In the past, I have been highly critical of airports, airlines and airport staff to the point where last autumn I made the soon-to-be-broken promise of never getting on another commercial flight again. This is not one of those stories. This story, if it hadn’t involved Canadians, would have just about restored my faith. But as it does involve Canadians it just reinforces the global view of what bloody nice people Canadians are.

For reasons best not examined too closely, we had to fly from Vancouver to Las Vegas via a 2 hour stopover and change of plane in Calgary. In Calgary, we have to collect our luggage from a special ‘in transit to the USA’ belt, present it to US customs and pass through US immigration and security before boarding the second half of the flight. Two hours? No problem. Except for the sudden and violent hailstorm in Calgary that actually saw four people struck by lightening and a temporary closure of the airport. The flight to Calgary was cancelled.

‘No matter’, said the friendly man on the desk, ‘you can go on the next one that leaves in an hour.’ And an hour is still enough time, he assured us, to do baggage, US immigration and security and still catch the second flight. We were a little worried of course but he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. So we sat and waited for the next flight. Which was delayed half an hour.

‘Ah’ said the still friendly man on the desk. ‘Half an hour to get through baggage, US immigration, security and catch your flight might be a bit difficult.” So by now we are either going to be spending an extra night in Vancouver, an unexpected night in Calgary or – and this seemed the most likely – we would get to Las Vegas without our luggage. All options were bad because we were flying from Vegas back to England the next day and that would be a really bad one to miss – for us or our luggage.

The flight left after the half an hour delay but by the time it had arrived at Calgary and got to the gate we had about 25 minutes to achieve what really seemed an impossible task. And this is where we learnt how bloody nice Canadians and Air Canada staff actually are.

As we walked out the gate from the plane we immediately heard a voice loudly calling our name and calling out the Las Vegas flight. A very nice young Canadian woman had been personally assigned to us to get us to our connecting flight. She marched us through the airport – fast and furious and eventually took us through a door into a large room that was empty except for a single luggage cart with our bags on it. How on earth they managed to get our bags off the plane and into this room before we could walk there is totally beyond my comprehension. But there they were.

Next we pushed the cart through a door at the other end of this room where we were met by two handlers who were actually waiting for us and who took the bags and whisked them away. On to US immigration where, the only people in the room, once again the agent was expecting us and passed us through quickly after fingerprints and photos had been obtained. Straight to the security checkpoint where we were again alone and expected – laptops out, shoes off – buzzed through. And then a quick and longish dash to the departure gate where we even met a couple of people along the way who knew our names and what flight we were heading for and seemed to be just there to point the way.

We actually made the plane with about 10 minutes to go. And so did our luggage. And I found the whole experience simply amazing. Many people from different departments, groups and agencies were set up and involved just to get two people from one side of an airport to the other passing through baggage claim, check-in, US immigration and security and all this after the airport had suffered massive disruption due to a storm.

But it gets even better! Later that night in Vegas, closeted in one of the grandest hotel rooms I’ve ever encountered, I found an email from Air Canada in my inbox. They had refunded us £14 as they had been unable to give us the actual seats we had booked on the Vancouver to Calgary leg of the journey.

Lovely people these Canadians.