Canadian Views

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Geo: 43.6485, -79.3854

Although I have only spent 1 week and probably seen about 0.00000000001 percent of the country, I think Canada is a pretty cool country; I can't wait to go back.
I thought the United States was Ok, but I liked the feel of Canada better. The best analogy to compare the two (well only for people who have been to India and Nepal would be able to relate to this) is that the USA is India and Canada is Nepal; being in the USA means a more busier country, chaos and more people, granted I have only been to New York; And Canada is Nepal; more isolated, friendlier people and surrounded with nature and mountains to escape to.

An early departure from New York was needed to time my arrival in to Toronto for Jamie and Paul to pick me up from the station after work. Jamie and Paul are a Canadian couple I had met earlier in the year in Nepal on the Everest Base Camp Trek and then randomly ran in to each other in Newcastle, Australia a few months later. I knew they lived near Toronto, so I made it my plan to visit them.
It took 12 hours by Megabus but I finally arrived, 1.5 hours late, in snowy and cold conditions. Paul and Jamie were there to greet me and we headed off for some dinner. The first night I stayed in Missassagua, I thought it was a suburb of Toronto but it actually is it's own city about 30 minutes South West of Toronto.
A few facts; Toronto has the worst traffic and motorways in North America. In the paper it said that people in Toronto spend about 34 days in a year in traffic. Poor Paul spends 1.5 hours commuting to and from work everyday in bumper to bumper traffic along the main highways.
And Canada being a very snow prone country needs to able able to handle this when it snows heavy. They are well prepared with constant snow ploughs throughout the streets and spraying the salt afterwards helps keep the traffic moving.
I tried my hand at Canadian custom when we had to pick Paul's snow covered car up from his work. An essential tool in Every Canadian car is a snow scraper.
So Jamie might not agree with me, and certainly has heard this before; and I know Paul would agree with me is the city of Missassagua is quite unattractive; sorry Jamie. It's full of work buildings and blocks and streets that all look the same with the same things. You don't need to look far to see the same franchises of Tim Hortons, a popular coffee chain or a Swiss Chalet or Boston Pizza in every block. I guess it can be rated number one for convenience though. It almost seems like pointing out a Tim Hortons is like playing a game of Punch buggy but worse.
But I'm not here to discredit it, I'm just pointing it out as I haven't seen any city quite like this before.

Moving on to the next day in which I took it easy for a change. Jamie and Paul had to work so I worked on my New York blogs and took a walk around the block, experiencing the jaw numbing coldness and surrounding parks. I swapped houses to Pauls as it was going to be easier to get to Nigara Falls the next day.
The following morning we went to Niagara Falls, it was snowing pretty hard in the morning, but stopped along the way. It took about 1 hour by car. I had never been to a waterfall of this magnitude before so I was taken but the size and volume. As we walked along the path you could get a sense of the coldness as small branches increased their sizes by 20 times with the amount of ice formed; Ice covered Lamp posts, stairs and chairs.
The annoying thing about Niagara Falls is you cannot see all of it; this is because of the sheer force it produces when it hits the bottom that it creates so much mist that rises high in to the sky impeding the view.
We bought a pass which allowed us to view a 4D movie thing on the creation of the falls and access to behind the falls and a butterfly enclosure.
The 4D movie thing wasn't all too exciting, although you get to put on a poncho. The access to behind the falls was almost pointless as the platform near the bottom was closed due to ice, the two small viewing tunnels were also almost covered over by ice. But the butterfly enclosure was quite nice. It is 6 miles away so you do need your own transportation.
Later that night we had an amazing cooked dinner by Paul's parents then went to a friends of Jamie and Paul's to watch some football and have a few drinks.
People from Toronto and surrounding areas love NFL and Hockey, it's a religion, Sunday's especially. Anther thing which I liked in Toronto, and I am sure all throughout Canada and even America are the basements. We don't have basements in Australia, and even if we did we probably wouldn't convert them in to liveable rooms. All the basements I went too all had TV's and couches, and the one we went to for Saturday night had a pool table, a bar, Tv and toilet.

I was staying at Paul's parent's house in Dundas, a nice little town further south which is home to wild deer. In the morning I was treated to some amazing breakfast thanks to Jamie and Paul.
Sounds strange but for the Sunday I was lucky to be invited to a Serbian Celebration. I know, who goes to Canada to experience Serbian culture. Well Paul's heritage is Serbian and they were celebrating what is called Krsna Slava which is the celebration of a patron saint, and the spiritual birthday of the Serbian people who converted to Christianity.
An amazing celebration which saw a lot of food, alcohol and conversation. It was great meeting everyone, although they were all Canadian born, but it was an amazing celebration with gracious hosts. The food was amazing and plentiful and the peanut butter Ice cream dessert was one to remember.
So I had been in Toronto, well kind of, for 3 days and I hadn't seen any of Toronto City.
It was a Monday, so it was back to work for Jamie and Paul. I took the Go Train in to Union station where I sought out a coffee place for some hot chocolate and breakfast, I then visited the CN Tower for views of the city and Lake Ontario; which was bigger than I thought. It has a glass bottom where if you are not afraid of heights you can walk on for some views of the ground.
The annoying this was when you went outside for 360 degree views the whole outside is meshed with wire so getting pictures from there is pointless.
I did a lot of walking this day, I went to China Town, through to Dundas Square, up Younge Street and took a tram to what I thought was little India on the outskirts of the city, but I found nothing remotely Indian there, maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. So I walked back in to the city. Toronto city is multicultural and has little pockets of Little Italy, China Town, Greek Town, Little India(supposedly) and a Vietnamese section. After a full day of walking it was back on the train and back to Jamie's place.

The following day I checked out Toronto's Path, with an astonishing 28 Kilometer network of underground pedestrian tunnels which covers from Union square to the Coach Terminal and more. And it's all retail shops and food courts. It connects businesses and underground metro together and during lunchtime it is a sprawl of business people avoiding the cold weather and grabbing some lunch. I did a little bit of shopping and headed back at about 2. That night I took Jamie and Paul out for dinner and then we packed on the waterproof clothing and headed out for some late night sledging. A lot of fun with a sore bum afterwards.

Well I had an amazing time thanks to Jamie and Paul and family; I love meeting with people I have met while travelling and experiencing their homeland, it makes for a richer experience.
I left early that morning back to New York, It had been snowing all night and so my ride was cancelled but I was able to get on another one. It snowed almost all of the way on the 13 hour trip back. I headed back to Matt's and ready to fly to Europe the following day, A thank you also goes out to Matt for his kind hospitality.

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Comments

[Jamie]

Don't you be calling Tim horton's a plague! lol!Great photos Hugh!