Touring Toronto
Morning came far too early....7:30 is when I set the alarm (Doug insisted on a early start, which is laugh), and I got up and took a shower. The showerhead is weird, and seems to only point towards the wall. ?!?!
I asked Doug if he wanted me to start looking up websites for the various attractions in downtown Toronto, and he insisted that it would easier to just go downstairs and ask the hotel staff for information. Ok, fine. I flipped through a couple of magazines (hello? I thought we were getting an early start?), and finally turned on the television. There are at least two stations which are broadcast entirely in French. It's disconcerting to be looking at a T.V. and not have the slightest clue what anyone is saying.
One of those stations was running kids' shows. I left that on and waited. Lauren was the first one to respond to the T.V. being on. She blinked at the screen for a bit and laughed at a couple of things. While she was doing that, I ran a warm bath for her, so after the show I tossed her into the tub and scrubbed Lake Huron off of her.
David took forever to wake up, and wasn't keen on the whole idea of getting a bath, either. I scrubbed HIM down and washed his hair and by that time Doug was getting up. (I'm starting to see what "early start" means. It means MOM gets an "early start.") I had him get the kids out of the bath while I put on shoes, and then I dried everyone's hair. (What fun!) The bathroom was now officially a disaster. No WONDER my house looks so awful, I have three people who don't do a THING to pick up after themselves. Ick! You could also now barely walk through the room, so I set out the kids' clothes for them to get dressed and I started unpacking my stuff into drawers, and putting lots of stuff into the closet. That helped a great deal. I noticed that Doug was looking up the various downtown attractions via the laptop. We were all ready to go by this point, but he wasn't. We waited and waited. Finally I snapped something about waiting around while he was getting a map and he says, "Look, I can't do this all myself, you know. I need help." My first instinct was to throttle him, but instead I asked through gritted teeth, "OK, fine. What kind of help do you want?"
"Well," he says, "I need to get all that stuff out of the cooler in the car, for one."
"Good! Great! Go! Get out! Do it NOW!" (I'd been hearing about this grand adventure since the night before, but I notice he never actually stepped forward and DID it.) I packed a backpack with last-minute items (maps, an area magazine, a camera, our documentation) and by the time Doug got back with the ever-loving cooler, we were ready to go.
He had pretty good directions to the CN Tower, but we still ended up slightly lost. We mapped out a new route, and while trying to figure out exactly how fast 100 km/hr is (the posted speed limit) and where the exit for Queen's Quay might be, I said, "I need to tell you, I'm really mad at you."
"Why?"
"Because. This morning you told me NOT to look up info on the attractions online, you simply forbade me to do it, because it'd be easier to go downstairs and ask. And here you sit, not more than two hours later, doing what? Looking up the information on the area attractions online--"
Doug starts to laugh.
"--and then you WON'T go downstairs and ask, and you have the audacity to turn to me and say, 'I can't do this all myself, you know. I need help.' So...what? You think I'm too incompetent to look up the information myself and you have to do it instead? Is it one of your passive-aggressive things? What is your deal?!?"
"Ok, ok," he says. "Mea culpa. I can see that. And no, it's not passive-agressive. I'm NOT passive-aggressive. I'm NEVER trying to be passive-aggressive."
"You have passive-aggressive down to such an art form that you revert to it even without thinking about it," I said. "And I did NOT appreciate whatever that was. Don't do it again."
He, of course, thought it was all rather amusing. Grrr.
We ate lunch at Pier 4 down on the harborfront. We ran into (shock) some seagulls, who weren't at all shy. The kids thought they were wonderful birds, particularly since they were NOT shy and let them walk right up close before freaking out. At one point both kids got down on hands and knees in order to look into the lake (Doug and I weren't keen on the idea that they could fall off the boardwalk and into the water, however), and after a bit, one of the seagulls came very close to David. After we pointed the bird out, David grabbed a leaf and held it between his thumb and forefinger. The seagull was ecstatic...BIRD TREATS! He was CONVINCED that he was going to get a nummy. He got right up close to David and eventually took the leaf out of David's hand, ran off, clamped on the leaf a couple of times, spat it out, and looked at David rather reproachfully over one shoulder. (Do seagulls have shoulders?) We ordered our food and waited. Lauren got bored quickly, and said, "If you don't mind, I'm going to go look at the seagulls." She stepped down and walked over to the boardwalk (I followed, obviously), where she shaded her eyes with her hand. The wind had started to pick up, blowing her hair into her eyes. She brushed it back out of her face, and gazed admiringly at the seagulls, and walked back and forth along the boardwalk with a big grin, flapping her arms like wings.
