About the blog
School's Out! Let's Go! was started by Sue Madill in 2014 as "The Adventures of the Madills" on a little wordpress blog to share her family's adventures in Europe with friends and family back home and maybe give some travel tips to other families around the world.
Since then, her daughter Hannah has come on board and her series of sometimes ridiculous adventures in Tuktoyaktuk have charmed readers from home in Drayton Valley all the way to Paraguay!
In 2017, Sue began to write down the stories of her childhood at the North Pacific Cannery in Northern B.C and they grew into the "Cannery Kid" series. Sue is always reaching out for more cannery kids to share their own Cannery Kid stories to preserve this special time and place.
Guest writers, especially travelling teachers are welcome to share their stories and tips! Drop us a line via our contact page.
About the Authors
Sue Madill
We’ve been in love with travel since we were a party of two in the mid 80s, backpacking across Europe and that love only grew as we became a party of three, living in England as part of a teacher exchange that gave us even more travel opportunities. Now as a party of four (but usually three, as the eldest child is off on her own adventures) we continue to make travel an important aspect of our lives.
We love to travel and believe in the importance of conscientious travel.
When we visit other countries we try to make sure our travel dollars benefit the people who live there and the local economies.
We like to rent guest houses rather than stay in multinational hotel chains and to buy our food from the markets and local independent businesses.
We believe in living local both home and abroad and respect how privileged we are to be able to explore other countries, eat the food, drink the wine and meet the people.
However, we are cognizant of the globalized world and the privileges it offers, so in order to access the wifi we need or the western toilets we sometimes need more, it might mean a cup of coffee at the golden arches.
We hope you enjoy the blog and please, if you have any travel tidbits and recommendations, we’d love to hear them.
David vick
David Vick is a well known and beloved figure in the Prince Rupert area.
He was born in Prince Rupert in 1940 and lived near Inverness until mid-1947.
He packed salmon for Nelson Brothers and B.C. Packers for 26 seasons - retiring as their longest serving mate, fished two seasons in the Gulf of Alaska and one season on the West Coast.
A teacher and principal in three school districts, he also served as the school district liaison with the First Nations communities in all three school districts.
school.
His grandfather Anton Vick was net boss at the BA cannery in Port Essington from about 1910 on. When BA closed in 1936 he became net boss at Inverness Cannery
He is a regular contributor and moderator of the Facebook group "Prince Rupert Stories of the Past" where his stories regularly reach 3000 members
He has a lovely wife, Joan, two fine sons, Chris and Todd and four wonderful grandchildren, Ryan, Owen, Lily and Grace and is happily retired in Courtenay, B.C
Hannah Madill
I believe my first airplane ride was when I was 2 and we went to visit my grandparents in Prince Rupert. The first time I left Canada that I can remember was when we went to Disneyland when I was 3. I first went to Europe when I was 4 when my Dad did a teacher exchange and we moved to Clevedon, England for the year and I started Reception (Kindergarten). Since then I've seen most of Western Europe and I went to China with my dad in 2009.
I LOVE to go to local grocery stores whenever I travel. It's probably one of my favourite things to do. I'm a big packaging design nerd and it's so exciting.
I'm also a freelance web/graphic designer. I designed and edit this website and am very affordable, I just want the internet to be a more beautiful place and for small local businesses to have a gorgeous, user friendly web presence.
TL;DR
This silly poem I wrote for my Facebook in high school that still pretty much sums me up:
"She's a pop culture junkie, with ever-changing hair.
Talks real speedy and brings laughter everywhere.
She talks like it's the 90's, "super, wicked, rad".
Jumps at every opportunity and regrets are never had."
“If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.”
― Carrie Fisher
Where I've Been so far:
Camille Dubé
I jumped on my first plane abroad when I was sixteen and I’ve been consumed by the thrill of travelling since.
I come from a standard Alberta oilfield family; my parents are some of the hardest working people I know. Travelling for me as a child meant making the driving to the Okanagan in British Columbia to visit grandparents, cousins and other family and I always looked forward to these summer adventures. My mom would often stop so we could explore different waterfalls along the way, go play at almost every park we saw and if we saw a new ice cream shop pop up that was not there the summer before, it went without saying that we would be checking it out. My mom and dad would always get Rum & Raisin ice cream and my sister would always get Tiger Tiger, no matter which ice cream shop we stopped at;
I on the other hand made it a personal goal at 5 years old to try every ice cream flavour in the world I could find and I am still pursuing this goal. In short, I did not come from a family of travellers; my grandparents have never even left Alberta. My mom loves her yearly trips to British Columbia, and as of recent her and my dad have been exploring the United States but I have never travelled with them there. I find that my family is content with the same summer travel routine, much like they are with ice cream flavours, and I love them for this. I on the other hand just can’t seem to satisfy my travel wants, just like my need to try every flavour of ice cream.
I have travelled with different travel groups and done a fair amount of exploring on my own. I am a laid back traveller; I feel that often times other people look at my travel plans and make comments such as “Oh, you could fit in another city in that time!” or “You’re only visiting four cities in twenty days? You could do more!” I like to take it easy. Take it slow. Relax. I like developing a local taste in different cities and really taking the time to connect within the community. It usually works in my favour that I do not over crowd my travel itineraries, unless the city is terrible and I want to leave and then I am stuck there for more days then necessary- which has only happened to me twice so far.
I love hot weather, hot beaches and also hot sauce (seriously, take hot sauce with you when you travel because guaranteed you’re going to find bland food and wish you had it on you). I am currently chasing the sunshine in my adventures; although I know that I will come to appreciate rainy cities, jacket weather and “cold places” one day, but I am not there yet. A few of my past adventures include The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, The Dominican Republic, New York and Spain. A few places on my “Need to Visit ASAP” list include Nicaragua, Greece and Australia.
I met my husband in January 2014 and knew instantly that I would fall in love with him because of his love for travel; we are good travel partners and I am thankful to have met him. We can usually have a week of good times travelling together before we are ready to kill each other and go to separate countries. We've been married since September 2019.
I am thankful that Hannah and Sue have allowed me the space on their blog to write some of my travel adventures; I look forward to writing and sharing. Enjoy!
