From Hot Docs To Forsythia, Festival Season Comes Into Bloom
As usual it's too late to write much and JM and I have to get to bed soon so we are ready… [more]
Geese Eggs For Lunch, Seagull For Dinner & A Midnight Feast With Some Baby Raccoons
Don Mills, where JM and I currently work, is not rich in natural diversity. It's a concrete… [more]
Meeting Our Toronto Necropolis Neighbours
JM and I finally got round to visiting our closest landmark neighbour this weekend. Even… [more]
Wishing For Whistler’s Secret Treehouse With The Don Valley Wildlife
I am foolishly starting a post when it's already almost bedtime but I just had to share my… [more]
Close Encounter With A Cabbagetown Raccoon
Continuing the exciting animal-spotting theme that started with chipmunks and groundhogs… [more]
High Park Cherry Blossom And A Visit From The Alpen Fairy
It's been another busy week in the JM-CWS household but I think we now have the morning… [more]
Discovering Cabbagetown: From Karaoke Chaos To Coffee And The Cobourg
We're a week in to our new Cabbagetown home and I'm finally able to get round to a post. … [more]
You Know It’s Spring In Toronto When The (Maple) Leafs Are Out
I can't remember where I first heard that joke about knowing it's spring when the leafs are… [more]
When Gateposts Wear Bonnets You Know It’s Springtime In The Annex
As the crazy weather continues - today I think we hit 25 or 26° - so too do the funny antics… [more]
(Picnic) Seats, Shoots & Leaves: Springtime Comes To Toronto But Christmas Still Prevails
Last weekend the clocks went forward and almost simultaneously temperatures leapt into… [more]
Sewing A New Cabbagetown Patch With A Cow, Some Sheep And The Three Little Pigs
From the heady climes of New Orleans it was back to Toronto and straight into estate agent… [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part VIII: Down And Dirty In The Mardi Gras Swamp
At last, I've reached the final day of our great American adventure. Since we returned… [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part VII: To The Garden District And Beyond
Breakfast, once we had emerged from our Frenchman-induced fog, was a hangover-banishing confection… [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part VI: The Dead And The Blues
Our second day in New Orleans kicked off with one of the much anticipated Patrick breakfasts. … [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part V: A Warm & Wet New Orleans Welcome
We left Chicago in the early hours, long before the streets were full of tourists and commuters. … [more]
Where Don Mills Rd meets Lawrence Ave
On Monday I started my new job as SEO Specialist at PostMedia, parent company to the Gazette, National Post, Vancouver Sun and several other titles.
It’s a pretty long commute from the Annex – where we are – to Don Mills; the strange suburban strip of housing, retail and business blocks in Toronto’s North York district where my new office is based.
There’s a bit of a trek down to the Bloor and a good eight or nine stops on the Subway to Pape, followed by a long and packed bus ride over Don Valley Parkway and up into the heart of what a Heritage Toronto plaque calls ‘one of the most discussed planned communities in Canadian history’.
In the midst of a housing shortage after World War II, E.P. Taylor, one of Canada’s most powerful businessmen, acquired over 800 ha of farmland here. From 1953 to 1965, Taylor’s companies transformed the farmland into one of the world’s most innovative “New Towns”, complete with 28,000 residents, over 70 industries, one of Canada’s earliest suburban shopping plazas, schools, and recreation facilities.
Don Mills was the first North American land development of its kind to be entirely planned and funded by the private sector… In an effort to create a landmark Modernist community, careful attention was paid to everything from the architectural style and position of buildings to their exterior materials and colours.
I’m struggling to reconcile this description with my current experience of the neighborhood. Although I haven’t yet explored the other side of our building where there are apparently many shops, cafés and even a pub.
Like the Mail, the PostMedia and National Post offices are built around a central glass atrium, the ground level of which is occupied by a cultivated jungle of broad-leafed plants and shrubs.
I made my first foray to the canteen this afternoon and was stumped by the complicated coffee setup. I got so flustered by the man trying to explain it to me that I ended up pouring myself a lukewarm decaf just to save face.
Honest Ed's discount store, est. 1948
Time is refusing to stand still. We are now here, in Toronto, in our super cute B&B The Admiral St George. We left Montréal yesterday morning saying a sad farewell to our lovely apartment and made the six hour train journey to Union Station.
JM had gallantly packed up and sent the majority of our stuff ahead of us but we were still pretty laden with bags. It hasn’t helped that I brought a whole extra suitcase load of clothes back with me from Newcastle.
We can’t move into our new apartment until the 9th but our temporary home couldn’t be more convenient and our host, Gerald, has already made us fell very welcome. After a night of sweet potato fries and Ontario wine at the Victory Café we were very grateful for the pots of coffee, croissants and toast that were liberally thrust our way when we emerged for breakfast this morning.
And we’re only a short walk from the new place. We went round at 11 o’clock to meet Douglas and sort out final details before he and his partner leave for Mexico. It is absolutely gorgeous. The street is a beautiful, tree-lined Annex confection; it’s right next to a little fire station but quiet; split over two levels with a gorgeous wee roof terrace and the rooms are massive.
