Oh, Canada!

One Friday morning late last fall, I spent the better part of an hour online trying to buy tickets to the coolest entertainment event in St. Louis in 2016: The March 6 Bruce Springsteen concert. Must have hit the refresh button on Ticketmaster a hundred times but never got close.

Disappointed? Sure. It would have been a blast, and Tom would have gotten an awesome Christmas present. But sometimes, one day’s disappointment turns into another day’s delight.

The walk to the conference center each day.

Had we been successful in procuring Springsteen tickets, I would have said no when my boss came in my office one day in early February and asked this: “Is your schedule clear the first weekend in March? There’s this conference we want you to go to …”

And so last Thursday, March 3, my alarm went off at 2:30 a.m. to begin a 12-hour journey by cab, two planes, and shuttle bus – 1,748 miles from Crestwood – to a small town nestled in a Canadian national park. What followed was 90 hours in Banff, Alberta. Glory days? Indeed.

The conference was on storytelling in the digital age, a flood of technical information with one common thread: A good story is a good story, and it doesn’t matter if it gets told with paper and pen, a bunch of HTML code, or through the lens of a camera. And if gets told with collaboration among your colleagues, your friends, your families – all the better.

That was the work side of it. What I didn’t expect was the personal side. Something happens when you spend a long weekend out of your comfort zone in the Canadian Rockies – arguably North America’s most beautiful landscape – with a group of Canadian filmmakers and hipsters.

You see things through a different lens, both literally and figuratively. Where moviemaking and entertainment is going is extraordinary – think 3D experiences that don’t give you a headache and television sports that will project on your living room coffee table.

You breathe a lot of really fresh, crisp mountain air that cleanses your nasal passages and clears your head. You wake up four mornings to a maple-leaf mountain majesty that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. You eat bison burgers and drink a few beers with names such as Moosehead and Molson. You meet a lot of really nice people from all over the world, and no one seems to care that sitting in the restaurant are folks of many different nationalities and race. And you hear stories, which is fundamental to each of us.

I ran across a quote once that said, “Make each day a story worth telling.” So if today you don’t get those concert tickets or that promotion; if you miss the bus or your car breaks down, if the day seems unbearable, hang on. There’s a story in it, someday soon.

The view from my window.