August 5, 2006: Ontario & Michigan

When we started planning this trip, I gave thought to taking Highway 17 out of Toronto and driving home on the Trans-Canada Highway, but I decided the northern tier of the United States held much more of interest to us. I was amused to find a song (on The Rough Guide to the Music of Canada) that tells us what we’re missing. Wendell Ferguson doesn’t put quite as positive a spin on Highway 17 as Bobby Troop did on Route 66. Here’s an excerpt:

“Rocks & Trees”

“Highway 17 runs in a roughly north by northwest direction across the Canadian province of Ontario, linking the remote towns and settlements. The rugged beauty of the land up there has inspired both paintings and poems. As a musician I have traveled this road many times... many, many, many times.”

Rocks & trees, trees & rocks
If you've driven 17 you've seen lots
Though I dearly love this land
I've stood all I can stand of
Rocks & trees, trees & rocks

Rocks & trees, trees & rocks
Reams and reams of endless trees and tons of rocks
The whole north is just proliferous
With metamorphic and coniferous
Rocks & trees, trees & rocks

Rocks & trees, trees & rocks
Motel signs, hydro lines, and a flattened fox
Oh construction site machinery
Is a welcome change of scenery
Rocks & trees, trees & rocks….

Trees & rocks, rocks & trees
A guy can quickly get real sick of seein' these
What's the deal with all the tourists?
It's just shield here and some forests
Trees & rocks, rocks & trees

Rocks & trees, trees & rocks
A double line and I'm stuck behind a dozen trucks
By the time you hit Kenora
You don't want to see no more of
Rocks & trees, trees & rocks

This morning, our mysterious hosts served us cantaloupe and pancakes, some with peach compote and some with Tommy’s favorite, blueberries. We thanked our friends and departed at our usual early hour: noon.

Perhaps it was the three-day weekend, or it may have just been a series of breakdowns and a big truck fire, but the traffic was ridiculously dense most of the way to Kitchener, more than 50 miles from Toronto (or nearly 100 kilometres if you prefer.) When we finally broke free of the traffic, though, it was smooth sailing all the way to the border.

We had lunch just before reaching London, and we left Ontario at Sarnia, where we paid another toll and crossed Blue Water Bridge into Port Huron, Michigan, on the shores of Lake Huron. The long lines at the border crossing added another two hours to our travel time. The boys continued entertaining themselves by rereading Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.

The asphalt on our way to Flint, headquarters of General Motors, was in dreadful repair for the most part, as we had been advised. I remarked on the irony of the state that for so long gave us most of our automobiles having such poor roads. The Rust Belt has truly fallen on hard times.

Debbie’s great-grandfather and great-grandmother on her father’s side were illiterate peasants who emigrated from Poland to Alpena, Michigan, early in the 1900s. Her father Bob was the first in his family to attend college, at the University of Michigan, where he met Dorothy, Debbie’s mother. Debbie and her sister Meryl were born in Detroit. As I’ve mentioned previously, Bob has written a book about the town of Saginaw, where he grew up.

We bought gas for $2.98 a gallon and spent the night at the Best Western in Battle Creek, home to the Kellogg’s company. There they operate a faux factory tour and mini theme park called Cereal City. It’s designed around the cartoon characters that the company uses to get our kids hooked on their sugary products. We decided we’d give it a miss.

August 4, 2006: Toronto

It was a beautiful day – not too hot or humid. Debbie went out for a run this morning with one of our hosts. At breakfast, we discussed our other host’s brother, who moved to Michigan, and the terrible state of the roads there. I lamented the self-destructive American tendency to avoid paying for the repair of infrastructure until it has already harmed our economy. We also talked about their daughter’s budding feminism (she was outraged by Kate’s treatment in a stage production of The Taming of the Shrew) and recommended she visit the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls.

We rode the subway, part of the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), from the Coxwell stop to Yorkville, a tony, trendy central district of the city. Toronto was originally called York.

On the way there, we got an earful of complaints about the mismanagement and labor woes the transit system is experiencing, including a recent wildcat strike that brought the city to a near-standstill on a very hot day. Most Torontonians feel that the subway’s promotional slogan, “Ride the Rocket,” is positively risible. No one calls it “the Rocket.” It impressed me, however, as reasonably clean and efficient.

This cleanliness is probably a product of general Canadian civic-mindedness rather than an ill-conceived anti-litter campaign that portrays riders as pigs.

In Yorkville we visited the first of two rather unusual collections: the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library, a beautiful room full of books, manuscripts, journals, and memorabilia related to the prolific British author of the Sherlock Holmes series.

I talked with the librarian about a few of the many facets of Doyle’s life, including his several trips to Canada, his influence on science fiction, his fascination with spiritualism, and his friendship with Harry Houdini. The relationship ended in a bitter feud over the subject of the supernatural, which Houdini was committed to debunking.

