Visiting Ann

Today I am travelling for the first time by Canadian train I am going north of Toronto to stay with the lovely lady I met on the steps of Casa Loma in Toronto. Union Station is the main station in the city and the main hall is quiet and cathedral-like.

Union Station

The level below is the busy main concourse for GO Trains - Government of Ontario Trains. I buy my ticket and then have to wait here for the information board to display the platform. While I am waiting I buy a cup of tea from the ubiquitous Tim Hortons (always fresh) and join other travellers waiting on a row of chairs. As evidence of Toronto’s multi-cultural population on one side of me is a man originally from Sri Lanka and on the other is a woman originally from South Africa. The man is about in his 60s and his accent is very strong and although I can't understand everything he says, I gather enough to know that in his opinion Sri Lanka is now a very bad place where I will get robbed and all Moslems are criminals. The woman on my other side is about in her 40s. After chatting for a few minutes she tells me she knew before she sat down that I am special and that she is very proud of me. I love the variety of these random chance encounters! Another couple along the line will be on the same train as me and they look out for me when the platform is displayed and I follow them to find the double-decker train, which is clean and spacious and leaves dead on time.

Tim Hortons

GO Train

The journey takes an hour and a half and we pass through various small stations and across flat farm land. Ann runs up the platform to meet me and with Harold, her grandson, we drive to the pretty town of Orillia, which sits between the two lakes of Lake Couchiching and Lake Simco. We go to Ann's house for pizza and plenty of chat, as we get to know each other. Ann and her family moved from Coventry to Camelford during the war and then they emigrated to Canada when she was 17. Harold lives in Nova Scotia and is staying with his grandma for 2 weeks and the two of them have planned to show me Canadian things. We start in the morning with a delicious Canadian breakfast of home-made pancakes, with fresh fruit, crispy bacon and real maple syrup. The syrup is dark and sweet and has a smokey flavour from being boiled over an open fire.

Pancakes and Maple Syrup for Breakfast

Then we set out for a day exploring in and around the town. The humourist Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) lived here in a beautiful house by the lakeside, which is now a museum. His most famous work was 'Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town' which was written about the mythical town of Mariposa – which is based on the town and local characters of Orillia. The hotel proprietor, the bank teller, barber, undertaker etc. are all in there. Leacock starts the book by saying, ‘I don’t know if you know Mariposa. If not, it is of no consequence, for if you know canada at all, you are probably well-aquainted with a dozen towns just like it.’

Stephen Leacock's House

Boat House

Downtown Orillia has a pretty main street, with old shop fronts. Most of the shops and businesses are named to reflect the Leacock connection and we have lunch in an amazing delicatessen, ‘The Mariposa Market’, in an old building with original shop fittings and a wonderful display of celebration cakes.

Downtown Orillia

Jewellers' Shop

Mariposa Market

Dotted along the length of the main street there is a public art installation of 50 chairs that celebrate the 100 year legacy of Stephen Leacock's 'Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town' via the talents of local artists. The chairs all have a Leacock connection, but are all so diferent. I recognise one of the quotes which decorate one chair: 'I am a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more of it I have'.

Stephen Leacock Chairs

To help me absorb some First Nations culture we drive out of town to visit the local casino. In Canada all casinos are only allowed on native land. We watch a multi media show which introduces the 7 tribes of the Chippewa First Nation and we chat to a lovely young woman called Nicole, of the Ojibwe First Nation who is working in the gift shop. She is 20 years old and she is very proud of her heritage and culture. She tells me some words from her language and shows me some hand- made crafts of beading and weaving and says that her grandmother can make such things and she hopes to learn those skills from her. She thinks that the Chief should do more to encourage the young people to stay within the reserve and learn their ways.

Casino

Nicole of the Ojibwe Tribe

At the end of the day we are all very hot and we visit the lakeside at Moose Beach to cool down. It is a busy Sunday afternoon in the summer holiday, so there are many families here enjoying the fun waterpark and the small sand beach. Lifeguards patrol an enclosed shallow section of the lake and Ann and I have a swim in the warm lake while Harold plays in the fountains.

Water Park

Me on Moose Beach

The next day the temperature is already 32 degrees by 9.00am, so we decide to have a quiet morning in the cool of the air-conditioned house. It clouds over a bit later and we drive north to visit a small town called Gravenhurst in an area called Muskoka. Here the oldest steamship in North America the RMS Segwun still takes tourists on cruises on Lake Muskoka.

Steam Ship Segwun

By the waterside there is a boat and heritage centre which we visit and I find out that the area has always been a vacation area. Since the 1800s rich tourists arriving by train from Toronto came to stay around the lakes for the whole summer. As the rich tourists required craft of all sorts to make the most of the lakes, a thriving boat-building industry grew up here. In the museum boat house there are beautiful privately owned wooden boats.

Steam Yacht

I stay with Ann for four nights. She has been the most amazing host – generous and kind. Her open heart and trusting spirit brought me to her and we will see each other again for sure, not least because of her Cornish connections. Harold is funny, polite and gentle and maybe I will see him again too, if I get as far east as Nova Scotia.

Ann and Harold

They drop me off at the bus station, with a lovingly-packed lunch, to catch the bus back to Toronto and then onwards to Ottawa and I settle into the journey with my copy of ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’ and giggle quietly to myself as I read. I really like the story about the annual outing on the lake when the steam ship sinks in six feet of water and all the town's people who go out to the rescue end up getting rescued themselves. And then there is the one about the young bank teller courting the judge's daughter. In it Leacock describes the young women of the town as being very romantic and he writes:

'Don't think they are all dying to get married; because they are not. I don't say they wouldn't take an errant knight, or a buccaneer, or a Hungarian refugee, but for the ordinary marriages of the ordinary people they feel nothing but a pitying disdain. So it is that each one of them in due time marries an enchanted prince and goes to live in one of the little enchanted houses in the lower part of town. I don't know if you know it but you can rent an enchanted house In Mariposa for eight dollars a month, and some of the most completely enchanted are the cheapest. As for the enchanted princes they find them in the strangest places, where you never expected to see them, working - under a spell, you understand - in drug stores and printing offices and even selling things in shops. But to find them you have first to read ever so many novels about Sir Galahad and the Errant Quest and that sort of thing.'