A trip to Canada

 

A visit to Canada, 2nd to 10th November 1984

Patrick Roper revised 21st September 2013 and 30^th December 2023.

In late October 1984 I flew to Toronto in Canada for an Association of British Travel Agents annual conference.  I also took a few days holiday with my Canadian relatives in Ottawa.  The long, dull flight across the Atlantic was alleviated by a large group of First Nation people (Huron-Wendats maybe) who had been to Britain to try and solve some long-standing land dispute with the Crown.  They were wearing First Nation outfits which made them seem very exotic, but they spent much of the flight chatting to us like normal mortals.  It seemed however a good, and somewhat unexpected, introduction to Canada on this my first trip.

I changed planes at Toronto and took a smaller aircraft on the one hour’s flight to Ottawa where my cousin Pauline had agreed to meet me. Pauline was the daughter of my aunt Doris (Carlé née Roper) and, although she was four years older than me, we knew one another quite well as we both grew up in Chingford on the Essex/London border.  I also spent much time with Pauline and her family when we were evacuated to Somerset and Cornwall during World War II.  In her late teens Pauline worked as a dental nurse in Chingford and I often joined her at various local events when I was living in Chingford during the period when I worked at my grandfather’s factory in Hoxton in London’s East End.

She was waiting at Ottawa airport with her husband Doug Fricker and she had changed over the years to a well-fed ageing lady with a warm, coffee-coloured overcoat and grey hair. We didn’t recognise one another.  It was cold and dark driving through the Ottawa suburbs to the Fricker’s home. In my notebook I wrote “The first impression is it all looks like Croydon.  The people seem more English than in the USA, but it is very curious to hear their nasal French and to see them reading French newspapers.”  I had a brief introduction to the Fricker’s house and their grown up children, Michael, David and Carole before we set off to dinner at Manfred’s restaurant in Ottawa.  It was a very warm and welcoming place heated to a tropical level and, although I was quite tired, I enjoyed the evening.  We left at about one in the morning and, as we reached the street outside, my skin seemed to shrink with the shock of the cold.  In true Canadian fashion it must have fallen to minus something as we ate.  Needless to say, the Fricker family did not seem to notice the cold.

My first night was not a comfortable one as I was introduced to a water bed which, although comfortable to lie on gurgled every time I turned over. In the morning Doug and I took the dog out for a walk.  The Fricker’s house was down a suburban side road with scrub behind the gardens.  All of a sudden we reached the banks of the Ottawa River and it was not something I had expected, partly because the Frickers had not mentioned that it was 150 yards or so down the road.  It was an overawing sight: a sea of fast flowing muddy brown water with the farther bank almost out of sight.  Whole trees were amongst the debris cast up among the reeds along the sides.  The river was at its widest close to its confluence with the St Lawrence and from our Ontario bank we could see the Gatineau Hills in the province of Quebec. I rather wanted to go there.

In the gardens round Ottawa, and I suppose in similar places, they have bird houses for purple martins, Progne subis, a bird of the swallow family (Hirundinidae).  The martin house in the Fricker’s garden was like a wooden dovecote on a twenty foot pole, roofed and with three tiers of holes, painted white with green and red.  The martins nest in colonies and their presence is encouraged in gardens to keep down the large number of summer midges.  They are migrants that spend the warmer months in North America and the winter in South America so, during my November stay in Ontario, they were absent.

Later in the day I drove with Pauline to Brittania Bay to the west of Ottawa city where the Ottawa River makes a right angled turn to the east. We stopped at a shopping mall and for some rye whiskey from the liquor store then out to some scrubby woods where I collected all sorts of seeds here and around the Mud Lake, an important urban wildlife reserve close to the Ottawa River.  We stopped at a shopping mall for groceries and for some rye whiskey from the liquor store then out to some scrubby woods where I collected all sorts of seeds here and around the Mud Lake, an important urban wildlife reserve close to the Ottawa River.  Every open area had a strange, shrill chirruping of crickets.  Most flowers were over but there were odd potentillas and vetches and the great pods of milkweed.  A few wild grapes were scrambling into some of the trees.  Pauline also took me on a tour of the city centre pointing out some of the important public buildings and historic sites.  I spent the rest of the days with the Frickers and, sadly, they did not seem to have a very exciting life.  The two grown up boys in particular seemed to spend much time drinking and channel hopping on TV with the remote controller.

The following day a trip had been arranged to Johnson Lake to meet other members of our family. in the Masham-Nord Municipality of Gatineau County in Quebec (Canadian grid ref: 240631).  We crossed from Ontario to Quebec on the A5 across a bridge over the mighty Ottawa river, the continued northward beside the Gatineau river.  We crossed from Ontario to Quebec on the A5 across a bridge over the mighty Ottawa river, the continued northward for many miles beside the Gatineau river.  We stopped at a riverside restaurant for morning coffee and were able to sit out in the chilly sunshine.  In the river there were thousands of pine trunk rafts, as one might expect in Canada where they were known as log drives.  In the river there were thousands of floating pine trunk rafts, as one might expect in Canada where they were known as log drives.  When the tree trunks got stuck and piled up, it was known as a log jam, hence the use of this term for a particularly intractable traffic jam.  This method of transportation had ended by 1991 so I feel privileged to have witnessed it. This method of lumber transportation had ended by 1991 so I feel privileged to have witnessed it.  The road outside was fairly busy and many of the cars had a dead deer strapped to the luggage rack, illustrating the importance of hunting to many Canadians.