The Toronto Public Library is the largest in Canada and, we are informed, the largest public library in North America if gauged by the number of branches (99) and by the number of items circulated every year (around 30 million). It’s the second busiest library in the world if rated by number of visits, exceeded only by the Hong Kong Public Library. Seattle's public libraries, while not quite as busy, are very well patronized, and our massive, high-tech Central Library, designed by a controversial Dutchman, Rem Koolhaas, is an acclaimed architectural landmark worthy of a visit by librarians and non-librarians alike.

We were interested to learn that our librarian friend would soon be competing with a crew of librarians in Toronto's annual dragon boat races. The team chose a whimsical name for themselves: "The Dewey Decimators." The races will take place at Ontario Place, three manmade islands on Lake Ontario just offshore from Toronto, which we rode a ferry to see on our last visit to the city.

We walked down Bloor Street past the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum (affectionately known as ROM), currently undergoing a radical Daniel Libeskind redesign.

The renowned architect, who also designed the controversial replacement for Manhattan’s World Trade Center, envisions a crystal growing out of the old museum.

We stopped for doughnuts and coffee at Tim Hortons, a wildly-popular Canadian chain.

Our second offbeat collection of the day was the Bata Shoe Museum, another large postmodern building that bears a resemblance to a shoebox. It’s devoted to the history of footwear, from its ancient origins to Michael Jordan’s Nikes, an odd combination of cross-cultural anthropology and celebrity worship. The shoes of many greats were there – John Lennon, Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, Mikhail Barishnikov, Winston Churchill, John McEnroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and more – together with special exhibits on famous shoe designers as well as Chinese and Native American footwear.

In the evening, we traveled via subway and bus to Little Italy, where we joined the locals at a very authentic eatery, followed by gelato at a nearby gelateria. It was a perfect way to end the day.

August 3, 2006: New York & Ontario

Signs of Canada:

• Metric measurements

• Red maple leaves

• Mild-mannered police (or at least innocuous-looking; we haven’t been pulled over yet)

• The French language

• British spellings (e.g. Harbourfront Centre)

• The Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto

We intended to reach Toronto by mid-afternoon, but an impulsive historical detour put the kibosh on that plan. Leaving Ithaca, we headed north along Lake Cayuga. When I saw the sign for the town of Seneca Falls, however, I turned off. Seneca Falls is significant for its location on the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, part of the Erie Canal System, between the two largest Finger Lakes. But the town is also important for being the site of the first women’s rights convention in 1848.

Growing out of the Methodist and Quaker anti-slavery movements, the gathering drew 300 women and men, 100 of which signed an unprecedented document calling for female emancipation and empowerment. Penned by Seneca Falls resident Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friends, it was an eloquent rewording and emendation of the Declaration of Independence, stating that “all men and women are created equal.” In an age when women were denied the vote, property rights, and education, the convention and the writing of the “Declaration of Sentiments” were inspiring and, eventually, world-changing events.

There are numerous historical sites and museums in the town, one of which, the Seneca Museum of Waterways and Industry, the boys found diverting for its presentation of early machinery. A poster on its wall, for an embalmed 65-foot whale that toured the area in the 1800s, was especially arresting.

Approaching Niagara Falls, we were surrounded by the beauty of the broad river on the one hand and the dreariness of an industrial wasteland on the other. But we left the industry behind as we neared the falls. The river drops 50 feet just before the final plunge, creating rushing rapids on both its American and Canadian branches. The hotels, casinos, and towers of the resorts on both sides have in no way diminished since we last visited; apparently people do still come here for their honeymoons.

We paid a toll, had our passports inspected by a pretty blonde customs officer, crossed Rainbow Bridge, and joined the crowds admiring the American Falls

and being soaked by the mists from the Canadian Falls. Then we took the expressway, Queen Elizabeth Way, which became a parking lot from Hamilton all the way through downtown Toronto. Rain, construction, and rush-hour congestion caused what might have been a half-hour drive to become a nearly two-hour crawl. We’ve dealt with bad traffic in Atlanta, Washington, New York, and Boston, but this beat all of them by many a mile.

To pass the time, we listened to a CD called The Rough Guide to the Music of Canada. We laughed as we drew alongside a truck belonging to a Canadian trucking company by the name of Fluke. Their slogan: “If it’s on time, it’s a Fluke.” Eventually the tallest building in the world came into view. Since we ascended the CN Tower on our last visit, we won’t do it this time, but it’s an exciting, if pricy, experience. There’s a glass floor at 1,122 feet and a “sky pod” at 1,465 feet. The tower tops out at 1,815 feet.

For reasons of security, our Torontonian friends prefer that their names and photos not appear on this blog. We first met the couple, a manager at a clothing company and a librarian, when we were all living in Japan nearly 20 years ago. They and their young daughter greeted us, welcomed us to the Upper Beaches neighborhood, and served us hamburgers, hot dogs, Greek salad, and a superb gazpacho for dinner.

We sat in their basement until the wee hours watching the DVD of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Tommy found the film intriguing, but he objected to the aliens’ humanoid form, since he’s decided that aliens, if they exist, are highly unlikely to resemble us.