We got lunch and sat out on the patio, which overlooked Lake Ontario. The two people sitting next to us were speaking French. "But dat's not interesting," says David. "I don't know what they're saying!" We were eating along happily when there came a screeching noise from nearby. We looked over to see the seagull standing on the patio, looking at us rather expectantly.
You owe me, dammit. Fork it over.
David looked overjoyed at the idea, but I said, "Don't! It'll encourage them to come onto the patio, and other people may not like it. The restaurant might come and yell at us. We'll feed him later, don't worry."
The seagull hung around, occasionally making loud, squawking demands. He was joined by another seagull (who was often chased off in little fits of jealous rage by the first one) and a pigeon, who was so used to people that he ran all around the patio and under the table. Doug cleared his throat and said, "Ok, the pigeon just ran over my foot." The kids laughed so hard they nearly spit out their food.
Finally were were done and we had lots of French Fries leftover. I tore up some of the leftover hamburger bun and we split the leftovers between the two fry containers. We went a little way down the boardwalk closer to the harbor. The seagull did NOT follow us.
"That's ok," I said. "Doug, see if you can get him over here." (I don't have a lot of seagull experience, can you tell?)
Doug took a piece of fry and tossed it in the general direction of the seagull, who screeched, dived for it, and was immediately joined by three more gulls. And five more. And they came sailing off the rooftops and in from nowhere, and the air was filled with flapping and hovering and screeching.
"Holy sh*t, it's like Hitchcock!" I said.
We were now arse-deep in eager seagulls.
At least thirty pairs of beady, black bird eyes bobbed at us.
The kids giggled. I tossed a piece of French Fry to the right.
An explosion of flapping gulls erupted around the landing site.
The kids giggled again. They tossed a couple of pieces, with the same result. Lauren dropped a piece less than six inches from her own feet, and shrieked and stumbled backwards as the gulls pounced. Dad immediately halted the whole process and went over the rules about keeping the Seagull Goodies far away from oneself.
The gulls were joined by a couple of brave pigeons, and two little finches. I tested a theory of mine about Seagull Greed by tossing a french fry down off the boardwalk and into the harbor, which brought a duck swimming as fast as a bullet. (And yes, I'm right, Seagulls will do just about anything in order to eat just about anything.)
When all the fries were gone, everyone was quite sad. I took a photo of the gulls and suddenly they all took off at once, landing about forty feel away. Someone down there was tossing out bird goodies, too. We had to laugh.
We walked back down the boardwalk and saw a lot of Coast Guard types...several search and rescue boats and lots of uniformed folks milling around. They seemed to be having some kind of search and rescue demo using rafts and dummies over in the other harbor. At that point we decided to take a boat tour of Toronto Islands. We still had about 25 minutes before the boat left, so we dragged the kids off to find a bathroom before embarking. On the way back, one of the Coast Guard uniformed folks stopped us and said "hi" to the kids, and asked if they wanted to speak with Bobbie, the Coast Guard Auxiliary search and rescue boat. A little, red, plastic boat, about three and half feet tall and complete with two Canadian flags flying from the back, wheeled around, rolled forward, and looked at them. With eyes.
"Hi there!" he said. "I'm Bobbie, the Coast Guard Auxiliary search and rescue boat! What are your names?" (See a photo of a Bobbie boat here. And a closeup of him here.)
The kids didn't quite know what to make of this, but they quietly answered. The uniformed officer repeated their names more loudly to the boat.
"David and Lauren," he said. "It's good to meet you. I really like your green shirt," the boat said to Lauren. "What's that on the front of it?"
