Cannons in Canada: Spring has sprung .. sort of

Hello everyone! It seems ages since the last blog - well, it is I suppose but for a very good reason: we had a Visitor! I'm going to show you the pictures from Eileen's trip in another mini blog after this so you can see what we got up to. It was a special time.

We've had beautiful weather in March and April which has brought out the blossom. Toronto isn't generally a colourful place - no daffodils to speak of and the grass never seems as green as at home - so it's very cheering to see it. The most recent colour is from the burgeoning dandelions! I read an article recently in a hospital waiting room (Eamonn was having a 'procedure'!) that every part of a dandelion is edible so they ought to be harvested really! (And all was fine by the way.) We've both had our annual physicals. I've been told my bad cholesterol is too high and my good cholesterol's not high enough although I'm pretty sure it would be acceptable at home. Anyway, I've got 3 months to reduce it so I'm making efforts to do more exercise and eat carefully. I told the GP it must be the Canadian diet!

Spectator sport: fighting hockey players

We have finally been to see an ice hockey match - a Canadian obsession. A group of us went to see the Toronto Marlies play the Hamilton Bulldogs. The Marlies are Toronto's second string team and it is much cheaper to see them than the top league NHL team, the Maple Leafs; you can pay hundreds of dollars to see them and the stadium is always full even though the matches are televised. The stadium we were in had a roof but wasn't completely sealed to the elements so we had to keep our coats on and of course the cold encouraged us to eat! There were times when you could really appreciate the speed of the players and it was verging on exciting but then there were frequent breaks and of course a few fights. During the first fight the referees just stood and watched while the crowd roared them on. I thought that was barbaric especially as one player lost his helmet and the battering continued. After what seemed like an day in a bear pit, the referees finally intervened and when any subsequent fights started they stepped in pretty quickly. Which lead me to think that some of this fighting is choreographed just to please the crowd. Cynical me! The Marlies won 2:1 and at the end of the game the opposition just vanished from the ice. There was no show of sportsmanship, shaking hands or acknowledgement of any kind. It made our football games look very civil! All this seemed completely contrary to the accepted image of Canadians as being polite and fairminded.

Tiny defender

My favourite parts were the intervals when they brought on very young children to entertain us. In the first interval there was a mini game and in the second the children ran relays to show off their skills. It was great to see how fast they could go and how confidently they could stop and change direction.

Little ..

.. and Large

The Newcomers Club has been busy with activities. One Movie Matinee trip was to see, 'A Separation', an Iranian film about a marriage break up which won an Oscar for the best foreign language film. It was very well made and acted but it was a depressing watch: one of those films where you come out and want to do something silly to cheer yourself up! Next, Eamonn and I went to see, 'We need to talk about Kevin'. A brilliant film but not for the squeamish. We just sat there at the end and agreed with the people near us that we needed a drink! Tilda Swinton was extraordinary though. In contrast, we saw 'She Stoops to Conquer' relayed from from the National Theatre to our local cinema. It was very funny and great to be back on the South Bank!

Our Photo Club has met several times and shared photos and ideas and we've been to some small exhibitions. One, 'Your Veil is a Battleground', was by a young Iranian woman, studying in Toronto who took photos in her homeland of her friends doing things which are normal by our standards but which are frequently illegal there. The pictures highlighted the restrictions that young people experience in their everyday lives while we, in the West, focus more on the military conflicts and nuclear arms issues. There were lovely images of young women paddling or getting ready to go to a party or just sitting chatting with young men, aware all the time that they could be reported by the morality police. One image particularly struck me - a girl practising ballet on her own: it's illegal for women to dance there. The photographer happened to be at the Gallery so we were able to have an interesting conversation with her. Her exhibition is travelling around the world and is even going to Guernsey!

A Cathedral-like walk in Elmira

I also went to an evening talk at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Art and Meditation. A Capuchin Franciscan monk from Ontario used the work of 19th century French artist, Charles Marie Dulac to show the relationship between art and spirituality. The Gallery has a collection of his works and so we were able to view his series of lithographs called The Canticle of Creatures with the purpose of contemplation and reflection. At first sight his pictures seemed to be pale, uninteresting landscapes and you could easily walk by without a second look. But after some explanation we learned that by focusing properly on a scene you could connect with it, as it drew you in, in a prayerful way. The features in each picture had a very specific meaning, so that once you realised this you could almost 'read' the picture and link the scene to its title. Each plate in the series had a Latin title which translated into a short verse of praise. Charles Dulac had a devotion to St. Francis of Assisi which is why nature is so prominent in his work. The Franciscan tradition sees all Creation as the "footprint of God" and all creatures as part of the family of God; if we are able to 'read' nature properly it will lead us back to God.

