Taken from the travel log of Captain Sister Brother Indy Meutzberg

We set out for Toronto footloose, fancy-free, and riddled with disease. Leaving the dark clouds engulfing Vancouver behind, we felt our spirits soar as we made our way to a better place, a brighter place, a place with Pay Equity. Four and a half hours later we arrived on Toronto’s verdant shores, our bones vibrating with the thrill of standing on new ground. Greener ground, firmer ground, ground where the sons and daughters of Pay Equity run free, bathing in pools of pure golden light and frolicking with unicorns.

A celebration was in order, and so the crew broke open a casket of grog. Merriment and debauchery ensued. Strange visions and nightmarish sweats; fires, brimstone and devil-puppies with flaming plastic forks…

[editor’s note: at this point the narrative breaks down into mostly incoherent gibber, pages flecked with blood, snot and barbeque sauce. In the interest of narrative flow, I have excerpted only the most relevant passages below.]

…two days of dark alcoholic night. Flaming spears piercing my heart, Pirate ships ramming my eyes and cacking in my face. Gotta get out somehow. The walls are closing in.

I can feel a change coming on. Something is going to happen…

[Several hours later]

Something strange is happening to me. Four devil puppies are tearing at me, pulling me in the four directions. I can feel myself splitting apart. Almost as if I am becoming four separate entities. Almost as if there are four separate people inside of me, longing to be free. My body fights to stay together, but the puppies tear harder and harder. I can feel it happening – they’re tearing me apart…

[Editor’s Note: At this point, the narrative breaks down completely into gibberish – non-existent words of a hundred or more syllables. When it finally settles down, Captain Meutzberg no longer writes under that name, but rather insists that on writing under four different identities: Alex Youngberg, Inder Pannu, Aili Meutzner and Randy Gatley. Their reporting follows.]

Randy: Today was a light pre-conference day, with only the Library Sectoral meeting on the agenda, at 10:00 in the morning, followed by a free afternoon and then the delegates reception in the evening. At the Library Sectoral meeting, we met and mingled with some of our sisters and brothers from across the country. We discussed resolutions germane to library services, and heard updates on the strike situations affecting our local and local 410 in Victoria.

Afterwards, we spent a few brief moments ironing out the glitches in our registration and picking up all our swag. That is, if by swag you mean several hundreds of pages of reports and resolutions we had to read through before Monday. And a nice pen…

In the evening we trooped over to the Royal York hotel to attend the Delegates’ Reception. Rocking out (well, jazzing out) with our sisters and brothers and enjoying lots of tasty cheese. Then back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep before the long day lying ahead of us.

Randy: We showed up bright and early for the mad dash to claim seats in the convention hall. Walking into that hall for the first time made me aware of just how much support we have behind us – it’s huge, and it was soon packed full of delegates from every corner of the country. But not before we attended the new delegates briefing, where we learned all about concurrence and non-concurrence. And we thought we used too much jargon.

The convention then opened with greetings from Sid Ryan, president of CUPE Ontario and general vice-president of CUPE National, from Aboriginal Elder JoAnne Kakekayash and then from guest speaker and mayor of Toronto David Miller. Our president, Paul Moist, delivered his report to us and assured us that our union continues to be the best damn union ever. Alex, always ready to go to bat for us, used brother Moist’s speech to take the opportunity to thank him and all of CUPE for their support during our strike.

Then we broke for lunch. Aili, Inder and Alex went to the Women’s Caucus and I went out and found a restaurant that serves half-price pints at lunch. As you will see, equality is a big topic at this year’s conference and I learned my first lesson about it at lunch. If you’re a woman at national conference, you experience a serious inequity in the amount of free time you have to sneak out for a beer or a snack: women’s caucuses at noon on the first day, and 8:00 AM every day after. Something oughta be done about it!

Business resumed after lunch with the awarding of the Health and Safety award. Our secretary-treasurer, Claude Genereux then delivered his report and assured us that we continue to be the best damn-funded union ever. For anyone worried about our strike pay running out, brother Genereux’s speech would have reassured you no end. Not only are our finances strong, but we are doing well enough to create some new funds to finance campaigns on the issues that are important to our workers, and especially to fight privatization and contracting out.

The afternoon progressed to debate and voting on several resolutions, before we closed with an election forum and heard from candidates running for election to the national executive.

But the fun didn’t stop there. Oh no, Because of course, at convention, there are caucuses! and forums! and events! And if you want to spend 14 or 15 hours straight of your day at convention, by god you can. And so, on day one we nearly did. When convention broke at 6:00, Aili and I headed to the youth forum, while Inder attended the rainbow forum and Alex nipped over to Costco to purchase a digital camera for our local so that we can document convention and everything else we’re doing back in Vancouver..

This was followed by the District councils meeting, which Inder and Alex attended and finally the equality forum, where we enjoyed a performance by Turtle Gals, an Aboriginal women’s theatre troupe. Finally, around 10 PM, we headed back to our hotel, some of us having been at convention almost a full fourteen hours without break.