"Um...a rabbit holding flowers," she said.
"It looks like flowers," said Bobbie. "It's very pretty."
"Thanks!"
"Now let me ask you something....when you guys go swimming, do you always go swimming with Mom or Dad?"
They were bewildered. David shook his head.
"You should never go swimming alone," said Bobbie. "You should ALWAYS have Mom or Dad or another adult with you."
This sounded like sage advice to them, so they nodded.
"Would you like to see what I can do?" Bobbie asked.
They nodded enthusiastically.
"I can move my eyes from side to side, like this," he said. "And I can wink, too. Like this. Can you wink?"
They dutifully winked back.
"Very good!" said Bobbie. "I have lights, too. See, I can light them up. I have my green light (flash), my yellow light (flash), and my white light (flash). And when I'm out on a search and rescue mission and I need to see in the dark, I have my big spotlight that I can use." Bobbie turned on the spotlight, which shone on David's shirt. You could see his brain cranking away at all this. "And I have my blue light. When I'm on a mission and I need to get somewhere, I can turn this on." The blue light turned on and started rotating like a police light. David moved his head in circles, following the movement of the light. "And I have a horn. Do you want to hear it? You better cover your ears, it's pretty loud." They covered their ears and Bobbie honked at them. Pleasantly, it wasn't too loud. "That tells other ships to get out of the way fast, because I need to help someone!"
"Oh!" said David.
"Do you know what else I like?" Bobbie asked them. "Hugs. Can you give me a hug?"
Lauren smiled and stepped up, putting her arms around Bobbie.
David shook his head emphatically.
Bobbie them offered coloring books, which his "helper" passed out, and he repeated who he was and told both kids to have a good time.
We made it back to the tour boat with just a couple of minutes to spare.
We got on board and went up to the top deck. David turns to Doug and says, "Dad, was Bobbie really real, or a robot?"
"Kind of like a robot," said Doug. "But a real person was making him do stuff. He was kind of cool, wasn't he?"
"Yeah!" interrupted Lauren. "And I gave him a hug! I want a ride on Bobbie."
"Oh, honey, Bobbie's too small. He can't give rides, only the big boats can do that," I said. Then I looked at Doug. "Did you see the guy with the remote and the headset?"
"No, I didn't," he said.
"He was back a ways. I started looking for him when he started in on the color of clothes the kids were wearing. I thought it was a tape recorder kind of thing before that. I liked Bobbie, he's quite a deal."
David was looking out over the water.
"Hey, David," I said. "So what does it mean when a Coast Guard boat has a flashing blue light on?"
He screwed up his face and thought deeply. "Um...for ships to get out of the way?"
"True. Why do you suppose they need to get out of the way?"
"Because he's in a hurry?"
"He is. And why is he in a hurry?"
Ponder. "Because...he...rescues?"
"Right! He's going to help someone in the water, to rescue them. It's like a police boat."
We had to wait for a few minutes to leave the dock because the wind had picked up, and made the lake really rough. We left soon enough and got a 45-minute tour of the Toronto Islands, which was pretty interesting. I got several good photos, but noticed the battery was going dead. Sigh.
After the tour we got back off the boat and the kids spotted Bobbie again. Lauren went racing up to him and announced she wanted a ride, which of course she couldn't have. Bobbie's "helpers" were very nice to her, and explained that he was too little and that he was "sleeping." I assume his battery had gotten low or something.
We headed over to the CN Tower, which was a bit of a walk from there. The kids got all distracted by some event tents setup, and despite the fact that the tents were empty, the lure of huge piles of small, yellow leaves proved to be too much...both David and Lauren insisted on gathering double handfuls of leaves and throwing them up into the air. To our dismay, we discovered that tickets to the thing were going to run about $100 for all of us to go. Now it was OUR turn to be bewildered. Instead we got some ice cream and watched the birds and squirrels in the garden, and then went over to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Museum. We had hoped to see a TV or radio show being produced, but none were running at the time we got there. Instead we talked to a heck of a front desk person, who told us about the parts of the museum and what was where. She asked the kids if they watched a lot of the CBC.
