Castles in Canada

OK, I admit it, we slept in pretty hard.

I was the one reluctant to get out of bed this time (yawn!), so we got a very late start on things. Because of the late start, I didn't get to the grocery store...which means we ended up at the Golden Griddle (oooh, great name, eh?) for breakfast. Apparently the kids are going through a growth spurt, because they ate every last thing and then asked for more, which is quite unusual.

After breakfast/lunch we headed to Casa Loma, which is a castle in Toronto which was built early in the 1900s by Henry Pellatt.

Sir Henry was a business visionary. In the same year that Thomas Edison developed steam-generated electricity, Sir Henry realized that supplying electricity could be extremely profitable. He founded the Toronto Electric Light Company in 1883. By the time he was thirty, the Toronto Electric Light Company enjoyed a monopoly on the supply of street lighting to the city.

In 1892 his father retired, enabling Sir Henry to invest with more risk. Despite vigorous discouragement from his friends he purchased stock in the Canadian Pacific Railroad and in the North West Land Company. As with steam-generated electricity, his intuition was right on target. A liberal immigration policy led to opening of the Canadian west which led to healthy profits from his investments in both the Canadian Pacific Railroad and in the North West Land Company.

By 1901, Sir Henry was chairman of 21 companies with interests in mining, insurance, land and electricity. In 1902, he and his partners won the rights to build the first Canadian hydro-generating plant at Niagara Falls. He was knighted in 1905 for his military service with the Queen's Own Rifles.

Pellatt's Midas touch continued through most of his business life. In 1911, armed with a fortune of $17 million, Pellatt drew up plans to build his dream castle with Canadian architect E. J. Lennox. The land on which he planned to build had been given a name by its previous owner: "house on the hill" or Casa Loma.

Casa Loma took three years and $3.5 million to build. Sir Henry filled Casa Loma with artwork from Canada and around the world. Casa Loma stood as a monument to its creator - it surpassed any other private home in North America. With its soaring battlements and secret passageways, it paid homage to the castles and knights of days gone by.

Sir Henry's numerous business and military connections demanded entertaining on a large scale. Casa Loma's romantic borrowing from the past, tempered by necessary modern day conveniences, provided the perfect setting. In the height of their years at the Castle, the planning of such a busy social calendar consumed much of Lady Pellatt's time.

Unfortunately, Sir Henry's fortunes could not sustain the magic that was Casa Loma. To finance expansion, Pellatt and Pellatt went further and further into debt. The one sure source of income from the monopoly of electrical power vanished when political decisions allowed for public ownership of electricity. In a futile attempt to restore his wealth, Sir Henry turned to land speculation. He was convinced that well-to-do Torontonians would rush to build homes around his castle.

However, in this case his entrepreneurial sense did not take into account the effects of World War I; during the war Canadians put their money into war bonds, not homes. After the war the economy slumped, tilting Pellatt and Pellatt into bankruptcy. The company owed the Home Bank of Canada $1.7 million - or in today's terms $20 million. With his stock worthless and his business debts out of control, Sir Henry was faced with a heartbreaking decision - a decision which he would always claim was made for him by the City's immovable tax assessors. Faced with an extraordinary tax bill, Sir Henry had no choice but to auction off his prized possessions for a fraction of their worth and to abandon his dream of a noble castle.

The Pellatts moved to their farm in King township in 1924. Lady Pellatt, weakened by the strain of the move and the financial difficulties, passed away later that year at the age of sixty-seven.

We toured most of the castle, including climbing the spiral staircase in the highest turret. (Pant, pant, pant) We also went out to the gardens to see what they had there. (See our picture here.)

We had to get Doug back in time to change into his suit and for me to drive him to the wedding, so we left Casa Loma and headed back. After I got him dropped off, I decided to fill up the car. It's amazing how much we rely on the familiar...I didn't even know which names to look for on the highway in order to find a gas station. The only obvious one I'd seen is PetrolCanada, but I didn't see any of those so far. They also don't have little signs on the highway that tell you what services are available at the at exit, so I played it somewhat safe by sticking close to the hotel area. Eventually I ended up at Esso. Their petrol was priced at 95 cents per litre ?!?!? Oh, hell. How many litres in a gallon? Around four? I decided to give them about $50 and call it good, however that ended up buying would be it. That turned out to be about 3/4 of a tank. Seems like everything out here is 25-30% more expensive. I dont' know if that's because it's in Canada, or because it's a major metropolitan area. (California costs a great deal more than suburban Missouri, too.)

I took the kids back to the hotel and we went swimming...they had a heated, indoor pool. I'd brought their lifesaver-type rings and at first we had the pool entirely to ourselves, which was quite nice. We had a good time paddling around for about an hour, and then a mom with two other little kids came in. This prompts my two to want to shed their floating gear and start to show off. That makes David get in water too deep for him almost immediately, and he freaks and tries to drown himself. Somehow I won't let him do that. After only a few minutes more, a herd of about 10-15 teenaged girls comes busting through the door, running, yelling, screaming, and they leap into the pool and splash all the little kids. Without so much as a glance around, they all starting hauling themselves out of the pool and doing cannonballs back in. Lauren is extremely upset because I had them follow the posted rules and take a shower before they got into the pool. She knows perfectly well that these others weren't following the rules and she's mad about it. "But Mom, they didn't even take a SHOWER!" she shouts indignantly as she's getting splashed and David covers his ears. An older woman meanders into the pool area and sits down, looking serenely and with great tenderness at the pack of airheads invading the pool. She's obviously supposed to be the chaperone, which in her book means following about 20 steps behind and simply keeping a nose count, not order.

