Toronto and Niagara: From Hogtown to Tacksville

Well, boys and girls, Queenie’s been in Canada a week now. And she’s not really landed yet I think. Although she came to earth with a thud of exhaustion yesterday and was tucked up in her berth in Cabin 19 of the Alexander Henry at 9pm Canadian last night. But that’s starting at the end, when I should be starting at the beginning.

Global Village Backpackers Hostel of Heat and Filth

Another post has dealt with NXNE so I won’t retread that worn path, except to say it was great and I’m glad I did it, for more than one reason. Volunteering is really important in Canada. When I went to my orientation session with SWAP, the Canuck USIT, the woman briefing us stressed it and suggested that if people didn’t have any experience, to be sure to make up some voluntary activity to put on their resume. Queenie, sitting there bleary-eyed after two days work and two nights partying, was more than a little pissed off with this attitude. After all, she had taken it upon herself to do this, while the other Irish at the briefing were nursing sore heads achieved with the minimum of effort – i.e. none of them had left the hostel bar yet.

But enough of the bitching. Queenie has a good ten years on most of the others, who are only over for the summer and will be spending long hours bussing tables and cleaning offices and are due a couple of nights off at the beginning.

The orientation session was alright, although it was totally focused on Irish students working in Toronto for the summer, and had no information for grown ups wishing to use their travel and work visa to travel and work. However, they gave me a contact name in Halifax before I left. And sold me a cell phone. Which they assured me would work across Canada.

WELL IT DOESN’T BLOODY WORK IN KINGSTON, WHICH IS A CITY IN ONTARIO, LADS.

I shall complain in the Montreal office when I get there.

After the session, Queenie went back to the hostel of heat. Global Village Backpackers is truly the second circle of hell. Two hundred plus smelly backpackers stuffed into an airless Victorian mansion with the scariest health and safety plan this girl has ever seen. Talking to Andy the engineer from Inverness one night didn’t help either. He wasn’t too pleased about being on the top floor in case of fire. And the dirt of the place!! There are people living in this kip. I couldn’t believe it. That afternoon, I was trying to clear a space on the floor of my room to repack my bag and an official-looking guy walked in and asked had I seen the cleaning staff. So I snorted loudly and exclaimed “You have cleaning staff here?” The room was done every day after that.

The following day, I was taking a leak when I realised my hair was getting wet. I looked up, and the second floor bathroom was about to dump its waterload onto me. I legged it downstairs to tell them wanting a clean bathroom on the first floor didn’t mean they had to flood the second floor bathroom but thanks for the effort anyways. I think they thought I was a bit mad. But I was just hot.

Having said that, it was dirt cheap (hur, hur). Only twenty dollars a night and cheap breakfast, free internet (if you had a wireless enabled laptop) and an open air bar that hosted Irish SWAPPERs, hosts of Australian pissheads, the Glasgow University football team, assorted Asian visa applicants and a few backpackers on any given night. They had a fantastic marketing strategy for the bar. The bar was outside and therefore reasonably cool. The hostel was inside and not air-conditioned, and therefore as hot as hell. Ergo, everyone stayed in the bar as long as possible. I tried not too, as the drunkenness invariably resulted in some antipodean couple stripping off to the delight of the Celts/ Picts/ Scallies, who could hold their drink a bit better and wouldn’t be caught dead doing said strip. I saw more Australian dangly bits than I ever dreamed I would. I felt very old.

Hogtown in all its glory

Queenie never found out why Toronto is called Hogtown. I’m sure someone else somewhere in Canada will tell her. She was a bit reticent about asking locals, in case it was something really rude. It’s a great city. It streams along the banks of Lake Ontario, and stretches north for miles. Downtown is quite small. There are clusters of skyscrapers, but it has none of the impact of New York or even London. However, there are lots of varying districts radiating out from the financial district, each of which has its own charm. I was in the hippy west side, around Queen St. and Kensington, which became more run down as you walked west, but was full of second hand clothes and book shops, art galleries, strange nightclubs, oceans of shops selling bolts of exotic cloth, tattoo parlours, jewellery shops, quirky furniture showrooms and ubiquitous coffee houses. It’s what Temple Bar should be. All the ladyeez I know would be well happy with two days shopping here – so cheap.

Canadians love their coffee. They all walk around with their coffee cups all day. And yet, they are still chilled. If Irish people did the same we’d be climbing the walls. And they don’t even seem to be obsessed with decaf, the way Americans are. God only knows how horizontal they’d be if they didn’t have coffee.

I found a little restaurant called Java House a bit down Queen St., away from the hostel, and ate there quite a lot. It was owned by a burly Italian, who sat at a table by himself all day drinking espresso, smoking really pungent cigars, and ordering the Asian waitresses around. It had a great patio that was frequented by Goths and punks so I could spend hours surreptitiously examining their tattoos and piercings.

I spent a lot of time just walking around the city, getting my bearings and taking photos. I really love the CN Tower. I felt its presence all the time. Suddenly I’d get a feeling and I’d look up and there it would be, hovering over me from some strange angle. You never got lost with it. I suppose that’s what the Spire was supposed to do in Dublin. It’s not tall enough, unfortunately.

On Monday evening, I was down at the Harbourfront, looking at the really posh condos THAT ARE STILL CHEAPER THAN MY APARTMENT, when lightening flashed, thunder clapped one-two-three and the skies opened and bucketed down on me. I ran and ran, looking for shelter. It was so exhilarating – it was the first time I felt I was away – that something was happening to me and nobody else knew. Or cared.

