Yesterday we drive to the KPU one last time to watch farrier Iain Ritchie shoe a horse with handmade horseshoes. I've seen that many times on screen, but never actually live. It's fascinating to watch how fast and accurate an experienced farrier will turn a shoe, cut the groves, punch the holes and pull the clips. It's not terribly complicated forging per se, but each shoe is a custom fit for each horse and small details can have a tremendous influence on the horses sensitive stance. Thank you Iain for showing us live. Then we got some last minute memorabilia (caps) and a beautiful handcrafted bick for the hardy. It's got a very fine tip, so I'll be able to draw out round holes/rings on it much sooner than so far. We then decided to check out Princess Auto, a hardware store that is like a wet dream for anyone mechanically inclined and omg it's great. You wouldn't believd the stuff they have. You could almost build a whole car from the parts they have. Or a hydraulic press or a power hammer. Then followed an odyssey through the suburbs of Vancouver to get to the last hotel we would stay at with the Meyers. We eventually got there after some swearing at the outdated satnav. Cleared out the van for handover and went to the nearby Casino to have dinner together and bet 5$ on some slot machines. We won nothing of course, but Hans took home a few dollars more than he put in. About enough to cover the fuel costs:) Lastly we got two lovely craft beers at the Liquor Store and had a nice evening chat in the hotel. Hans is a gifted storyteller so you can listen to him for hours. Our last day will consist mainly of three things: waiting for the shuttle, waiting for the flight, waiting for the food.

Another day another series of demonstrations at the KPU in Surrey for #CanIron XI. We watched Douglas Pryor advance into the chasing aspect of his snail. Benoit showed me his home built rolling mill (I had a go myself) and just before lunch time I watched Glenn Moon forge a little damascus ring from mild and bandsaw blade steel (I believe it was). They lost the little billet several times in the fire, so it was good entertainment to warch two grown men (the other was Kelly) dig in a burning firepit frantically trying to find a thumb sized piece of glowing steel in equally sized pieces of glowing coke. We then had a lovely Poutine (last one, promise) at the KPU canteen and I spent the afternoon watching Gennadii Boyarskyi forge/weld a wheat ary for a truly stunning bouquet of flowers made out of steel. Glenn Moon showed us how to create a very simple oil burner forge with a gravity feed to burn diesel, cooking oil or whathaveyou. Gets super hot this stuff, too! Kerry Neilson showed some more file cutting and rasp making and finally Benoit Laurent finished his bracket for the auction later that day. The evening banquet was lovely salads followed by roast beef, Yorkshire puddings and potato mash and sweet desserts with chocolate fudge cake and a kind of Nanaimo bar. Then followed the auction where all the things made were auctioned off and the proceeds will be used for the next #CanIron. My reverse bottle opener sold (phew!) for 20$, not too bad. I got a little Victoria Blacksmiths organization aluminium anvil as a souvenir. We met more people and had some good discussions about technical issues and worldly things and good times were had by all. Today will be the last half day of demonstrations and then we'll have to start packing and getting the car ready for handover. We're going to meet Hans and Ruth again in the afternoon.

After a first hot then cold night (the temperature difference between night and day is significant here) and a hearty breakfast to warm up again, we watched Matt Jenkins from Winnipeg demonstrate a couple of techniques for making hooks, or rather how to use special texturing tricks to make otherwise boring hooks look interesting. He also showed us how to make the tools for it. He mixes in funny stories and silly jokes with the highly skilled forging (he never misses a blow) and so was excellent entertainment. We had lunch at Taco Bell/KFC and then watched Benoit Laurent work on his bracket including some waterleaves and penny end scrolls. Forging with coke and that in a bottom blast forge was new to him though, so he struggled a bit with the firewelds. To his aid then came Glenn Moon from Australia who proved it was doable and proceeded making a special tool for the powerhammer under the powerhammer for Dorothy Stiegler. Bec also saw Douglas Pryor continue working on his snail, but I missed out on that one. The comedy moment was apparently when, in the attempt of rapidly cooling off the vessel filled with pitch, he opened a freezer in the farrier school building only to find it full of frozen horse legs that are used for training purposes. The Canadians are funny like that. They'd rather donate their meat to a school than throw it on a barbeque. Hardly anyone eats horse meat here. After dinner at Wendy's (their salads are amazing), we then watched power point presentations both by Dorothy and Glenn about their past work and life. Interesting stuff to say the least. Who else owns a dozen or more powerhammers off the grid somewhere in the bush of Australia and runs a big forge off tge countryside? And I thought I had a remote workshop. Tomorrow will be more presentations and the banquet in the evening.

After we had a sumptuous breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to the Kwantlen Polytechnic University campus on 180 street and joined CanIronXI. Because the campus was closed yesterday, the smiths still had to set up the worksites, so we started with a bit of a delay, but eventually everything turned out alright. We watched Douglas Prior demonstrate some raising and chasing in copper. A very time consuming process by any standard, but magical as a flat sheet of metal turns into very intricate hollow shapes without welding, soldering or riveting, just pushing the material around in the right way as if it were clay. We had a quick Sushi lunch at King of Sushi and I had my first BC roll, a futomaki with grilled salmon skin in it. Sounds disgusting but tastes amazing! In the afternoon we watched Dorothy Stiegler forge some flowers and hummingbirds as well as a hummingbird based on a Friedrich's cross or blacksmith's cross or split cross, as it is also sometimes referred to. Apparently it was invented by Christoph Friedrich from Switzerland. Who knew?! We both didn't feel very hungry after just sitting around all day watching others, so we only had a small sandwich and an icecream for dessert. We had a little chat with our blacksmith camping neighbors from Ontario and are now listening to the booms of the US independence day fireworks over the nearby border.

We then did some shopping and ran a few errands before chilling out with a cold beer at the hotel. A quiet day with great weather again. I am greatly looking forward to the start of the demonstrations tomorrow.

We said our goodbyes to the Stoys in the morning and first got some gas and air at the gas station (the tyre company who put the new ones one before we took over the car was a bit conservative with only about 3 bar in the tyres. 3.5 is much better.) Then we drove to Black Diamond AB and shopped for some gorceries. We then continued through rolling hills and cattle ranches along the cowboy trail. We eventually came to Leigh Collieries an abandoned and rather unsuccessful coke plant in the coal belt of Crowsnest Pass. We only stopped at first to get rid of some trash but quickly found that this was very interesting. We continued to explore the area with the massive Frank slide, where 30 cubic metres / 90 million tons of rock came down over the town of Frank in 1903 in a giant rockslide. The sight of it is amazing. Sadly, over 90 people lost their lives in their sleep. Further down the road is the town of Coleman, where coal was mined and coked until 1983. We explored the town that had just renovated their former APP station and went for a hike up the miner's trail to the location of one of the former mines. Sadly we took a weong turn and ended up hiking up half the mountain before turning back and finding the right place. But it's a lovely little valley with a clear creek running through it. We came across a wedding and two lost dogs. We assisted locating their owners as best as we could and met two locals, both with British roots in the process. Eventually we continued on to Sparwood, only to find that the local Elkview mine is still very much in operation and important for the steel industry on the continent. We set up camp in a newly developed RV resort in Fernie. Two British blacksmiths emigrated to the neighboring town of Hosmer 12 years ago and because we'll likely meet them at CanIron XI, we'll try and pay them a visit tomorrow. The campground here is very modern, has all the amenities and very friendly staff.