after coming to japan for the ice championships a few years ago, Will has kept in touch with the ice scene over here.
as soon as news of the disaster in tohoku hit the world Will responded, offering whatever assistance he could.
now, Will and i had been in the process of sorting some ice stuff in china previously, and when he asked what was needed i said all the obvious stuff - millions of tonnes of food, water, emergency shelters and communications.
obviously sending the required food from canmore wasnt an option, but Will came to the party by lending his sat phone.
in a disaster zone its a resource war - those with the goods can go further and deeper. having that sat phone meant not just that we could go way off the radar and communicate if we needed to, but more importantly it meant we could take the right people safely in with us, people from embassies and corporations and ngos, that needed that security to convince their bosses they should go.
people like that move mountains when they need to - we presented for days in tokyo to big players, but getting just a few of the right people into the red zone got more done fast than endless talking about it.
there were a lot of factors that got things moving, but Wills phone was a big player.