"Well, they watched some of it this morning," I said. "We're actually from St. Louis, Missouri, so it's kind of hard for them to see much of the CBC!"
"Oh!" she said. "So you're more likely to watch PBS. I have some stickers here...I bet you guys know who this is!"
"CURIOUS GEORGE!" they shouted in unison.
She told us that both the Canadian "Mr. Dressup" and our "Mr. Rogers" came over from England together, were quite good friends, and they produced very similar kinds of shows, one in the U.S. and one in Canada. We also saw a display for "Sesame Park," which is of course a Sesame Street kind of thing, but without the educational facet of it. It was only produced from 1995 to 2000 and was apparently meant only as entertainment for younger kids. ?!?!? You can tell it's the same puppets as Sesame Street...and must not have had a very good following if it was only produced for five years. I wonder why they didn't put the educational part in?
There was also a kid's story about a young pioneer girl who planted lots of "Maple keys" (seeds) and was sort of like a Johnny Appleseed, but for maple trees. I stood there for a bit and then elbowed Doug. "Look," I said. "Notice her clothes? The story calls her a 'young pioneer girl,' but look how closely her clothes resemble the Pilgrims."
Doug simply looked at it and nodded.
"You're forgetting. This is Canada. They don't have any such thing as Pilgrims over here. So what's with the clothes? Is that just the fashion of the day, or something from a particular part of Europe, or France, or....what?"
No idea.
After that it was pretty much time to head back. We got caught in a small bit of rain, and we ducked into the Raddison to avoid it. It was extremely short-lived, and we drove back to the hotel. We ate at Montanna's...a themed and overpriced restaurant. I'm going to take the van and find a grocery store (g-d bless the "find nearby" function of Google Maps!) and we'll start getting a bit more self-sufficient here.
Doug went to meet some of his World of Warcraft guys...he's been playing online games (Shadowdale MUDD, EQ, WoW) with some of these people for the last 15 years. We're actually HERE because one of them is getting married; tonight he went out to get a drink with some of them.
And, of course, the website has Toronto pictures here. I'm also adding movies to the site...sort of a test run...
I asked Doug if he wanted me to start looking up websites for the various attractions in downtown Toronto, and he insisted that it would easier to just go downstairs and ask the hotel staff for information. Ok, fine. I flipped through a couple of magazines (hello? I thought we were getting an early start?), and finally turned on the television. There are at least two stations which are broadcast entirely in French. It's disconcerting to be looking at a T.V. and not have the slightest clue what anyone is saying.
One of those stations was running kids' shows. I left that on and waited. Lauren was the first one to respond to the T.V. being on. She blinked at the screen for a bit and laughed at a couple of things. While she was doing that, I ran a warm bath for her, so after the show I tossed her into the tub and scrubbed Lake Huron off of her.
David took forever to wake up, and wasn't keen on the whole idea of getting a bath, either. I scrubbed HIM down and washed his hair and by that time Doug was getting up. (I'm starting to see what "early start" means. It means MOM gets an "early start.") I had him get the kids out of the bath while I put on shoes, and then I dried everyone's hair. (What fun!) The bathroom was now officially a disaster. No WONDER my house looks so awful, I have three people who don't do a THING to pick up after themselves. Ick! You could also now barely walk through the room, so I set out the kids' clothes for them to get dressed and I started unpacking my stuff into drawers, and putting lots of stuff into the closet. That helped a great deal. I noticed that Doug was looking up the various downtown attractions via the laptop. We were all ready to go by this point, but he wasn't. We waited and waited. Finally I snapped something about waiting around while he was getting a map and he says, "Look, I can't do this all myself, you know. I need help." My first instinct was to throttle him, but instead I asked through gritted teeth, "OK, fine. What kind of help do you want?"
"Well," he says, "I need to get all that stuff out of the cooler in the car, for one."
"Good! Great! Go! Get out! Do it NOW!" (I'd been hearing about this grand adventure since the night before, but I notice he never actually stepped forward and DID it.) I packed a backpack with last-minute items (maps, an area magazine, a camera, our documentation) and by the time Doug got back with the ever-loving cooler, we were ready to go.
