Can’t Go Home?

City of Kitchener clock tower

Sorry about the delay in posting. I began writing this post while I was enroute back from London. Once home however, life got in the way. I’ve finished it now, and I have another three more posts that I want to do! I have now set myself a goal –Find the time to write one blog post a month. Starting NOW! We’ll call this one September…

August 26^th:

“Who says that you can’t go home?” Thank you Bon Jovi for making a very good point. I doesn’t matter where you go, or who you are – you can always go home. That’s what I’ve spent the last month doing.

Possibly the best porridge I've ever eaten!

Now, before I go on and on about my last month, let me draw your attention to my current location – one of my favourite places (although infrequently visited) in the world: first class car on an East Coast train. Enjoy it. Love it. Hot tea or coffee five minutes after departure, hot and cold breakfast (I’m having the porridge with banana and honey –yes fresh banana and real honey from a jar. The porridge is delicious too as it is made with real milk), there is lots of leg room and every seat has a table. There are also plugs for charging phones and laptops at each table, although for some reason they’ve not set the ones in my car to on, but c’est la vie. I’d rather sit here and enjoy my beautiful morning with my large and currently unshared table than move to another car in search of additional power. I find that sometimes it’s better to be content with what we have, especially when what we have is pretty damn satisfying for only twenty pounds more than standard class tickets and I get waited on. I mean for such a minute price difference who wouldn’t travel first class?

When everyone of my friends, most of whom are now spread across the vast expanse that is Canada asked if I was coming to visit all of them, I felt of course loved, however the thing is it’s so much harder, and more expensive to travel in Canada than it is in England (with the very real exception of taking taxis in London –holy cow!).  So in my 26 days back in my home country I spent a lot of time running all over and doing a lot of things, both of business necessity but also of personal pleasure – most of which I did from my home region of Waterloo. Well, when you’re young and broke, what else are you suppose to do but bounce from friend to family to friend and spend as much time with the people that you haven’t seen in year and eat as much of their food as possible? I mean really, isn’t that what family is for?

Second of Toronto waterfront

I must say though, as much as I’ve enjoyed the last two years in the UK, it really was good to be back in Canada for a while. There is a comfort that cannot be defined that one gets from being with people that they have been close to for a very long time. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how long you have been away, some things never change. And those things are the relationships that you have with your closest people. Now ideally one could get said people to come gallivanting around the world with you when you go so that you don’t have to settle for seeing them every few years, but we all make our choices. And really, if we couldn’t and didn’t make and stick by our own choices what would we be? Would we enjoy our time together as much, or would we all just resent each other because we just did what someone else wanted us to do? No, no, no – choices are a good thing. They are something that makes us unique. Really, who wants to be boring?

Other than spending as much time doing as much as possible with as many people as possible (which we all know with me means spending as much time as possible sitting on someone’s couch just relaxing with said person) what else have I been doing? Answer: visiting all the cool places from when I was younger.

October 5^th:

I went to Toronto, as you do when applying for a work permit, and spent a good deal of time just wandering around and revisiting random places from my childhood trips there. My day started with me departing from the GO portion of Union Station and having to figure out what exactly was going on with the whole downtown Toronto construction situation. Construction, as it is in Ontario, was extensive and confusing. What I knew to be Union Station was quite confusing, but with the help of a very nice gentleman working at the token booth, I managed to not only purchase my day ticket for TTC but also find out where exactly I needed to go.

So, a quick subway ride down to Bloor Street station, I depart and walk past the ROM to the office building that now houses the visa application centre office. This took a great deal lesson time than I anticipated, so I spent forty minutes sitting at a Tim Hortons walking people.

This was a nice experience, since when I spend time in coffee shops these days, its usually when I do extensive reading sessions when I don’t feel like being in the house. This does not leave much time for people watching. It was good fun. From sitting in this particular Tim Hortons, I learnt that there was a sports camp not far away (I suspect only across the street) considering I could see a stadium outside. The camp leaders came in one at a time which suggests this camp runs over lunch and only one is permitted to leave the site at a time in order for adequate supervision to be maintained. I also saw people walking around taking pictures (which I later also did). There was one particular individual who must be a serious photographer as they stood for several minutes staring at something across the road, then lined up a shot, took a few, inched over and then took a few more. The whole process was at once boring and amusing.

Once I finished my application appointment, I had a lovely afternoon just wandering around in Toronto. I enjoyed an ice cream in front of the ROM just as we used to in the summer as a family after our day long trip to the ROM. Trips to the ROM are only complete if you do two things: get lost in the ancient coins from around the world area and eat ice cream sitting either on the steps or on the wall. That made me both nostalgic and satisfied with my trip to Toronto. This was not, however the end to my trip to Toronto.

I had forgotten that one side of the ROM looks like a spaceship.

