They say everything is bigger in North America . . .
(sorry about the picture quality, I was laughing too much!)
Monthly Archives: November 2009
Canadian Humour
Few people can fail to be aware that Ice Hockey is pretty important in Canada.
Toronto’s team, the Maple Leaves may be a financial success, but are not known as winners on the ice.
Recently the Toronto Star ran a selection of Maple Leaf jokes, of which the following is a taster:
Q: What do the Leafs and the Titanic have in common?
A: They both look good until they hit the ice!
Q: What do you call 25 millionaires sitting around watching the Stanley Cup playoffs on TV?
A: The Maple Leafs
(the Stanley Cup is the NHL championship trophy)
Q: What did the Leafs fan do after Toronto won the Stanley Cup?
A: He turned off his PlayStation.
Update on Our House
The closing (completion) date for our house purchase has now been set for Monday 30 November, so by the start of December we will be living in our own home!
Below are a few more photos of the house.
Highlights (week beginning 2 November 2009)
It’s been such a busy time doing that I don’t get to write things up! So here is a brief summary of the ‘firsts’ and highlights from the last week.
- Buying a house (OK, I did report on this one)
- Venturing downtown for the first time since we’ve been here to see Where the Wild Things Are at the Imax (as Imax is a Canadian technology, this seemed appropriate) and drifting out of the cinema into a bookshop where we browsed until well after 9.30 pm.
Friday night at our local (Quigley’s), doing our usual half-time swop between risotto studded with PEI (Prince Edward Island) Mussels and bursting with calamari, scallops and prawns, tomato and basil and a spicy chicken, bacon and chipotle pasta, washed down with Creemore (a fine drop of beer from a small town we visited in July) and accompanied by live rock, much of which took me back to my early 20s.- Going to the mall (another first) and investing in a really good mattress – the Brick (a major furnishing store) had a one day 50% sale on mattresses.
- Scarborough Bluffs – where sculpted cliffs rise steep and tall and, on an unseasonable November day, I basked on a rock in the sun, savouring the shore’s soothing susurrus and the dancing diamond path across the water to a sliver of silver tranquility on the horizon.
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Doris McCarthy Trail to Guildwood
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
Scarborough Bluffs (November 2009)
- Saturday night supper – eating Catfish, which we thoroughly enjoyed. We have promised ourselves that we will try at least one new food each week when we go shopping!
- Our first trip to ROM (the Royal Ontario Museum) and a magical exhibition of unusual gems, Light & Stone: Gems from the Collection of Michael Scott (one of the founders of Apple). This included some stones neither of us had heard of in raw form and as jewellery or sculpture – fabulous! We also took one of the museum tours to get an overview and went to photographic exhibitions of Vanity Fair portraits and key Canadians photographed by Michael Dickinson. Thanks to Paul’s brother Robin and his wife Justine who gave us a year’s membership, this should be the first of many visits – we have yet to take in the current major exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
- Wandering back to the subway through upmarket Yorkville – Prada, Louis Vuitton, Max Mara ( you get the picture) – to be explored at our leisure, particularly Holt Renfrew, an upmarket department store.
We may have bought a house (3) – the location
Below is the Google street-view of the house we are hopefully buying (ignore the house numbers as they are only approximate and may not represent our address!) – you can move around the locality and see the immediate surroundings.
The house is about five minutes from the GO station (Danforth) and just a couple more from the subway. There is a small Mall just up the road on Danforth, as well as a variety of shops along Danforth itself. And Loblaws, one of the key supermarkets, is a five minute walk (they also sell petrol).
We can walk down Beach’s leafy streets to Queen St – if we walk the most direct route we come out at the bottom of Beech Ave, on the corner of which is our current ‘local’, Quigley’s, with the Remarkable Bean close by and the shore a further five minutes or so’s walk.