Canadian Thanksgiving

Canadian Thanksgiving

In Hope, on this Thanksgiving weekend (October 5 - 8, 2007), I attended the Rambo “First Blood” 25th anniversary celebrations. On Friday night at the Silver Chalice Pub, I watched the premiere showing of the documentary about making Rambo in Hope. The film producer from Seattle was there. Everyone laughed at the character on his quest, and listened to Hope people talking on the film. Inge from the visitor center and Tom, the fire chief, were interviewed.

Oliver, a young man from Germany who has a rambotown.net website, was on the film and at the pub. One man sitting at the table, Ray, from Cold Lake, Alberta, makes Rambo knives. Another man at the table had flown all the way from Ukraine.

On Saturday, we walked around the town for five hours and stopped everywhere a scene in the movie was shot. "All I wanted was something to eat." A Rambo-look-a-like stalked us through the woods. "Give it up! Give it up!" At night in the theatre hundreds of people listened to memories of the time the movie people were here in town and then we watched the movie together on the big screen.

On Sunday, I was too tired to hike to the tunnels or to go to the pig roast so I had a Thanksgiving dinner with friends—one from Taiwan, one from the Czech Republic, and one from Scotland. In a way, it was a typical Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. The world had come to visit us here, and we had so much for which to be thankful.