Two years of pandemic travel restrictions kindled a certain wanderlust among Euromoney’s correspondents, which has taken some effort to redress.
So it was that, for our story on the Little Red River Cree Nation sovereign wealth fund, we were ready to go the extra mile. Thousands of them, actually.
We arrived in Edmonton, Canada, in a blizzard. Conditions were so dismal the camera battery froze and cracked.
The next morning, we drove for eight hours due north to the far extremes of Alberta, and then spent three hours in a helicopter to reach the reservations of Little Red River.
Then we drove all the way back again.
We learned valuable things about the potential for sovereign wealth vehicles
By the time we returned the vehicle (“Don’t get a car. Get a truck,” was the advice of our hosts) in Calgary, 2,000 kilometres had been added to the clock in three days.
But the trip was not just an indulgence. We learned valuable things about the potential for sovereign wealth vehicles when applied to requirements quite different from foreign reserve diversification or commodity-heavy oil wealth.
This story is about poverty alleviation for generations ahead and about the very idea of sovereignty to those who have been deprived of, among many other things, status.
We have rarely learned more from a trip.