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Published: August 20th 2016
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After an amazing time in Asia, it was back to the West, to end our travels with a month in Canada. First stop was Toronto to stay with Tania's brother just in time for Canada Day and the Pride Festival. Jetlag stopped us doing much celebrating on Canada Day as we crashed by about 9pm, but we were up and ready to go for the Pride parade the next day. Toronto has one of the biggest Pride festivals in the world, and it didn't disappoint; full of vibrancy, colour and fun. We got on board with the global love for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, seeing him marching past in the parade - not something I could really have imagined David Cameron doing, somehow... As the parade went on it turned from celebration of LGBT to a general celebration of really anything that you're into, and progressively the tastefulness became more and more questionable, as the floats became correspondingly more weird and wonderful... The BDSM group near the back were definitely interesting, but the highlight was without doubt the uncircumcised bloke marching alone, naked from the waste down, carrying a banner proclaiming 'I ❤️ MY FORESKIN'. Amazing.
We went to catch
a baseball game the next day, watching the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Cleveland Indians. We picked a good game to watch; close and exciting. I didn't know a lot about baseball beforehand, but it's a game I could definitely get into - fun, a friendly atmosphere, and plenty of time to have a few beers in the stadium. Cricket still wins though, if you ask me... We couldn't leave Toronto without going up the CN Tower, the worlds tallest tower until the Burj Khalifa was completed in 2010. There's a rotating restaurant below the observation deck, so we booked in, had a nice meal and gazed out at the beautiful view over Toronto, watching the sun set over Lake Ontario - lovely!
After catching up with a few WNU friends we hit the road to Montreal to soak up some French Canadian culture. The first thing that stood out in Montreal was the food - in true French style, it's delicious, central to the culture and totally gout-inducing... We went one night to a restaurant called Au Pied de Cochon, which has the signature touch of putting foie gras in everything on the menu. Delicious, but man was
it rich. We also tried the famous Montreal speciality, the smoked meat sandwich, at the original deli Schwartz's. Definitely tasty, but basically just a very good New York style pastrami sandwich (although don't tell any Montrealers I said that - they're very proud of it). The other highlight of Montreal was going to Cirque du Soleil - Montreal is the home of Cirque, and there's a permanent big top down by the water. I'd never been to see Cirque du Soleil before, but I'll definitely be going again - absolutely brilliant. We saw the Mexican themed show, Luzia, and it was just incredible; fun, colourful, and jam-packed with non-stop acts of jaw-dropping athleticism.
Ottawa was next, Tania's old university stomping grounds. We went to a few of her old haunts and explored the city - a lovely place, full of old architecture (by Canadian standards at least) and atmosphere, which we soaked up while wandering down the picturesque Rideau Canal eating the delicious speciality pastry of Ottawa, the crispy and cinnamony Beaver Tail. We managed to catch our second baseball game of the month there as well - this time free tickets with Tania's friend Tammy to the Ottawa
Champions, a lower league side. It was much more amateur than the Blue Jays, but somehow more fun; the atmosphere was still great, there was still plenty of beer available, but there was the major bonus that no-one really cared if they lost - which they duly did.
We hit the road again down the Ottawa Valley, to Tania's current home in Deep River. After a fun couple of days catching up with more WNU buddies and meeting (and drinking far, far too much) with Tania's friends, we went to one of the valley's biggest draws - whitewater rafting on the Ottawa River. We'd signed up to the 'extreme' trip, also known as the 'flip trip' - small six man boats, unstable, rocky and very liable to get you dumped into the middle of a raging rapid. We thought there was a decent chance we'd be falling in, but realised it was a certainty when our guide flipped us immediately on the way out from the bank, just to give us a bit of practice for climbing back in... What a fun day it was - the rapids looked pretty big from the bank, but nothing compared to how
they looked as we dropped vertically down into the first one. We bounced, rolled, flipped - and did quite a lot of unexpected swimming - down the river, and headed back that evening tired but exhilarated.
Our final stop in Canada was Sudbury, Tania's home town, to stay with her family and do some camping. Sudbury is famous for formerly being one of the worlds most polluted places, with the amount of mining that goes on beneath it. At one point there were no trees for miles around, and all the rocks have turned from brown to a burnt black. The initial tactic to reduce the environmental impact was to build a massive stack to send the plumes out of - maybe not the prettiest tower, but it certainly gives Sudbury a striking skyline. Happily, Sudbury is now an example of world best practice in recovering an environment, and is returning to greenery - the only tell you have now as you drive into Sudbury is the glimpses of burnt black rock and the sudden drop down in size to permanently stunted pine trees. We had a nice few days with the Delongchamps, meeting more of Tania's family and
doing the tourist bits that Sudbury has to offer - going down the mine and enjoying seeing skunks, porcupines and beavers and being big kids for the afternoon at Science North, the surprisingly good science museum.
We finished off with a couple of nights camping in Killarney Park. A beautiful place, a couple of treks took us to stunning views of the picture perfect image of Canada - hills, lakes, and a whole lot of trees. I was less thrilled when, after jumping in the lake a few times, I realised I'd taken my phone swimming with me... The less said about that the better. We had a few battles with the local wildlife to content with that night, as a little bugger of a raccoon made repeated raids on our food - it was amusing to see Tania sprint outside and chase it through the woods shouting, but annoying to lose our food...
All too soon that was it for our time in Canada, and that was it for our year of travel - back to jobs, back to real life, and back to four long months living in separate countries until Tania gets to the UK
at the end of November. And it's almost it for our blog - just one more post to come on the highlights, lowlights and memorable moments of our incredible year.
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