us going on the French piece we'd recently memorized and not quite remembered all the words too.

After the end of the set we all rushed off to change into the normal clothes we'd brought and headed out fairly quickly. It was still really hot and the gardens were very busy. Plus, because I was going to be working the next couples days this was the day I needed to pack. U