He had pretty good directions to the CN Tower, but we still ended up slightly lost. We mapped out a new route, and while trying to figure out exactly how fast 100 km/hr is (the posted speed limit) and where the exit for Queen's Quay might be, I said, "I need to tell you, I'm really mad at you."
"Why?"
"Because. This morning you told me NOT to look up info on the attractions online, you simply forbade me to do it, because it'd be easier to go downstairs and ask. And here you sit, not more than two hours later, doing what? Looking up the information on the area attractions online--"
Doug starts to laugh.
"--and then you WON'T go downstairs and ask, and you have the audacity to turn to me and say, 'I can't do this all myself, you know. I need help.' So...what? You think I'm too incompetent to look up the information myself and you have to do it instead? Is it one of your passive-aggressive things? What is your deal?!?"
"Ok, ok," he says. "Mea culpa. I can see that. And no, it's not passive-agressive. I'm NOT passive-aggressive. I'm NEVER trying to be passive-aggressive."
"You have passive-aggressive down to such an art form that you revert to it even without thinking about it," I said. "And I did NOT appreciate whatever that was. Don't do it again."
He, of course, thought it was all rather amusing. Grrr.
We ate lunch at Pier 4 down on the harborfront. We ran into (shock) some seagulls, who weren't at all shy. The kids thought they were wonderful birds, particularly since they were NOT shy and let them walk right up close before freaking out. At one point both kids got down on hands and knees in order to look into the lake (Doug and I weren't keen on the idea that they could fall off the boardwalk and into the water, however), and after a bit, one of the seagulls came very close to David. After we pointed the bird out, David grabbed a leaf and held it between his thumb and forefinger. The seagull was ecstatic...BIRD TREATS! He was CONVINCED that he was going to get a nummy. He got right up close to David and eventually took the leaf out of David's hand, ran off, clamped on the leaf a couple of times, spat it out, and looked at David rather reproachfully over one shoulder. (Do seagulls have shoulders?) We ordered our food and waited. Lauren got bored quickly, and said, "If you don't mind, I'm going to go look at the seagulls." She stepped down and walked over to the boardwalk (I followed, obviously), where she shaded her eyes with her hand. The wind had started to pick up, blowing her hair into her eyes. She brushed it back out of her face, and gazed admiringly at the seagulls, and walked back and forth along the boardwalk with a big grin, flapping her arms like wings.
We got lunch and sat out on the patio, which overlooked Lake Ontario. The two people sitting next to us were speaking French. "But dat's not interesting," says David. "I don't know what they're saying!" We were eating along happily when there came a screeching noise from nearby. We looked over to see the seagull standing on the patio, looking at us rather expectantly.
You owe me, dammit. Fork it over.
David looked overjoyed at the idea, but I said, "Don't! It'll encourage them to come onto the patio, and other people may not like it. The restaurant might come and yell at us. We'll feed him later, don't worry."
The seagull hung around, occasionally making loud, squawking demands. He was joined by another seagull (who was often chased off in little fits of jealous rage by the first one) and a pigeon, who was so used to people that he ran all around the patio and under the table. Doug cleared his throat and said, "Ok, the pigeon just ran over my foot." The kids laughed so hard they nearly spit out their food.
Finally were were done and we had lots of French Fries leftover. I tore up some of the leftover hamburger bun and we split the leftovers between the two fry containers. We went a little way down the boardwalk closer to the harbor. The seagull did NOT follow us.
"That's ok," I said. "Doug, see if you can get him over here." (I don't have a lot of seagull experience, can you tell?)
Doug took a piece of fry and tossed it in the general direction of the seagull, who screeched, dived for it, and was immediately joined by three more gulls. And five more. And they came sailing off the rooftops and in from nowhere, and the air was filled with flapping and hovering and screeching.
"Holy sh*t, it's like Hitchcock!" I said.
We were now arse-deep in eager seagulls.
At least thirty pairs of beady, black bird eyes bobbed at us.
The kids giggled. I tossed a piece of French Fry to the right.
