Scott Caroline made engagement history on June 27 by proposing to his girlfriend of six years Sharon Langlois during the indoor DinoSite program at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
A video of the unique proposal can be found on the Tyrrell Museum YouTube page. In it, Caroline and Langlois are working away on boxes filled with rocks and microfossils. Eventually, Langlois found a ring in her box.
“I was trying to keep my cool and not blow it. But, when she was digging through the box with the ring, it was sitting right in the open. She wasn’t going for it and I wondered if she wasn’t going for it on purpose. That’s when I started to get really nervous,” said Caroline.
In the end, Sharon finds the ring and Caroline kneels and proposes. Langlois said yes. Afterwards the couple took some time to drive around Drumheller and see the Hoodoos.
Caroline got the idea after coming to Alberta for his career. Caroline works as a heavy equipment operator working to build a wind farm near Stettler.
“One of Sharon’s hobbies is fossil hunting. We live on Vancouver Island and where we live are a couple river beds that have been productive for nice fossils. Since I’ve been working in Alberta I’ve been told about the museum and Drumheller, so I flew her out for her birthday and took her to the Tyrrell Museum for the day. I thought she would get a big kick out of it,” said Caroline.
He contacted the Tyrrell Museum and the staff there went to work helping to plan the special moment,
“Scott called us up and asked if it would be alright to surprise his girlfriend at the museum. We thought it was a really cool idea and wanted to support it. He wanted to do an outdoor DinoSite, but due to the large amount of rain we had to switch to an indoor program,” said Mike Dooley, Public Relations Coordinator with the Tyrrell Museum.
In the DinoSite program, participants usually head into the Badlands to search for fossils. The indoor version, held when its rainy, has participants sort through boxes filled with small rocks and fossils, similar to palaeontologists collecting microfossils.
Caroline gave the ring to the Tyrrell the day before and staff made preparations, hiding the ring in one of the DinoSite boxes and gathering a few other employees as extras in the act.
For Caroline and Langlois, their immediate future has them in a long distance relationship. While Caroline works in Alberta, Langlois still lives on Vancouver Island working as a firefighter for the military.
Things will hopefully change soon for the couple.
“It was about time, after being apart so often, to make it official. Now we can work towards being together somewhere. She wants to actually move to Drumheller,” said Caroline.
This was the first engagement the Tyrrell Museum has participated in.
“We’re really excited for them and wish them all the best in the future,” said Dooley.
“I couldn’t have asked for better support from the museum, they went above and beyond,” said Caroline. “It was a perfect day. The museum is always going to hold a special place in our hearts.”
