Not only was The Lighthouse the site for a series of FCM Tours last week, we were host of The Governor General’s Leadership Conference tour today.  These are not your typical tours.  According to their website

Members will be divided into sixteen “study groups”. Each group will include individuals with highly diversified professional and cultural backgrounds, and each group will travel to a different region of Canada. Every effort will be made to ensure that participants tour an area of the country where they have had little previous experience.

The Study Tours are not conventional “visits” to factories and organizations. Each host organization understands at the outset that uninhibited individual and group face to face discussions with people at all levels are essential to the success of the visit. The locations for the tours are selected because of their potential usefulness as learning sites. They are, in essence, the Study Conference laboratories.

A typical day during the tour might consist of a plant visit in the morning followed by a meeting with the C.E.O. and senior management, an in-camera workshop with union leaders, a luncheon meeting at the local community centre with grassroots activists, a visit to a local school or hospital, and a dinner discussion hosted by the municipal council.

At the close of each day, participants meet with their fellow group members to discuss the issues that have been raised during the day. These lengthy sessions allow intensive exchanges of opinion among peers with vastly different backgrounds. The emphasis in these debates is not placed on finding solutions to the issues raised, but rather on increasing the members’ personal exposure to the views and perspectives of others. The discussion and debate is always rigorous.

We were honoured to have them stop by and spend some time with us!