An explosion of flapping gulls erupted around the landing site.
The kids giggled again. They tossed a couple of pieces, with the same result. Lauren dropped a piece less than six inches from her own feet, and shrieked and stumbled backwards as the gulls pounced. Dad immediately halted the whole process and went over the rules about keeping the Seagull Goodies far away from oneself.
The gulls were joined by a couple of brave pigeons, and two little finches. I tested a theory of mine about Seagull Greed by tossing a french fry down off the boardwalk and into the harbor, which brought a duck swimming as fast as a bullet. (And yes, I'm right, Seagulls will do just about anything in order to eat just about anything.)
When all the fries were gone, everyone was quite sad. I took a photo of the gulls and suddenly they all took off at once, landing about forty feel away. Someone down there was tossing out bird goodies, too. We had to laugh.
We walked back down the boardwalk and saw a lot of Coast Guard types...several search and rescue boats and lots of uniformed folks milling around. They seemed to be having some kind of search and rescue demo using rafts and dummies over in the other harbor. At that point we decided to take a boat tour of Toronto Islands. We still had about 25 minutes before the boat left, so we dragged the kids off to find a bathroom before embarking. On the way back, one of the Coast Guard uniformed folks stopped us and said "hi" to the kids, and asked if they wanted to speak with Bobbie, the Coast Guard Auxiliary search and rescue boat. A little, red, plastic boat, about three and half feet tall and complete with two Canadian flags flying from the back, wheeled around, rolled forward, and looked at them. With eyes.
"Hi there!" he said. "I'm Bobbie, the Coast Guard Auxiliary search and rescue boat! What are your names?" (See a photo of a Bobbie boat here. And a closeup of him here.)
The kids didn't quite know what to make of this, but they quietly answered. The uniformed officer repeated their names more loudly to the boat.
"David and Lauren," he said. "It's good to meet you. I really like your green shirt," the boat said to Lauren. "What's that on the front of it?"
"Um...a rabbit holding flowers," she said.
"It looks like flowers," said Bobbie. "It's very pretty."
"Thanks!"
"Now let me ask you something....when you guys go swimming, do you always go swimming with Mom or Dad?"
They were bewildered. David shook his head.
"You should never go swimming alone," said Bobbie. "You should ALWAYS have Mom or Dad or another adult with you."
This sounded like sage advice to them, so they nodded.
"Would you like to see what I can do?" Bobbie asked.
They nodded enthusiastically.
"I can move my eyes from side to side, like this," he said. "And I can wink, too. Like this. Can you wink?"
They dutifully winked back.
"Very good!" said Bobbie. "I have lights, too. See, I can light them up. I have my green light (flash), my yellow light (flash), and my white light (flash). And when I'm out on a search and rescue mission and I need to see in the dark, I have my big spotlight that I can use." Bobbie turned on the spotlight, which shone on David's shirt. You could see his brain cranking away at all this. "And I have my blue light. When I'm on a mission and I need to get somewhere, I can turn this on." The blue light turned on and started rotating like a police light. David moved his head in circles, following the movement of the light. "And I have a horn. Do you want to hear it? You better cover your ears, it's pretty loud." They covered their ears and Bobbie honked at them. Pleasantly, it wasn't too loud. "That tells other ships to get out of the way fast, because I need to help someone!"
"Oh!" said David.
"Do you know what else I like?" Bobbie asked them. "Hugs. Can you give me a hug?"
Lauren smiled and stepped up, putting her arms around Bobbie.
David shook his head emphatically.
Bobbie them offered coloring books, which his "helper" passed out, and he repeated who he was and told both kids to have a good time.
We made it back to the tour boat with just a couple of minutes to spare.
We got on board and went up to the top deck. David turns to Doug and says, "Dad, was Bobbie really real, or a robot?"
"Kind of like a robot," said Doug. "But a real person was making him do stuff. He was kind of cool, wasn't he?"
"Yeah!" interrupted Lauren. "And I gave him a hug! I want a ride on Bobbie."
