My dispatch from Canada.
My wife and I marked our 30th wedding anniversary a few days ago. We were going to celebrate the milestone with a trip to Europe. But then Life, Suburban Parenthood Edition, imposed itself this year: my son's high school band toured Italy earlier this year (I'm happy for his getting the opportunity to see the world, but is it really necessary for a high school band to tour Italy?); our oven burned through its heating element and we had to replace the whole oven (it sounds simple but has turned into a saga which still isn't over - it may merit a separate post); we paid the down payment (and, for now, also the monthly payments) on a new car for our daughter the school teacher so she could get back and forth to her first teaching job; and because of the additional car, we need to double the width of the driveway, because we can't fit all our vehicles in our driveway now and our "village" doesn't permit overnight street parking. All of which is to say, a European trip may or may not happen next year, but definitely won't happen this year.
So we went to Canada instead. I'm writing this from our bed and breakfast room at Niagara on the Lake, which is a little hamlet a few miles from Falls on the Canadian side. We discovered it about 25 or so years ago - at that time, its primary claim to fame was a George Bernard Shaw theater festival which it hosts every summer. We've been here several times, and the theater is always pretty good - not quite Broadway and West End good (although not all of those productions are great, either) but still pretty good. That good work continues - we've seen a couple of shows on this trip which have been enjoyable, including a terrific production of the musical version of Grand Hotel, a work I've been kinda/sorta aware of for the last couple of decades but didn't know much about. And in the quarter century since we first came here, the region (with help from the national government - imagine a government that isn't ideologically opposed to partnering for economic development) has been working hard to repurpose itself as a wine region. Somehow the soil and the climate work around here for certain varieties of grapes. And while Napa and France, and for that matter Germany, Italy and Spain, don't have to worry too much yet, the vintners here are getting better, and there are some highly drinkable wines on offer. There are quite a few wineries in the area, and one can spend a very pleasant afternoon bopping around from winery to winery, trying this and that, purchasing the occasional bottle, and eschewing the spit bucket. In addition to theater and wine, there are a few decent restaurants, and the downtown area is the de rigeur "cute shops" district, with the same type of retail stores one finds at all of the arty tourist villages: the gift shops, the Irish shop, the Christmas shop, the fudge shops, and so on. I'm not much for that sort of thing but my wife is, and when one is married for 30 years, one learns to wait out on the sidewalk and carry packages with good grace.
When one vacations in Canada, one necessarily comes into frequent contact with Canadians. And so I felt a bit of anxiety coming on this trip, because the relationship between Washington and Ottawa is frostier than normal, and I can't help but feel that we Americans don't hold the moral high ground. The Ugliest American occupies the White House, and niceties like history, reality and treaty obligations apparently mean nothing to him. I fully expected to be served warm juice and cold eggs by our B&B host, to get snarled at by barmaids, and the for fellow at the Will Call booth to explain with a smirk (well, Canadians are too well-mannered to smirk, but let us say, with a certain cold gleam in his eye) that a booking mixup has caused our seats to be relocated to the eighth balcony.
But I haven't experienced any of that. No doubt, a good deal of it is native Canadian courtesy. And part of it is the professionalism of tradespeople who don't want to snooter their customers. But a part of it seems to be that the Canadians size us up and conclude, accurately enough, that whichever Americans are the problem, it's not us. I suppose it's a fairly safe assumption in a place that caters to theater lovers and oenophiles. But it's been a pleasant surprise, and leaves me rather optimistic that we may somehow get through this period with the Rainbow Bridge and the other bridges unburned.
I was in a Connecticut winery doing sampling last year. A couple from Canada was there at the bar doing the same thing. I told them they were very brave to enter the US under the circumstances. I asked if their state department put out warnings about entering our unstable country.
ReplyDeleteStanley - when you're exiting Canada near the Falls, the bridges around there have a series of signs to the effect of: last exit before entering US; make U turn here to remain in Canada. My wife found them pretty amusing, in a dark way.
DeletePicking a fight with Canada (just because Justin Trudeau didn't write great things about him the way Kim Jung Il did?) wasn't the nastiest, but may have been the dumbest stunt, the pudgy guy with the cheap Chinese neckties ever did.
ReplyDeleteBut your post, Jim, reminded me of two stories. And a p.s.
First, with the Chinese hoax being so powerful, wine growing is moving north. Red grapes now flourish in Bernkastel, Germany, which used to be Mecca for lovers of whites. A German friend told me that once Winston Churchill sent Konrad Adenauer a case of the best Scotch that part of the Empire could produce. In equal return, Adenauer sent Churchill ONE bottle of Bernkastler Doktor.
(Probably a Stadt legend.)
Second, the U.S. and Canada had, until just the other day, the longest undefended border in the world. When the surveyors were running that border, they came to a farmer in North Dakota and told him, "Your farm is entirely in the United States." The farmer replied: "Praise the Lord. I couldn't have taken another of those Canadian winters."
And the p.s. When we lived in New Jersey, our #2 daughter's high school band was "selected" to pay its way to Miami and march in the Orange Bowl parade for 20-seconds of admiration from the vast TV audience. Getting ready to go entailed weeks and weeks of crazier and crazier fund-raising. Finally a local resident was quoted in the newspaper saying, "It's costing a lot of money to let my daughter throw up in Miami Beach on New Year's Eve." The editors of the newspaper did not believe the reporter who returned with that quote. But it was true. That's what I said.
Tom, yeah, band trips. Brings back memories of our oldest son's high school days as a trombone player. One year they went to Chicago, another year it was St. Louis. They sold lots of candy and magazine subscriptions. There was a group of gung-ho band parents who headed up all the fund raisers. I wasn't one of them.