This is plate 6 of the series, 'Jesus, Our Life', depicting Mother Earth which produces goodness and sustains us. The tree connects the earth and heaven. The background is Mt. Assisi and the Umbrian Plain and the chapel represents the one where St. Francis founded his Order.

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day at our young friends' apartment while watching England thrash Ireland in the 6 Nations rugby tournament. Our Irish hostess had prepared about 14 cooked breakfasts! We walked to their apartment carrying the Irish flag we'd bought and toasted each other at 11.30 in the morning! My brain thought I was drinking Guinness flavoured coffee! I'd had a go at making soda bread for the first time in many years and finally got the hang of it. Their apartment is on a main road junction which is being redeveloped on a huge scale so this is the view west from their sitting room.

One Sunday we went for a walk in Elmira, Ontario. We walked about 7 km, not knowing how long the walk would be at the start, of course. It took us through very pleasant wooded countryside with a lake and a river. Part of the walk followed a carpet of red pine needles through a long arch of pine trees. It was so quiet and peaceful and when the sun shone through the branches it reminded me of light coming through stained glass windows in a cathedral. The last section of the walk took us through a maple forest where the trees were being tapped. You can see sap dripping into the bucket here.

Sap is boiled in a sugar shack. The maple season is only about 4 to 8 weeks long and this year the season has been very short because of the early spring. The temperature needs to be below 0 at night and above 0 in the day. During the day, starch stored in the roots during the winter rises through the trunk as sugary sap, allowing it to be tapped. Sap is not tapped at night because the low temperature prevents it.

Many Mennonite farming families live in this area. Here is a Mennonite family in a horse and carriage. This group appear to be from a branch of Mennonites which restrict all types of technology although they will use tractors for ploughing.

For my birthday we went to Prince Edward County, 2 hours east of Toronto. This is a very pleasant rural area of vineyards and orchards. As an island, it is surrounded by Lake Ontario and has a long coastline, but, as we've found everywhere else there are relatively few places to relax by the lake. But there are a few Park areas with dunes which were lovely to see. It reminded me of a cross between the west of Ireland and Jersey! We stayed in a lovely B&B owned by a very friendly couple from Quebec and they had the most adorable dog (sorry Henry!) - he looked at us like a faithful little toddler, padding around! We stopped en route in Coburg, one of the very attractive lakeshore towns away from Toronto. We had a look in their Town Hall, opened by the Prince of Wales in 1860, which contained an art gallery and offices.

Prince Edward County has many artists' studios and galleries too so it will be a good place to return to in the summer when it is possible to do a food trail or an art trail or a wine trail! It is also an important stopping place

for migrant brds in late spring and autumn. Many things were closed of course. This is so common, even in Ottawa where we went with Eileen so that's another reason to return.

Me on my birthday - yes I must wear a different top!

The water was perfectly still here and we were the only people around. There an ethereal feel about the place as the sun went down.

Eamonn bought us a scope for birdwatching and here he is practising, looking out over the back garden (!) of our B&B.

It's been tax return season here and Eamonn's spent weeks preparing the forms. The Canadians want to tax our tax-free ISAs!!!

This is an art work called 'Monky Business'.

On our journey back I spotted this sign and then we stopped at the beach in Coburg.

Since then I've been on a couple of Newcomers' Walks. The first one was in the Distillery and Corktown district of Toronto. This is one of the few areas of Toronto which still has some old buildings. This poster shows that the lakeshore was much closer in the 19th Century. This area, once known as Toronto-on-the-Lake, has worked its way south as it has grown. During the 1960's a staggering 25,000 buildings were pulled down in Toronto in the cause of modernisation. Toronto also suffered several fires which destroyed many wooden structures too. 600 buildings were pulled down to build the TD bank; an arch was built here to mark the Rebellion of 1837 but that was removed to make room for a carpark! Some of the remaining buildings show that they were inspired by Parisian designs of C19th. Many of the buildings used for the coal and gas industry were built by British immigrants in the Methodist style. One of these is now the rehearsal space for a Toronto opera company.

St. Lawrence Market

TD Bank is the tall building, left.

There is a huge construction site near here now which is being prepared for the Pan-Am games of 2014, including the athletes' village. It should transform quite a run-down part of town.

Distilllery District

Last week I went on a walk in High Park at a time when it was looking its best as the trees were still in full blossom. It's quite an event when this happens as you are much less likely to see blossom here than at home. It was supposed to be a walk for fitness but everyone was so transported by the blossom and the sunshine that it turned out to be a very slow walk!

This looks pretty tranquil but out of shot on the left is a noisy highway!

There is a small campaign to save this little zoo in the park where we saw the llamas in January but it really doesn't look right to see bison and mountain goats, etc. in such small pens. It also costs a minimum of $250,000 to run it and the money can be put to much better use. So I think it should go.