"Oh, honey, Bobbie's too small. He can't give rides, only the big boats can do that," I said. Then I looked at Doug. "Did you see the guy with the remote and the headset?"
"No, I didn't," he said.
"He was back a ways. I started looking for him when he started in on the color of clothes the kids were wearing. I thought it was a tape recorder kind of thing before that. I liked Bobbie, he's quite a deal."
David was looking out over the water.
"Hey, David," I said. "So what does it mean when a Coast Guard boat has a flashing blue light on?"
He screwed up his face and thought deeply. "Um...for ships to get out of the way?"
"True. Why do you suppose they need to get out of the way?"
"Because he's in a hurry?"
"He is. And why is he in a hurry?"
Ponder. "Because...he...rescues?"
"Right! He's going to help someone in the water, to rescue them. It's like a police boat."
We had to wait for a few minutes to leave the dock because the wind had picked up, and made the lake really rough. We left soon enough and got a 45-minute tour of the Toronto Islands, which was pretty interesting. I got several good photos, but noticed the battery was going dead. Sigh.
After the tour we got back off the boat and the kids spotted Bobbie again. Lauren went racing up to him and announced she wanted a ride, which of course she couldn't have. Bobbie's "helpers" were very nice to her, and explained that he was too little and that he was "sleeping." I assume his battery had gotten low or something.
We headed over to the CN Tower, which was a bit of a walk from there. The kids got all distracted by some event tents setup, and despite the fact that the tents were empty, the lure of huge piles of small, yellow leaves proved to be too much...both David and Lauren insisted on gathering double handfuls of leaves and throwing them up into the air. To our dismay, we discovered that tickets to the thing were going to run about $100 for all of us to go. Now it was OUR turn to be bewildered. Instead we got some ice cream and watched the birds and squirrels in the garden, and then went over to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Museum. We had hoped to see a TV or radio show being produced, but none were running at the time we got there. Instead we talked to a heck of a front desk person, who told us about the parts of the museum and what was where. She asked the kids if they watched a lot of the CBC.
"Well, they watched some of it this morning," I said. "We're actually from St. Louis, Missouri, so it's kind of hard for them to see much of the CBC!"
"Oh!" she said. "So you're more likely to watch PBS. I have some stickers here...I bet you guys know who this is!"
"CURIOUS GEORGE!" they shouted in unison.
She told us that both the Canadian "Mr. Dressup" and our "Mr. Rogers" came over from England together, were quite good friends, and they produced very similar kinds of shows, one in the U.S. and one in Canada. We also saw a display for "Sesame Park," which is of course a Sesame Street kind of thing, but without the educational facet of it. It was only produced from 1995 to 2000 and was apparently meant only as entertainment for younger kids. ?!?!? You can tell it's the same puppets as Sesame Street...and must not have had a very good following if it was only produced for five years. I wonder why they didn't put the educational part in?
There was also a kid's story about a young pioneer girl who planted lots of "Maple keys" (seeds) and was sort of like a Johnny Appleseed, but for maple trees. I stood there for a bit and then elbowed Doug. "Look," I said. "Notice her clothes? The story calls her a 'young pioneer girl,' but look how closely her clothes resemble the Pilgrims."
Doug simply looked at it and nodded.
"You're forgetting. This is Canada. They don't have any such thing as Pilgrims over here. So what's with the clothes? Is that just the fashion of the day, or something from a particular part of Europe, or France, or....what?"
No idea.
After that it was pretty much time to head back. We got caught in a small bit of rain, and we ducked into the Raddison to avoid it. It was extremely short-lived, and we drove back to the hotel. We ate at Montanna's...a themed and overpriced restaurant. I'm going to take the van and find a grocery store (g-d bless the "find nearby" function of Google Maps!) and we'll start getting a bit more self-sufficient here.
Doug went to meet some of his World of Warcraft guys...he's been playing online games (Shadowdale MUDD, EQ, WoW) with some of these people for the last 15 years. We're actually HERE because one of them is getting married; tonight he went out to get a drink with some of them.
And, of course, the website has Toronto pictures here. I'm also adding movies to the site...sort of a test run...
posted by Kelly at
10:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home