Smelling of dogs, horses and bad eggs in Canada

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So I lasted 3 weeks back in the UK before my travel itch got soooooo bad that I set off again. For some crazy reason I decided to go to Canada in the depths of Winter - I flew to Toronto 26th November and ended up staying in Canada until 7th January 2011. My main justification was cheap board at my mate Robbie’s pad in Southern Ontario in return for a bit of cooking, housework and dog minding This ended up including clearing up several tons of dog sick when his lovely black lab Roddy ate something nasty on the farm and his sweet long haired jack russell, Lilly, upchucked in sympathy, but it was still better than working.

I am horrendously behind in writing the blogs so this will be briefer than normal and not very detailed, as its depending on my old and deteriorating memory capacity. I will also cover big chunks of time in each of the next few blog entries in an attempt to catch up.

It kind of set the tone for the whole stay when Robbie collected me from the airport and took me straight to a party at his mate Kim’s place. The party was a get-together for horse owners in the area (racing and showjumping) before many of them went south to Florida for the winter season. It was good to meet so many new people and to mix with the horsey crowd, even though I understood little of the chat. Kim’s house was lovely with amazing views for miles across a forested valley, near Toronto. I made it to midnight before I crashed and burned which wasn’t bad given the time difference to UK.

Robbie is a professional showjumper and trainer so for the first couple of weeks after I arrived we were living on a horse farm in a lovely 3 bedroom townhouse attached to the stables and barn near Cambridge, where Robbie had been training. The weather was freezing cold and an early snow storm set the pattern for the next 8 weeks, with record low temperatures, snow, ice and freezing strong winds that created chill factors down to MINUS 28 degrees. I was totally unprepared for how cold it got and also had no suitable clothes, so Robbie took me to town and helped me get kitted out with a down-filled coat (think of wearing a large duvet/comforter) with a fur hood and a pair of boots guaranteed to keep your feet unfrozen. Not very glam, but practical and warm. Gloves, hat, scarf and sunglasses were also required anytime you ventured more than 2 feet away from a heat vent. The snow was blinding and in those temperatures you quickly got icicles on your eyelashes when you were out and about - not fun.

Here I was on a horse farm smelling of dogs and horses, dressed in so many layers of clothes that I could fall over with impunity, knowing I would roll or bounce under the heavy padding that included some rather fetching thermal underwear and going through several tubes of high performance lotion designed to stop Arctic fishermen from getting chilblains, as the cold weather sucked all moisture from my skin. Sexy eh ? Actually it was great fun and Robbie and I battled the cold with copious amounts of wine and great big dinners as we socialised with his friends and neighbours. We partied a lot and had to make far too many trips to the bottle bank with our empties, but I met some great people and had a great time.

The countryside in the area was pretty with rolling hills and attractive farms and barns, many of which were built in the Dutch style with interesting roof-lines and huge, tall grain silos standing in their yards. The road behind the farm was known locally as Alps Road as it undulated so much, but even in deep snow it was no problem for our huge 3-ton Dodge truck. I loved riding in the truck as it was high and gave panoramic views of the passing countryside, but it was a bugger to climb up into. We took a day trip to a nearby farming area where many Mennonite families have settled and practice their traditional way of living, using horses and carriages instead of motorised vehicles and the women wear long dresses and large cotton caps and aprons, very similar to the Amish. We bought several bushels of apples for the horses and a wheelbarrow, visited a great tack shop where they made harnesses on the premises and then had a great dinner at the local restaurant, where you had a choice of 2 mains and 2 deserts. It was an interesting.excursion.

The area was filled with small towns which unfortunately had had their hearts ripped out by a whole string of mega shopping malls strung along a nearby main road, leaving the old centres rather sad and pretty dead. However the houses were very varied in style and architecture which made it attractive and interesting and the Canadian habit hereabouts was to decorate the outside of your property as much as possible with all manner of Christmas lights, festive life-sized models ranging from snowmen and deer through to aliens (don’t ask me why), which was great fun to see both day and night.

Almost every house was very well insulated, cozy and had a large cellar area - most of these were converted to be fully habitable. It was generally the practice when you arrived at somebody’s house to go downstairs immediately, where you would spend 5 minutes stripping off your many layers of outdoor clothing and you would don your slippers. It was a strange sight to see everyone arrive at a party clutching a bottle of booze in one hand and their house slippers in the other. I met a teacher who told me that in the winter the children’s break-time (recess) was extended by 10 minutes just to allow for the amount of time it took them to dress or strip their numerous outdoor clothes required to combat the freezing outdoor temperatures.

After a couple of weeks we moved to a small cottage on an agricultural farm in the middle of nowhere, with Woodstock as our nearest town 20 minutes away. We packed up all of Robbie’s possessions and managed to move everything in one morning thanks to his huge horse trailer and our willingness to bribe the teenage sons of a friend to help with the heavier boxes. The cottage was tiny and I ended up sleeping on a pull out sofa bed with a thin mattress and vicious springs, but I got the bedroom with the only TV in the house - yeh !! As it only got 5 rubbish channels and you had to rotate the aerial for those, I didn’t watch it much. A book was more interesting than the TV and the horizon was more interesting than a book. You could see for miles from each window of the cottage and it was a half mile trudge through thigh-deep snow to the nearest road, where a car would pass every few hours on a busy day. Very isolated but very cozy with big sky views, so a great place to watch the weather and wildlife, including black squirrels that played all day in the huge trees lining the driveway to our landlord Lee’s house. Our water supply was well-fed, which was perfectly OK to drink but smelled strongly of sulphur which took quite a bit of getting used to, particularly as the smell lingered for ages after you showered and washed your hair. So now I smelled of horses, dogs and rotten eggs. Nice.

For Christmas we were invited to Robbie’s family in the town of Sudbury, a seven hour drive to the North. They were incredibly generous and we had a lovely time, being treated to huge and tasty meals. Christmas dinner was actually hosted by some friends of the family in an amazing, huge house on the shores of the frozen Long Lake. It was a great meal and we all had a ball. It was wonderful having a white Christmas, with gentle snow on 25th, but the weather got colder and the wind picked up the following day. It was very different to last year when I sweltered on a Thai beach on Koh Lanta for the festivities. The local tour companies in Ontario advertised their excursions as “Free when the temperature is 25 degrees (F) or below - for each degree above 25 the cost goes up $1”. Later in the week I declined the offer of a snowmobile ride along the frozen lake as it was the coldest day of the year and I wouldn’t have been able to see anything with my eyes tight shut against the powerful and bitter wind, even with a helmet and visor. We spent a week in Sudbury but came back down to Woodstock for New Year where we drank a few rather superb bottles of wine to see in 2011.

I explored some options for travelling around Canada in order to see a bit more of the country, but it was too expensive to visit the cities over the holiday season and not the right weather for the Trans-Canadian 4-day train trip, that I will do in the future as its still on my bucket list, along with the spectacular and scenic loop through the Canadian Rockies. I will be back as I love Canada and its warm and generous people.

Robbie was busy with new clients and preparing his horses as he geared up for a long season of horse shows in the USA, so I decided to move south to Florida for some much needed sun and warmth. But before I left I had to visit one of the natural Wonders of the World, so the next blog will include my trip to Niagra Falls.

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