DeleteTom: re: the longest undefended border in the world: as it happens, the area we were staying in, along the Niagara River which is part of the border between the US and Canada (and the body of water that connects lakes Erie and Ontario - it's where the Falls are) was a war zone during the War of 1812. A string of forts along both sides of the river. Seems the Americans crossed the river - invaded Canada - and burned down the original town of Niagara on the Lake (probably had a different name then) so there are virtually no houses older than 1812 in the town. But the Canadians (many of whom were descendants of American Loyalists who emigrated north after the Revolutionary War) ultimately repulsed the Americans and drove them back across the river, and captured some forts on the American side, a matter of considerable patriotic pride among Canadians, I believe, albeit seemingly not much known or remembered by Americans.
DeleteAs a native Michigander, that sort of thing is semi-familiar to me, although as I learned it as a schoolboy, it wasn't Canada per se as much as the British that had a fleet of ships on the Great Lakes. Mackinac Island had a fort (and American one, I think), whereas Mackinaw City on the Michigan mainland had an opposing British fort. The whole area was criss-crossed by conflicts between Americans, British, Canadians, French and Native American tribes.
On the whole, I favor lots of trade, friendly relations and pacts of mutual support and aid. I hope that will continue. When we crossed over into Canada, the direction we were going had no line to get through the border, but the opposite direction, from Canada into the US, had a very long back-up, nearly all of it semi trucks presumably filled with cargo coming into the US from Canada. I saw that as a hopeful sign.
Toronto is my favorite city. The American Psychological Association often has its annual meetings there. I would always book the hotel next to the Island ferries for a couple days before and after the meeting. Rented a bicycle. I would catch one of the earliest ferries out to the Islands, ride the bike for several hours, then come back just as the waves of people began to come to the beaches around ten or eleven o'clock.
ReplyDeleteOne of my best experiences there (not at a meeting) was when a whole fleet of Tall ships came. At the end of their stay, they raced to Rochester. I was fortunate to be able to be on the yacht that was charted by Canadian TV to film the event. We went right down the starting line coming right up to each ship for a close up shot.
Jack - I agree Toronto is a great city, surely one of the great cities of the world. I believe it looms even more prominently in Canadian society and culture than New York does for the US. Something like one out of every six Canadians lives in the greater Toronto area. The New York area would need to have a population of something like 54 million to be comparable in the US (Google suggests the greater New York City population is more like 20 million).
DeleteWe used to go to Stratford every year. Many good memories of that. Also loved Sault, Ontario, when I lived on the border. Nice library. Saw Margaret Atwood speak there with her bright red hair. Had our honeymoon in London. Only time I was mildly hassled was by an OPP officer who was stymied about how Reagan got elected. Some Canadians in my cancer group who seem sad that a cancer diagnosis in America is both a health and financial crisis.
ReplyDeleteJean - we've been to Stratford, too, several times - Niagara does Shaw, Stratford does Shakespeare. We've been favoring Niagara more recently, because it's easier for us to get there from Chicago (it's about an hour drive from the Buffalo airport; we haven't figured out yet how to fly conveniently within a short driving distance of Stratford, so we end up driving straight through - it's about an eight hour drive for us.). And Niagara has the wine district now.
DeleteBut Shakespeare is better than Shaw. That said, at Stratford I've seen just about several cockamamie attempts by directors to make Shakespeare "relevant" by setting it in modern times, or having fun with gender identity, or what have you. I guess I'm an originalist in the same sense that conservatives are originalists when it comes to the Constitution: as originalist as suits my preferences. A hard-core Shakespeare originalist would insist on casting boys in the female parts. Naturally and somewhat ironically, that would have some contemporary liberal cache these days. But I'm in favor of setting the plays in the places and times for which Shakespeare wrote them rather than, say, doing the Taming Of The Shrew in the American West, or Hamlet during WWI, or (as happened once in Chicago, not sure about Stratford) doing Twelfth Night by casting women in all the men's part and men in all the women's parts.
Sounds lovely, Jim. Enjoy! The plays and wineries would be fun.
ReplyDeleteMust be a lady thing, I enjoy the cute shops, too. My favorite place to do that is Estes Park, CO. Maybe I'll make it as far as Canada someday.
I'd be envious except that we're having a pretty nice late summer/early fall here.
Although we have traveled a lot, I have never been to Canada (my husband has - when he was in college and on business long ago). However, we will be in Canada in three weeks, in Vancouver. The college roommate of one of our sons is from Vancouver. We became friends with his parents over the years they were in school, as they were both rowers, and we stood together at the edges of various bodies of water during those years to cheer them on. They have been inviting us to visit them for a long time, and we are finally going.
ReplyDeleteWe will also go to Victoria, on Vancouver Island to see the famous garden. I don't know if they have wineries in the area, but if they do, we might visit those too!
Vancouver would be the part of Canada I would most like to see. I have heard of the famous garden; I'm sure it is beautiful.
DeleteI met two guys from Vancouver in Banff (not a shabby place itself) for an editorial writers' convention. They kept knocking the place. Oh, the rain. Oh, the heat. And the cold. And the bugs. Oh, it was terrible. I finally called them on it, and they admitted they talk that way to people who haven't been there, so they'll stay away and the guys can have heaven to themselves. Funny guys when you got to know them. I've never been, always wanted to.
DeleteI've also never been to Vancouver, or anywhere in Canada west of Ontario, to the best of my knowledge. Anne, I hope you'll give us a report.
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