The first car came by about 5 minutes later. They stopped to see if they could help (but then this is Canada - EVERY car that came along stopped). A cellphone was produced and we tried the CAA. Busy. So I tried the Thrifty Car rental road-side assistance number for Toyota. I thought it was strange that each make had a different number to ring and wondered if the service got steadily better the more prestigious the marque. If that was the case then what followed didn't say much for Toyotas.



"Hi there - my car's come of the road. We are stuck in a snowdrift; we need a tow truck or something."

"My membership number? I'm not a member, I've just rented this car and this was the telephone number I found"

"The what number? Errr.. where will I find that?"

I read off anything that looked like an official kind of number on the rental form. Not your basic integers or ordinal numbers but the real long numbers. Some had letters in them: they had to work. But they didn't. So they asked for my address.

".. 8HP, London...England?..That's right... No I'm not a member, I've just rented this car and this was the telephone number I found"

"The mileage? Do you really need me to tell you the mileage? It's just that it's -25 here, we've got a bit of a situation. Can't you send a truck and can we sort this all out later. No? OK - no sure I understand but still.. Sure I'll hold."

I held. There wasn't much else I could do. I had had to take my glove off to dial the number and hold the phone and by now my hand was frozen into a phone-holding grip. So I held. I hadn't got to the bit about us going to a wedding today and the fact that the vicar was sitting in the back of the car, but I was keeping my powder dry.

"Oh Hi .. great... yeah. We are on the Bow Valley Parkway. Between Banff and Johnston Canyon.... erm Alberta ... that's Canada... Calgary's the nearest city! Yeah I'll hold".

I could hold, but the phone couldn't. The cold wasn't just freezing my hands: the phone had died and that call that was going nowhere went no further.

This was clearly all my fault. I shouldn't have gone to that party the night before and introduced myself as the bride-to-be's ex-boyfriend "here to cause trouble". When they learned that I had burried the vicar in a snowdrift they might just think I wasn't joking.



By then a second car had stopped and a new phone was offered. One call to the hotel we were staying at sorted the problem: a tow truck was on its way.

That news didn't deter the third car to stop: a 4x4 with a group of ice-climbers all gung ho for adventure. They leapt out, jumped into the ditch and studied our predicament. I told them about the wedding, showed them the vicar. They talked knots and promised to help us out. The park ranger turned up and lent them a tow rope. He also added some knot suggestions into the knotty melting pot. In the end the knot wasn't the problem - the tow rope snapped on first heave. The ice-climbers were sanguine about their loss (of adventure), wished us luck and drove off.



Chris, the park ranger, hung around though. He checked with his base that help comming and assured us it was. I passed by his truck as he was talking on the radio and overheard this final exchange:

Ranger Chris: "They need to be at a wedding in Canmore at 4"

Base: [pause] "We'll get 'em there"

I love Canada!