Douglas is also something of a superstar having agreed to take responsibility for collecting our boxes from the Greyhound depot and even offering to put us up in the guest house at their place in Mexico if we feel the need to escape the bleak Toronto winter.
We had a taste of what is in store for us today – almost over night the weather has turned bitterly cold and it was raining for most of the morning. Which is why we decided to venture into Honest Ed’s in search of an umbrella.
Honest Ed’s is a huge discount store that takes up an entire block, split into two sections connected by a glass walkway. The exterior façade makes it look like the entrance to a carnival or circus – there are thousands of light-bulbs and the signage is painted in fairground red and yellow.
Inside is a maze of shabby discount bins spread over several levels and laid out on floors that curl downwards at the edges. Incredibly, amongst all the junk and clutter we did not manage to find an umbrella.
More successful was our hunt for wellies – I now have a pair of matte black Trenton boots with fur lining. And I also got one of those monthly travel passes.
We had dinner tonight at The Pour House Irish Pub at the end of our road and our waitress let us fill in coupons to try and win tickets to the Alexander Keith’s lobster dinner birthday celebrations taking place this Wednesday.
New job starts tomorrow so time for some sleep.
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Campbeltown rainbowarama
Family Reunions
So the reason I’ve been so remiss with my blog over the past couple of weeks is that JM and I were in Scotland where there wasn’t enough reception to text let alone fire up a laptop. Not that we’d have had time anyway as from the second we touched down in Heathrow we were swept up in a cyclone of activity that still shows no signs of abating.
By sheer coincidence (and a wee bit of logistical foresight), we managed to chime our visit with celebrations for my Uncle Sandy’s 60th birthday. These were taking place in and around his house at Kilchousland, by Campbeltown near the Mull of Kintyre in Argyll.
Our trip there from Montréal was a transport adventure that took in not only Metro, bus, plane, Tube and train but also involved a five hour drive from Newcastle to Tarbert where we boarded the good ship Brag at midnight and were under way and making way by 8 o’clock the next morning.
Needless to say the passage south was wet and windy but six hours later we were tied up and de-layering; just in time for the first of many rounds of champagne and barbecued sausages. And there began our Écosse odyssey of eating, drinking and general family-fuelled mayhem.
Over the afternoon and evening the various Wilkie contingents gradually descended (from London, Canada, Glasgow and Blantyre) until we were a good twenty or thirty strong group of loud and well-oiled Scots. It was fantastic to see everyone – especially my Auntie Margo and my cousins Vikki and Ruth – and I probably went into Scottish accent overdrive. A linguistical challenge which JM faced with admirable Aussie dexterity.
Cousin Ann with whom we spent a fantastic few days in Halifax last year was there, plus her daughter Emma and her daughter Pasqual who had made the pilgrimage from Whistler; and we even had a proper French person from actual France. Uncle Sandy was, I think, surprised and happy to see such a good turnout.
For the entire weekend Auntie Ailsa and Cousin Craig worked magic in the kitchen and on the barbecue, producing seemingly endless amounts of food – we are all big eaters with a collectively insatiable appetite for square sausage, bacon and all forms of potato. To top off the first night of oral excess, Uncle Sandy’s age was transcribed in sixty candlelit cupcakes, which took the whole lot of us to eventually blow out.
The Campbeltown rainbow extravaganza continues
Treasure Hunts
The next day got off to an early start – we reconvened at the cottage where my Mum and Craig organised us into teams and equipped everyone with plastic water pistols. Each group had a car and a mandate to get to nearby Davaar lighthouse, find the twenty clues hidden around the island upon which it is perched, and get off again before the tide came in and it was cut off from the mainland.
It quickly became clear that my Dad was not going to take this as anything less than a fight to the death. Although he refuses to admit responsibility, at least two people ended the trip with a twisted ankle. And there was more than one occasion when a clue was unceremoniously snatched from rival fingers.
Davaar Island is a pretty strange place. As well as the old, now automated, Stevenson lighthouse, there is a cave painting of the crucifixion hidden inside one of the deeper crevices cut into the side of the hill. Uncle Sandy and Wikipedia have much the same explanation:
[T]he crucifixion [was] painted in 1887 by local artist Archibald MacKinnon after he had a vision in a dream suggesting him to do so.
The painting caused uproar in the area as it was seen as a sign from God; it is said that when the townsfolk discovered it was MacKinnon, and not God, he was exiled from the town indefinitely.
Restored several times since, including twice by the original artist, the painting was vandalised in July 2006, having a red and black depiction of Che Guevara painted over the original masterpiece. It has since been restored again.
Along with eerie depictions of Jesus, the island is also inhabited by several hairy horned creatures that could either have been goats or sheep, we’re still not sure. But JM and I did get a nasty surprise when we walked into one of the caves and almost fell over a dead one.
With my Dad’s team thoroughly in the lead in terms of clues accrued, it was time to head ashore before the causeway flooded and make for the Mull of Kintyre lighthouse, an 1820s structure located at the bottom of a steep and winding road on the southwesternmost tip of the Kintyre Peninsula.
