Demis (left) and Nancy, met and got married in Mexico and are travelling by bicycle throughout the Americas. They’ve just come down from Alaska and the Yukon to pick cherries in the South Okangan. They have a YouTube channel, Vagaboom, where they post videos of their adventures. (Richard McGuire photo)
When Osoyoos Baptist Church invited hundreds of fruit pickers over for dinner this past week, there was quite the mix of languages being spoken.
Mingling among the groups of young people, you could hear English, French – both Québécois and European, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and perhaps a few other languages.
Pastor Phil Johnson said numbers attending this year were down substantially from previous years, largely due to the early cherry season this year.
But he praised this year’s pickers who came to the church grounds on Wednesday for a Mexican meal of nachos, beans and vegetables with salsa, and who have been using the church to shower throughout the picking season.
“They’ve been really polite,” said Johnson. “They’ve been really appreciative. There haven’t been any real drug issues or anything like that, vandalism, or rowdyism. No fights. It’s just been great.”
The challenge for the church, which partners with Mountain Park Community Church from Abbotsford to provide the dinners, is that it needs to set the dates for dinner week far in advance, so that volunteers can book time off work.
In the past, early July has worked well, especially for teachers who are finished their school year.
This year, however, the cherries arrived in late May, nearly a month ahead of some years, and many pickers have now moved on up the valley or over to Creston.
“These last two years have really been quite an anomaly,” said Johnson.
Some pickers like Simon Brousseau-Arcand, 21, of Jolliet, Quebec, are here to earn some extra money for school.
This is Brousseau-Arcand’s third year picking cherries in the South Okanagan. He’s been working for Oliver grower Greg Norton.
With the picking winding down here, he plans to move next to the Creston area to obtain another picking contract. After that, he’ll go to California for a month before returning to school in Quebec.
“I love this place, the vibe,” he said. “The people in the valley are really nice. I love this part of Canada. There’s good money to make when you work hard.”
Asked if all the pickers work hard, he laughs, and acknowledges that some are just here to hang out.
Some experienced pickers do it year after year, work hard and make a lot of money, he said. Others come for fun.
Although most local people have been friendly, ask any of the Québécois and they will admit to encountering some hostility directed at them.
Mikaelle Gelineau, from Montreal, said she went to buy gas in Penticton, not knowing of the B.C. law that requires gas to be prepaid. In Quebec and most other provinces, you can pump your gas and then pay inside afterwards.
She told the attendant she didn’t know how much gas she would need and asked if she could pump it and then pay.
He told her there would be no special treatment for Québécois, she said.
“It was really in a bad tone,” Gelineau said. “I just left. No need to waste your time with it.”
A number of global travellers were also socializing on the church grounds. Perhaps Nancy and Demis, both 28, epitomize the mini-United Nations here. (They’ve asked that their last names not be used).
Nancy is from Monterrey in the north of Mexico, close to Texas.
Demis was born in Switzerland, but his mother is Italian and his father is from the south of Spain. His last name is Arabic, a remnant of the Moorish occupation of southern Spain between the years of 711 and 1492 AD.
“I don’t speak any Arabic,” he adds.
He was bicycling through Mexico when he met Nancy. The two got married and decided to continue travelling the world by bicycle. They literally rode away from their wedding ceremony on bicycles.
Because she was a less experienced cyclist, they headed for Cuba for two months so she could learn to cycle in that country, which is largely flat.
Since May 10, they have been bicycling from Alaska to Argentina, starting at Prudhoe Bay in the far north on the Arctic Ocean.
The two have been posting videos of their adventures to their YouTube channel, Vagaboom, often in Spanish with English subtitles.
They show their encounters with Cubans, going gaga over a mother grizzly bear and two cubs by the road in the Yukon (they were in a vehicle and not cycling at the time), and picking cherries and partying in the South Okanagan.
They realized they would miss the cherry season if they continued cycling at their pace of 100 kilometres a day, so they hitched a ride from Whitehorse to Hope.
They’ve now been picking cherries between Oliver and Osoyoos for a few weeks to earn money to continue their travels.
Nancy said she was impressed by how much the Canadian landscape suddenly changed when they got to the Okanagan. Demis is impressed by how welcoming people here have been.
“It’s amazing how people are helpful here in Canada and in Osoyoos,” he said.
Adam, from Tel Aviv, Israel, agreed to speak with us if we didn’t show his picture or use his last name. He admitted he doesn’t have a Canadian work permit, but has been making money to pay for his travels by picking cherries.
He left Israel 10 months ago, going to the U.S., then to Peru, and then to the Yukon for a week and a half. There he picked morel mushrooms, but the season wasn’t good, so he headed to the Okanagan to pick cherries.
For the past two weeks he has been picking mainly in Osoyoos, but also in Oliver.
“I love it,” he says of Osoyoos. “Especially because I came from the Yukon and it was raining in the Yukon and all the way down.”
He plans to move on next to California to stay with his brother and then travel through Europe.
Adam said he was bitten by the travel bug while he was in school in Israel.
“I went to school for two years, but in the middle, I thought, ‘I’ve got to go,’ so I just picked up my things and went,” he said.
He served three years in the army before travelling to India, and through Asia and Europe.
“I’m kind of travelling where I can travel,” said Adam. “I don’t want to go back to Israel. It’s quite difficult there.”
Here in Osoyoos, he’s been happy to meet, among the pickers, kindred travellers from all over the world.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
Simon Brousseau-Arcand (left), from Joliette, Quebec, and David Aumont, from Montreal, pick up their Mexican dinner Wednesday evening at Osoyoos Baptist Church. (Richard McGuire photo)
A good crowd of fruit pickers turned out at Osoyoos Baptist Church Wednesday evening for free dinner. The church teams up with Mountain Park Community Church from Abbotsford to provide dinner to the pickers through the entire week. (Richard McGuire photo)
Fruit pickers lined up Wednesday evening at Osoyoos Baptist Church for a free dinner of Mexican-style nachos, beans and salsa. The church has been providing the dinners all week in partnership with Mountain Park Community Church from Abbotsford. (Richard McGuire photo)
