Hi Folks:

Well, it’s only mid-June but we’ve already done eight hugging sessions this year! We started on April Fool’s Day, after all. As we’ve mentioned, this is our 8th year of doing this, and so far we’ve hugged ambassadors from 57 countries (that we know of), including 21 countries so far this year! Every hug is unique and special to us, but we continue to have new experiences, like our first 3-time hugger, random hugging experiences (two strangers hugging each other, spontaneous group hugs, someone making an image of someone they don’t know hugging us, etc.)

In our last hugging session on Sunday we had two women tell us that they had already been hugged by someone else! Curious, we had to check this out for ourselves, so one at a time we went down along Wharf Street, around the corner onto Government and there we met Brad with his own Free Hugs sign! Such a treat! Brad’s been traveling to different places around the world, and wherever he goes he creates his own Free Hugs sign. At the end of each session he leaves the sign behind as incentive for someone else to pick it up and continue the tradition. We’re not sure how long Brad is in town, but we’d be more than happy to see him again and share more hugs!

Today is Victoria’s Ska & Reggae Festival, and last year it was our busiest hugging session of the year. We had line-ups of people wanting to share hugs… it was wonderful! Looking forward to a repeat this year. 🙂 Tomorrow is Car Free YYJ; maybe we’ll bring our posters down there as well! 😉

Remember to hug someone you love today. Or a stranger. Or, preferably, both!!

Hugs,
M&M

Hi Folks:

Last Saturday was our fourth Free Hugs session for 2017, and it also marked a number of firsts! Our usual procedure is to arrive at the Homecoming Memorial, doff extraneous gear, coats, etc, retrieve our Free Hugs posters from their tube, then Marcia assumes her (most glorious) hugging position while Mike makes a few images. That done we wait for the first huggers to arrive. The intervening time has ranged up to several minutes, but in our last few sessions we’ve broken records for the time it takes for our first hugger. At our last session we had someone stop within seconds of getting ready, and we joked that the only way to beat that would be for someone to show up before we were ready. Well, it happened! Not only did we have our first hugger arrive before Mike had a chance to make any photographs, we had someone waiting in the wings so to speak as well! After that surprise we joked that the only way to beat that record would be for people to be there waiting for us before we arrived!!
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