Several emergency stops were made on the way to retrieve rogue clues cunningly secreted in hedges and fence posts along the single-track road. Our caravan of 4x4s – one of which was decked out like a Friesian cow – must have been quite a spectacle. Given how fixated we all were with spotting the coveted white laminated paper clues the journey to the top of the hill was a little sporadic.
Sensing the simmering hostility that was beginning to build towards the winning team and their underhand methods, in the time it took all of us to reach the summit my Mum and Craig had hatched a genius plan. Instead of sending everyone off to look for clues, they selected the three most competitive players – my Dad, his cohort Junior and, inexplicably, JM – to race ‘to the point where you can see the lighthouse’.
Not realising the scheme afoot, JM graciously offered up his place to Pasqual who had hitherto been thwarted in her clue-finding endeavours by the more cut-throat boys. They took off like bolts of lightning and careered off down the road… followed moments later by Pasqual in tears with a twisted ankle.
The clues, of course, were nowhere near the lighthouse; all three were stuffed in the end of the first barrier that rang alongside the bend overlooking it. Happily I claimed all three for my team, leaving my Dad and Junior battling it out somewhere around the bottom of the Mull.
More rainbow action over Kilchousland graveyard
Next stop was lunch of haggis, neeps and tatties at the wonderful Muneroy Tearoom in Southend where we all put on masks featuring Uncle Sandy’s face and a few of us braved a pint of Tennent’s.
The last stage in the treasure hunt took place back at Kilchousland which comes complete with its own crumbling graveyard and small sliver of beach – perfect hiding spots for the final twenty clues.
There was the inevitable initial dash and scatter as we all scrambled. But the final showdown came on the rocky shoreline where my Dad, perceiving that I had picked up a scent, trailed me across the rocks and, a split second after I had grasped the last elusive clue from the plastic bottle in which it was hiding, he literally – quite literally – tore the piece of paper from my hands.
It was an utterly shameless act of treachery for which he was later awarded the prize for cruellest father and was immediately under siege from every quarter by Wilkies bearing water pistols.
As you can tell from the photographs there were some beautiful rainbows – fully convex AND a double. There was also an impressive fireworks display, which went ahead in spite of the onset of an unavoidable Scottish drizzle.
Sunshine on Tarbert
On Sunday we were joined on board Brag by Ann, Emma and Pasqual for a perfectly still, sunshine-filled motor-sail back to Tarbert. We arrived just as the music festival was drawing to a close and we entered the harbour to the strains of the Rolling Stones.
Our Canadian cousins disembarked and, after drinks on deck, it was time for a walk along the front, where we discovered the spoils of some recent lottery funding – an all-weather set of outdoor gym equipment, randomly plonked next to the marina.
JM and I had a lovely meal of fish & chips and venison followed by banoffee pie at The Anchorage, and a final pint of Tennent’s in The Tarbert Hotel.
As well as finally enjoying a lie-in, one of the greatest treats in store for us on Monday was a trip to the shower hut. I also got to see the plot of land where my Mum and Dad will hopefully soon be building a house.
The views along the coast are astonishing and it even has its own tiny beach full of strange and exotic shells, and just behind where the house will be there is a fairytale dell of spindly trees and giant rocks.
Last port of call on our return drive to Newcastle was a visit to see my grandparents in Hamilton who stuffed us with tea and cake. Next year will be their 60th wedding anniversary – although they were married on the 29th of February so perhaps, technically, they’ve only been together for a quarter of a century?
Back in Newcastle JM and I had what was probably our first curry since being in India – and we survived unscathed.
We spent the next day faffing and, prompted by some not-so-subtle hints, took our turn at cooking dinner; successfully proving in the process that the fire alarm does in fact work.
All of this was only part of our trip but I’m getting sleepy now so will have to pick up where I left off tomorrow.
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What a poor we neglected blog this has been. JM and I headed back to the UK last Wednesday and there honestly has not been an opportunity at any point to sit down and write something coherent.
And I’m afraid right now isn’t any more conducive. We touched back down a few hours ago after a long but astonishingly smooth trip. Much praise must be bestowed upon Air Transat, an airline about which we were probably both a little sceptical but which we’re now unashamedly in love with.
We ransacked our luggage for dirty washing then dragged our flight-weary bodies out into the surprisingly potent Montréal September sun for a rather pathetic run at the end of which we were even more broken than when we started.
It has at least had the desired effect of keeping us awake for an extra few hours. And it can’t be too much longer now until I can legitimately refer to myself as ‘having an early night’.
A full account of our sea-faring and land-lubbing adventures in and around the mother isle will have to wait until I’m feeling more articulate. Suffice to say it was an action-packed, fun-filled, memory-making and emotional affair. There were boats and treasure hunts and water pistol fights in Scotland with family and too little sleeping and too much eating and drinking with friends in London.
We packed a lot in but inevitably there still wasn’t enough time to do everything and see everyone we wanted to. I knew the time would pass in a flash so my friends were very indulgent in letting me take their picture every five seconds… just in case I wake up tomorrow and convince myself the whole trip never happened.
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