I packed my gear for a typical day of shooting journalism type work with: 2 bodies, 300 f/2.8, 70-200 f/2.8 VR, 18-50 f/2.8, and 50 f/1.4, laptop. I used everything but the 50 f/1.4 which stayed in the bag with the backup body.
The first stop was at the Forks where Harper broke ground and spoke at the future site of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and the second stop was at a business round table meeting at the Delta hotel. Harper spoke for ~5 mins at the forks and broke ground with other dignitaries. Interesting things to note was that this event was held in a tent, and it was a very nice surprise when I got inside and it was very warm. Only surprising because outside it was close to -30, and with the windchill it was -40 C. There were so many members of the media in the little area set up for us that they had to break ground twice because there wasn't enough room for everyone to capture the ground breaking, so they staged it twice. On the later roundtable event in the afternoon the media were given about 15 seconds to photograph, all I heard Harper say something along the lines of "I'm sorry for being late, but i'm happy to be here", before being ushered out of the tiny room (to give you an idea of how small the room really was, I couldn't fit the three tables in the frame from a straight on angle at 18mm).
My photographs appeared in: macleans.ca, The News; New Glasgow, Moose Jaw Times Herald, Prince George Citizen, Packet & Times (Orillia), Calgary Sun, Winnipeg Sun, Ottawa Sun, Toronto Sun, Canada East, The Chronicle Herald, jminforme.ca, The North Bay Nugget, Truro Daily News, The Amherst Daily News, Whistler Question)
Here are a few webclippings and links I've found that show a few of the photographs that i've filed:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2008/12/19/7809656-cp.html
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2008/12/19/7807706-cp.html