I spent a bit of time in Chinatown as well, which runs along Spadina Ave., never having experienced a Chinatown before, with all the really exotic spicy smells and fantastic restaurants and delis. This is the first time I’ve been able to speak with people who have an Asian background, as most of those living in Dublin are only learning English. Generally, they seem to be a bit more upfront than us Europeans, who tend to crabulate around issues. Or maybe it’s not an Asian thing, maybe it’s a Toronto thing. Or a big city thing.

I really hope I didn’t wander around Toronto for a week with my mouth open like some Irish gobdaw. I have no idea whether I did or not, and everyone was so polite, I’m sure they wouldn’t have said. But if anyone ever tells me that Dublin is diverse again, I’ll knock them over the head and put them on a plane to Vancouver, which everyone tells me is even more diverse than Toronto.

Another thing I noticed was the propensity of everyone I met to take my questions at complete face value (which was correct) and launch into a long explanation of whatever it is I had been enquiring about. They sure liked to talk about themselves. Even more than me, boys and girls, yes, the unthinkable happened a couple of times and Queenie couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

THUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Niagara Falls, or Horseshoe Falls, Niagara, if you’re being pedantic

I got the Moose bus to Niagara. The Moose bus is the backpacker bus. There are Moose buses all over Canada. You book a Moose loop of six or seven stops (eg Toronto – Montreal – Quebec – Toronto) and they take you to out of the way places and ensure you have a cheap bed for the night. You can stay in one spot for a few nights if you like, so it’s not as confining as a tour. It’s a good system. They also do one day tours to famous spots. Which is why Queenie, Jeremy from Bristol, Tom from North London (which turned out to be Hertfordshire) and three Mexicans – Sonja, Carlos and Hugo – all sat on the Moose minibus and headed off to Niagara for the day.

Jeremy from Bristol had taken a nine month sabbatical from his job in the Golden Pages, because he had met all his targets, and was doing Canada, USA, South America, Vietnam, Cambodia, China and India.

Attaboy.

Tom from North London had been in Canada for five weeks. He had come east from Vancouver and was on his way home. He was a physicist and was about to start working for the government on a new job. He was very diffident at the beginning, so Queenie decided he was a spy or had been in the army or something. Mainly because of the diffidence, but also, he knew about random things like:

- How long a drop it takes a parachute to open
- How big a spot you need for a helicopter to land
- How to stop a car from aquaplaning

That is not to say that Myles or William or Ivan or indeed any physicist, wouldn’t know all these things (not least because they know everything), but there was something a bit muscular about him that was not your average physicist (sorry guys). I was just thinking about checking him out actually, when he committed political hari kiri by saying, ‘yes, we’re all from the UK aren’t we’, to which I responded with an ‘I’m from an independent republic I think you’ll find’, much to Jeremy from Bristol’s delight. Poor bloke turned round to face the road and didn’t talk again for a good hour. And I decided he was definitely in the Queen’s service. The other queen don’t you know. Although I wouldn’t have minded…

Stoppit!!!

Faced with two reasonably diffident Brits, after the rigours of almost a week of Torontian chatterboxes, was too wonderful an opportunity for Queenie to miss, so she talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and…………. You get the picture. Jeremy from Bristol didn’t seem to mind. Neither did the back of Tom from North London’s neck. Which was very tanned and had a little mole on the left side.

The Mexicans didn’t speak much English. When we got to Niagara we lost them. Brian the Moose guy, of whom I will think every time I use the word laconic, like forever, so tall and laid back was he, made us walk around for an hour looking for them. We decided they’d skipped across to the States, in an interesting spin on Mexican border hopping. In fact, we were outrageously racially stereotyping them as we searched for them in the heat. But it was very hot and we were searching for a good hour. Their bags were still in the Moose bus. I nearly convinced Brian they were stuffed with coke. Then we found them, waiting for us in the wrong place.

We all headed down to the Maid of the Mist, the boat that brings you up to within spitting distance of the falls. Tom had thawed out a bit at that stage, so we even got a smile when Jeremy put his blue plastic poncho on assways, with his head poking out through the left sleeve. The whole journey was a bit of an anti-climax. I had more fun taking pictures of the blue-poncho-people than actually looking into the waterfall, which has so much spray that you can’t really see anything.

Interesting fact: three quarters of the water flowing over Niagara is diverted, in order to protect the soft limestone of the falls from eroding too fast. So it is four times more powerful than we see. Which is pretty damned powerful.

Then we went to the Inniskillen Ice Winery. Did you know that ice wine is $80 a bottle? Queenie suffered from complete mortification as she remembered that someone she knows very generously gave her a bottle of ice wine a few years ago and she had no idea that it cost that much. Erm, sorry guys.

Back into Niagara for dinner and the lights. Being with two English blokes I ended up going for an Indian. Quel surprise. One of the interesting things about travel is that you lose some of your stereotypes, mainly the ones you read about and didn’t actually know. And have the rest reinforced – you know, the ones about your European neighbours mostly.

Niagara is tacksville. Honeymoon capital of the world. It’s like a mini-Vegas. I imagine, not having been to Vegas. Truly horrendous. We hung around till nine when they lit the falls up with green, pink and blue lights. It was like watching an elephant put on a frilly apron to amuse the circus kids. I felt bad until the skies opened again and it thundered and flashed and spilled rain and totally spoiled the effect the tourist board wanted.

Mama Gaia knows best.