Toronto

I was able to time my visit to Ma and Ba in Toronto to coincide with Julie and D's visit over the Canada Day/Independence Day long weekend. The weather ended up being beautiful throughout my stay. I got in on Thursday and was picked up by D and Julie, as Ma and Ba took Austin and Mari to the Lion Safari for the day. D wanted to check out a new Mel Lastman square area that he'd heard about in North York. When we got there, we discovered it wasn't so much of a square but we were directed to Baton Rouge for dinner by two different groups of passersby.  Despite the name, the restaurant turned out to be a rib place (with very little connection to Louisiana cuisine). The food was pretty good, very substantial with D and I sharing a big plate of ribs.

The next day was Canada Day and we headed down to the Harbourfront where there were a lot of free activities lined up. I was amazed at the number of new condos and apartment buildings in the area. It was a beautiful sunny day and the crowds were out in force, with various musicians, performers, booths and other activities, both commercial and non-commercial. We saw a magician who did a nice routine with some traditional tricks, a competitive jump rope team who did amazing things with a couple of ropes, had ice cream, sipped coconut water from a fresh young coconut and did some crafts with the kids. The jump ropers encouraged audience members to join in and Julie and I gave a go at double dutch and did okay! York Quay Center had a glass blower working in their open craft studio that drew a small crowd. All in all, it was a fun and very inexpensive day.

On Saturday, we all went to ROM in the afternoon to check out the Toga Party and the Water exhibit. The museum had invited some members of a Roman legion re-enactment troupe (similar to Civil War re-enacters) in full Roman military regalia and set up tables for kids to try writing their names in Roman alphabet, do some mosaics and learn Roman numerals. The military gear was mostly hand made by the re-enacters and they all spoke a little Latin! The water exhibit was quite interesting, showing all the ways that water is important, various critters that live near or in water, and how humans have affected our water systems. In the evening, Ma and Ba took the kids home and Julie, D and I went to the Distillery. We were planning to see "The Glass Menagerie" and hoped to grab a bite to eat before. There was a jazz festival on site, so the place was crowded with pockets of great music floating around. We just managed to snag a table at the local brew pub where I had an amazing burger and D and Julie tried some local beers. The play was excellent, well acted, interesting staging and of course you can't top Tennessee Williams' writing. After the show, there was a cabaret evening in the adjoining room. We stopped in briefly to see what that was about. They had a couple of guys on stage chatting in between performances by a Canadian Opera tenor (of Randy Newman songs, of all things), a string/piano trio playing Bach, and a video of a Canadian TV personality ragging on a respected Canadian modern dancer over government funding for the arts. This promised to be an unusual evening but we had to leave as it was getting late. A thunderstorm was brewing on our way out and we were treated to a cool lightening show.

On Sunday, D and Julie and I went to Ontario Place with the kids. Boy, how this place has changed! It's the 40th anniversary of the opening. Now there's a water play area with slides of varying degrees of scariness, a zone filled with squirters and mini-slides and a huge bucket that would fill and dump onto eagerly waiting kids. Another area has mini-rides for smaller kids (as well as games where you can't lose) and a big room where kids can shoot little foam balls at each other! The IMAX was still there, but we didn't even have time to see the movie, there was so much to do! I tried to remember what we used to do at Ontario Place when we went as kids, since most of the activities that Austin and Mari enjoyed didn't exist back in the day! In the evening, I met some Iroquois friends for dinner. Three of them, Julie, Linda and Deb, were also at our last Iroquois reunion a couple of years ago. We added Anne-Marie, Jo Ann and Lisa. Despite the years, we had a great time reminiscing about the past and talking about our current lives. Deb is moving to Kitchener this summer so we don't know if she'll be back for the next time.

Monday looked to be a quieter day. We had lunch at Asian Legend with the Yangs and Huangs. The food was excellent and the adults got to talking making for a long lunch. Since July 4th was also Huang Shu shu and Ma's birthday this year, we ended the meal with a nice cake, a light chocolate sponge with an unusual jello filling. D prepared a barbecue chicken dinner on the complex's grills and we ate at the table in back. The grilled veggies, fruit and chicken were delicious, capping off a nice extra long weekend.

I flew home on Tuesday, enduring a ridiculously long customs line and just making the plane boarding.

Here are some pics that I took during my visit.

As an aside, I saw Unknown (with Liam Neeson) and Unstoppable (with Denzel Washington) on the plane to and from. Both were enjoyable big entertainment movies. Unknown had a plot twist that caught me completely by surprise, and Unstoppable was a terrific chase movie with just a touch of real-life events to make it interesting. I highly recommend both. The third movie I saw was "Win Win" with Paul Giamatti. I found this to be a heartwarming story with some wonderful performances, but it was not so much a comedy as advertised.