I wandered down Bloor Street to enjoy some window shopping. Bloor Street has some fabulous shops that I’d never dare go in, but it was fun to pretend and look in the windows. From Bloor I decided it would be good fun to walk down Church Street since I was hungry. I saw some great places to eat but couldn’t decide on anything so eventually I settled on an ice tea from David’s Tea and then kept walking. I took a turn through a little park. It was refreshing to be reminded that yes, even a city as big and busy as Toronto does have green spaces still.

Eventually I ended up down on the waterfront. It was gorgeous there that day. I wasn’t too sunny to be hot but it was pleasantly warm. I enjoyed a calm walk along the water front and then took a rest near the ferry terminal. 

"Jack's got your back" Stronger Together Jack Layton Memorial

I hadn’t realised that they ferry terminal had been renamed after the late Jack Layton, but it was cool to see the impact that he had made that it had been. The area outside of the terminal was fairly busy. As ferries came back in and unloaded passengers I saw groups of children all wearing matching t-shirts with teenagers leading them shouting “keep together!” Some of these groups had very small children. I couldn’t help but thinking how cool it must be to go to a day camp that takes a field trip on a ferry to an island. It is something that must be unique to cities that are set up like Toronto, but hey, how cool is that?  

From the waterfront, I decided that I wanted to visit the Princess Gates because I knew I wouldn’t have time to visit the CNE while it was in action but I could at least drop by the site and remind myself what it looks like. Boy was I in for a surprise. There was a project undertaken sometime between when I was a child and now, to put an art instalment (for a lack of a better word), in front of the gates. This I thought was pretty cool. This instalment was in the form of granite slabs that have been laid in the ground with each province of territory’s motto inscribed. At the head of each slab is a seat made of polished granite (at least I think it was granite), these had a carving depicting each provincial/ territorial tree. Some of these carvings showed the leaves of the tree, or pine cones or acorns that are created by the tree (dare I call it fruit?). I haven’t been to the CNE or the Princess Gates in years, so I really enjoyed going there again.

For more (historically correct) information on the Princess Gates, see this link:

http://citiesintime.ca/toronto/story/princes-gate/

Ontario's Eastern White Pine

Gearing up for the CNE!

Ontario's provincial Motto: Ut incepit Fidelis sic permanet = Loyal she began, loyal she remains

Granite seats - one for each province and territory.

I was in a Toronto a second time, again on visa business. I decided because it was a beautiful day, and I was again early for my appointment that I would walk from Union Station up to the centre. Along the way, I found most of the way down Young Street a busker festival! I was pumped! I love buskers! This was the biggest collection I'd ever seen of buskers. I got to watch some great music. This is the band that I enjoyed the most:

Another food I can't get here. I miss these amazing cookies!

Yes indeed, Toronto was good fun. While back home, I also indulged in some very unhealthy things that I can’t necessarily get in West Yorkshire. These things are very obviously mentioned to anyone who has ever had a fast food craving that can’t be satisfied simply because they live away from a source of said fast food: Harveys and A&W. After three years of no Harveys’ Flame Grilled Angus burgers, I enjoyed a well-deserved burger that was delicious! I also ate poutine and chubby chicken strips from A&W more times than I care to admit to anyone –including myself. I was very happy to find though, that A&W’s meat is all hormone-free. This made me especially happy since there are so many people now who find that they are having serious health issues due to the hormones that are now added to so many meats. We all have our own natural hormones, we don’t need it added to our food! Our food doesn’t need to be produced bigger – if we ate a healthy amount of food at each sitting we’d likely find that we don’t need supersized chicken breasts from chickens who can’t even hold their own weight off the ground because they have been pumped full of so many hormones just so that they produce more meat! But hey, rant over – I was happy because it means a dear friend can still indulged in a little naughty eating every once in a while without ended up on her deathbed from pain (I’m hoping that I exaggerate, but I suspect that I am not based on the stories she’s told me).

Hmm, what else is there to say about my time back in the land of ice and snow? It was comforting being able to cross a road and know exactly where to expect people to be driving and from where they could be turning. It was nice to have street signs that make sense and lines painted on the road that cars stop at –these lines also are not past where pedestrians cross, they are before so that people are not run over. I enjoyed being able to go for a run around the neighbourhood where I grew up. I ran past where I used to go to Summer Playgrounds as a kid. I did not once see a single child outside playing there, so I wonder if perhaps that site has been closed down. I ran past where we used to go to church. I also ran part of the trail that we ran in Grade 8 for our cross country unit. I’m happy to say, I could run it much faster than I did then, despite being much bigger and heavier, I’m much fitter – who knew?

Anyone who was around when I wear gearing up to head back home heard me complain endlessly about having to spend most of my summer holidays dealing with visa things instead of just relaxing, blogging, cooking, knitting, travelling and running –but here’s the thing, I still got to do a little bit of all of that. All in all, it was a pretty decent summer. It was good to be back home. And it’s good to be home too.