Since they can really no longer swim, I ask the kids if they want to try the hot swimming pool. They say sure. Lauren hates it (way too hot) and David takes a few seconds to get used to it and then loves the hot water. Lauren is still greatly discontented, however, and decides to go swimming without me. She tosses her floating ring into the deep end of the pool and decides the best thing to do is jump into the pool and try to hit the ring like a target. Strangely, I'm not hip on this idea, so I come rocketing over to snatch her up before she makes her daredevil jump. While I'm trying to negotiate her out of the idea ("But Mom!"), about half of The Swarm swirls up out of the big pool and clamors into the hot tub, and bursts into song at the top of their lungs, "...And they will know we are Christians by our love, BY OUR LOVE!"

Ah. I might have known.

A Youth Group.

I have never known a church Youth Group which was not loud and overtly obnoxious. I knew a few members of such things which I was in Jr. High school, and they didn't impress me as particularly pious or even nice people. In fact, one of the nicest girls I knew was younger than I, deeply Christian (carried around a Bible), and she never screamed and hollered to pronounce her faith. She simply exemplified what most Christians are taught...she was modest and always on the lookout to be kind and/or lend a hand. The Youth Group folks, on the other hand, were prone to standing on the bus seats and screaming at each other down the aisle, and apparently (from their public banter, at least), many of them had used their Youth Group outings (camping especially) to procure their first sexual experiences. This didn't sound like a church-sanctioned activity to me, but it seemed pretty common.

It seemed pretty much time to go (and I noticed the Chaperone had left), so I lured David out of the hot tub with the promise of dinner, and took both kids into the bathroom to get dried and dressed. We listened to The Swarm continue their "song..." always the same exact 13 words, always shouted as loudly as possible in the reverberating pool area, always followed by self-congratulatory giggles.

While we were getting dressed, they all came dashing into the dressing room (what? are you freaking following me?!?) seeking the sauna. The found it, cranked the dial, and disappeared inside. Well, at least they were quieter in there, despite the fact that they were still shouting their idiotic hymn. Along comes the chaperone. She discovers the Swarm. She leaves. She comes back with a camera.
"Do you all want to be in the picture?"
"YES! YES!"
"Ok, scoot close together....say 'cheese'!"
"Cheeeese!"
"PENIS!!"

I momentarily close my eyes and then open them and continue to brush my hair. Well, it's not a foreign word, anyway. Not like I have to explain what it means. Hell, they've gotten the Birds and Bees talk.
(Parents of little kids: try the book It's Not The Stork. It's written by a couple of doctors and family therapists and covers everything from "Boys and Girls are Different" to sex and pregnancy, through what constitutes a family (and the diversity thereof) up through appropriate/inappropriate touching and even aging. Speaking of inappropriate touching, some of those "stranger danger" topics are covered nicely by the video Stranger Safety by The Safe Side. That one is produced by Julie Clark (Baby Einstein) and John Walsh (America's Most Wanted host, whose six-year-old son disappeared from a mall and whose head was discovered days later in a ditch somewhere). So while it talks about kidnapping and such, it does so in a way that's not very scary, and that gives the kids some actions to take to AVOID the situation, and how to get out of it if they find themselves actually IN it. We checked it out from the library and my two wanted to watch it over and over again.)

I wondered how the chaperone was going to handle the fact that her precious brood had just shouted "penis" in the presence of my six year old and three year old. She turned to David and said, "Those girls are crazy, aren't they?" He nodded, and then the chaperone looked at me and said, "They don't get out much," and left.

Oh sigh.

We went back upstairs and hung up our suits, and then went out to dinner. I also found an ice cream shop to help make up for the fact that we had to leave the pool early, and hit the grocery store that was right next door. Oddly enough, there was very little variety at the store...it also seemed kind of warehouse-ish, on the dirty side, and not particularly the best area of town. I was also lucky to have brought along a backpack...there wasn't a plastic or paper bag to be had in the whole place. Whether this was a function of resource conservation or a means of keeping costs down, I have no idea.

We got back fairly late and I put the kids to bed and started working on the computer for awhile. Doug called around 1 a.m. needing a ride back to the hotel from the wedding...so I was pretty angst-ridden at leaving the kids by themselves. But they were pretty soundly asleep, so after thinking a bit, I wrote a note and left it for the kids. The front told them that if Mom and Dad are gone, to take the note to the front desk. The back was for the front desk, noting that neither parent had returned and asking them to notify authorities and contact the listed guardian ASAP.

I rather enjoyed tearing the note up when we got back.