Morocco - delay in Toronto

 I knew the flight back from Morocco would be difficult, with a planned 26 hour travel time with layovers in Paris and Toronto. I had heard about the storm in Vancouver, and at first I hoped there would be a window in which our flight from Toronto to Vancouver could go. However, after several delays, the flight was cancelled - not because of weather, but because of lack of crew. Apparently nobody at Westjet had the foresight to get crew out of Vancouver before the first storm. By this time we had already been up for over 24 hours, and we had to stand in a long line to find out what to do and get a hotel voucher for the night.

They told us to wait for an email with a re-booking, and we had to come back to the airport every day to get another hotel voucher. We showed up the next day, and there was one 3 to 4 hour line, for everybody - whether they were checking in normally, trying to get a re-booking, or getting another hotel voucher. Just one long, long, line. Every day.

Fortunately, people in the line talk to each other, and we got some reliable information from them. The Westjet staff were incredibly nice and patient. But they were just telling us what they were told to, and a lot of that information was not correct.

According to other people, the email never comes. They advised us to insist on a booking when we got to the counter, and we did, for 6 days later. We got one more hotel voucher and decided to pay for the rest of the hotel nights ourselves. We were told we'd be reimbursed but I don't really trust it.

Main take-away:  the air travel infrastructure in Canada - airports and airlines - is a complete mess. From now on when I travel internationally, it will be with a non-Canadian airline, and I will make sure there are no layovers in Canada.

So, we had an unplanned week in Toronto. On the bright side, Celene has family in Toronto so we spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day at her cousins or her uncles place. She got to see some relatives she hadn't seen in a long time. Also visited with some friends there.

The hotel was downtown, so there was the chance to walk around and explore downtown Toronto. We went to the Winter Village in the Distillery District.

Finally, after a nail-biting wait at the airport with more delays, our flight finally to Vancouver finally took off.

Got to Vancouver to find 2 of the 3 bags of checked luggage were lost.