Hi Folks:
It’s not (yet!) commonly known, but the first Saturday in July every year has been designated ‘International Free Hugs Day‘; that meant it fell on July 2 this year. Not that we ever need an excuse to hug people, but in order to celebrate we took our ‘Free Hugs’ posters down from the shelf and headed downtown. We also brought along a stack of ‘Hug Certificates‘, of course!
For our last ‘Free Hug’ session we were down on the walkway of the inner harbour, but we chose a different location this time: In order to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Canadian Navy last year, a bronze sculpture called ‘The Homecoming‘ was erected at Ship’s Point. The sculpture shows a young girl running into the waiting arms of her father, returned from sea. It was a perfect location for us!
We held our signs aloft and waited, but not for long. Very soon we had a reasonably steady stream of people coming by to hug, be hugged and, in some cases, to have their pictures taken. Several people asked why we were doing this, and we simply told them that it was International Free Hugs Day!! A couple of people wondered if it was a tourism promotion put on by the city; that may be a good idea (‘Hug Me, I’m from Victoria‘ T-shirts? Hmmm…) but no, it’s just something we enjoy doing. We hugged young people and old people and everyone in between. We hugged both locals and visitors to our city, all with gay abandon. We were instructed on how to say ‘a hug’ in Portugese (um abraca, I think), and basically we had a wonderful time! Hugging is good for you (and the person who’s hugging you), doesn’t take a lot of time, is non-fattening, doesn’t cause cavities and contributes to world peace!! Continue Reading →
