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crossed: my mind. Be nice, I. said to myself.-When-1 got-out of the car, I left the cameras behind, despite my desire to visually capture what was about to happen. At the same moment that I closed the door to. Marc’scar, the’ Viagiqeg aid s front. door. ae and. he appeared.

Wearing a golf shirt and a pair ‘af dress path: ‘Wade observed that we were dressed up . Suddenly I felt self-conscious about our choice of attire and I wondered if the others felt the same. We each shook Wade’s hand as we entered his house ant introduced ourselves to him..

_I was the first to present a gift. 1 gave him the bottle of wine and explained to him that we didn’t know much about wine and chose it because Stephan was from Cape Breton. Wade accepted the wine graciously..Ryan gave him the jar of pickles and Wade asked who made them, genuinely interested. Marc gave him.the candle and finally Stephan gave him the certificate. Wade looked at it, not-real- ly epeetee us to bring it, and told Stephan that he could keep it as a souvenir.

We took off our shoes and Wade gave us a a tour of the house. From the outside, the house looked like an old farmhouse, but in reality it was only two years old. Before he became the President of UPEI, Wade decided to build a home for himself on this piece of property in Stanhope, overlooking the sand dunes. He was actively involved in every part of the design and decoration of the house and one of the things he specifically wanted to achieve was to make it look like an old farmhouse on the outside. On the inside, however, it is nothing like a farmhouse. It is open and spacious, with high ceil- ings and few rooms. The first floor has a living room, a kitchen and a sunken dining room. Windows line the side of the house facing the ocean and the view is quite nice. Unfortunately, with the clouds and the rain, said Wade, we would not be able to see the sunset that evening. _

He took us upstairs, where he has another living area that looks over onto the sea. He also showed us his bedroom, where he has a desk built into the wall that faces the ocean and yet another window overlooking the water. I noted the Harry Potter books on his desk. Not moving to far into his bedroom, we also noticed that his bed was built into the wall like a bunk bed on submarine, only much larger. There was also a ladder that led up into a third level, where children like to go when he has families visit his house.

Wade had paid a great attention to detail. The entire house was wired to his stereo, but I could not see any evidence of speak- ers. The floors were heated. He even helped design the dining room table so that he could join it with the coffee table in the living room for entertaining latee groupe pier a0 this was what it was like to be rich.

When. the tour was over, “Wade led us to the ifichen: where he was busy. preparing the meal. He opened his refrigerator and offered us some wine to drink, which made. Stephan and | a little uncomfortable since we don’ t drink alcohol. We told him our prob- lem and he. offered us. some-orange juice, which we accepted. Wade

$ ¥ 43. a 4

immediately took out a can of frozen orange juice concentrate and

made us our.juice on the spot. He also took. out a bottle of white wine that he was chilling in his refrigerator.and let Marc pour some. for the people who would drink wine. Marc poured three glasses: one for Ryan, one for Wade, and. one. for. himself. Wade, however, was working on. a glass of red wine that he kept near the stove, which Marc. did not notice until he had poured the glass.

As Wade kept preparing, he showed us some photographs that he recently had developed. There were some beautiful photo- . graphs tha Wade had takien on a recent hiking excursion to Baffin’ Island. He also _had some pictures of hin skating during a recent trip to Calgary. Finally, he showed us some photographs of him; Lori Kane, Pat Binns, and Jean Chretien playing a round of golf togeth- . er at the Links at Crowbush Cove. I asked him if he, as the president of UPEI, gets to hang out with such important people all the time, ai told me that this was rare. Wade-said that he was “the other

y” in those photographes.

Our conversation turned to other matters. We asked if we all worked for The Cadre and we told him we did. He did not.seem, to know much about the paper, except he really: like the articles that that “Jimbach” guy wrote.

Wade delegated Stephan to handle the music and we men- tioned that we were organizing a concert that was happening the next week. Wade seemed rather impressed and he told us about how he used to organize musical events when he went to UPEI. He recalled one time when he booked an oompah band for what he thought seemed like an extreme amount of money. Indeed, it was much more than we were paying for any of the bands that we were having at our concert.

Soon after, the meal was ready to begin. Wade put us all in charge of setting the table and we did so, trying to figure out where exactly we should place all of the silverware that he gave us. Marc seemed to know how to place everything because where he worked he got to watch people set tables all the time.

We sat down and Wade told us to put the bowls that we had placed next to our plates on top of the plates because we were begin- ning with the soup. He brought over a bowl filled with steaming soup and filled our bowls. He told us that since it was Thanksgiving weekend, he had decided to give the meal a harvest theme. The soup was a spicy potato soup that Wade said would cure anybody of their stuffy sinuses. It was certainly flavourful and I would ae finished my bowlful had it not gotten cold so fast.

Next was the main course. Wade brought plates and bowls to the table and he passed them around. Everything was good, although I do not recall everything that he had. I do, however remember the stuffed tomatoes, mostly because | remembered how every time Ryan bought a submarine sandwich at the Superstore he would offer me the tomato slices. I suppressed my laughter as I watched Ryan try to eat a small slice of the large, whole and ripe tomato. gh In an unusual turn, Wade rounded out the meal with a salad

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