March 16^th: Meeting with Gary Wilson. Michael came along as an observer We addressed the issues on our agenda, and Gary seemed very interested in moving forward on the First Nations Chamber of Commerce idea. He received well the idea of doing something on the Manitou Water - short term initiative, and expressed interest in looking at the longer term strategy which is to build a bottling plant. We met for almost two hours and also attempted to get Gary to support the Inter Tribal connection with a loan. While one might think that getting the Inter tribal connection a loan may be easy this may not be the case.

Michael took me around to various Nanaimo people, part of his support team. After going to the Artery, we went over to the Mayors office to get the clerk to copy our presentation for the evening. The staff was very helpful, and while we tried to move our agenda item from 19^th to earlier, we were led to believe that the council meeting would not be as long as we anticipated. We then went on to meet Willy Good , the hereditary Chief of the Nanaimo Band. We invited him to the meeting with Pat and I at 5:30 where we were to discuss our strategy for our evenings presentation. On the way we noticed Baxter Aviation that runs a shuttle service between Nanaimo and Vancouver. I decided to take the shuttle in order that I have more time at the Globe 98 event.

The meeting with Pat and Willy and Michael went really well. Willy wants to be involved wit the Chamber of Commerce and is onside for anything we want to do. I made a rough presentation on what I was going to present to the Board. I was going to use my wampum beads and demonstrate both the idea, and the "team "players. Pat nixed this as he felt we did not have enough time.

I repositioned my presentation, and in a general sense everything went as planned. We rece9ived a first level approval, but have to come back and ask for something specific. Pat suggests that the IAEWP open an office in Nanaimo and that we hire Michael to run it.. Seems to make sense, although we have some caveats.

Got home late and found I had to sleep , not on the couch, but in the bed with my ex-wife and her son. Brandon enjoys playing soccer as we may have mentioned, and the night was spent dodging his kicks. Not much sleep this evening.