 The house, or cottage as they called it, was owned by Winnie (or Rosalie) Fraser of the Canadian branch of the family descended from my grandfather Roper’s sister Dorothea who had emigrated to Canada.  They were a considerable influence on my cousin Pauline’s decision to emigrate there around 1958.  Rosalie, Winnie’s sister, was with the party at Johnson Lake. In 2003 Jennifer Fraser, granddaughter of Winnie turned up in London where she was at university and on one occasion came to South View where, coincidentally we had a large gathering of other people – a slightly overcrowded day.

 The Johnson Lake cottage was in a beautiful site on a wooded bluff overlooking the extensive water of the lake itself towards the vast pine forests extending to the Arctic. When I visited there did not seem to be any houses or settlements nearby but I think it is now more popular for warm weather dwellings.  The Frasers told me it was habitable in the warmer months only as it had not been winterised, a reminder that Canadian winters are somewhat colder than those in Britain.  Another problem they mentioned was from the porcupines that came foraging round the property and trashed the garden area.

 In the afternoon I went out with a couple of local naturalists known to me only as Don and Eustace .  They had a home at Gleneagle just north of Gatineau and took me on a fascinating walk through some woods up to the local beaver dam, a very imposing structure.  I also remember seeing dozens of male winter moths fluttering around the bottom of tree trunks waiting for the wingless females to emerge.  I suspect this used to happen in Britain, but not in my time though winter moths are still common enough.  I still have one or two plants in the garden grown from seeds collected on that November walk in the Gatineau Hills.

 Before we met up again with the Frickers I went into a small local store, probably to buy cigarettes,  it was quite busy and, being in Quebec, everyone was talking French.  At the checkout I broke forth in my very rusty schoolboy Franglais at which point the shop assistant immediately changed to English.

 The following morning I was due to return to Toronto and decided to take the bus rather than the plane so that I could see some of the Canadian countryside.  The Frickers came to the Ottawa bus station to see me off on the five hour journey to Toronto and I was soon speeding through the mixed farms and woods of southern Ontario.  One surprising feature was the number of obviously deserted farms, the houses empty, the fields scrubbing over. 

This was and still is a widespread phenomenon in both this part of Canada and the neighbouring United States. Small farms became uneconomical and eventually the owners moved out. Today there are long-running battles with developers on how to use this abandoned land. The pattern from the air seems to be of updated or rebuilt detached former farmhouses with large gardens surrounded by wildland, a kind of unintended rewilding.  From time to time the bus stopped close to the edge of the road and I could see the richness of the regenerating scrub vegetation with many plant species tangled together – autumn leaves, red berries, black berries

We had, in places, a glimpse of the St Lawrence River that connects Lake Ontario with the sea as it flows past Montreal and Quebec and here and there we could see right across to New York state in the US but the only major town or city on our coach journey was Kingston, known as the Limestone City.  It was once the capital of Canada and has a history that seems quite diminished since its glory days.  Before arriving in Toronto we travelled for a while along the north side of Lake Ontario which gave as a good impression of the enormous size of the Great Lakes.

On arrival at Toronto, I made my way to the Sheraton Centre Hotel, where I was to stay during the few days of the conference, to catch up with the remainder of my tourist board colleagues.  My room at the Sheraton, a 43 story hotel opened in 1972, overlooked a square of grass and trees populated by numerous squirrels – red, black and grey – which provided something interesting to look at.  My daily rate was $60 but it would be over twice as much today.  After signing in we went to the ABTA Welcome Party thrown by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation at the Ontario Science Centre, a facility now under threat of removal to a smaller site.

The next few days seemed to consist of visits to different restaurants. These included Young Lok, The Old Mill, Crispin’s, Pier 4 Storehouse, Old Angelo’s and Sherlock’s.  I also had tea at the Sheraton Centre and the Windsor Arms Hotel. The latter claims on its web site today that it is the “paramount destination for discerning guests in pursuit of the perfectly indulgent, delectably elegant, and distinctly luxurious high tea experience.” ($60-$80 per head).  I have a scrapbook of ephemera collected during my trip to Canada and a colourful matchbook from Sherlock’s restaurant is currently selling for up to $25, probably as much my meal cost.  I was invited to most of these gastronomic experiences, but some were just forays into Toronto eateries with other members of our team as it was cheaper and more fun than dining in the Sheraton.  As a senior employee of the English Tourist Board many organisations were after the cash and services we were able to offer, so I was a welcome guest

Duties at the conference did not prevent me from making some modest excursions into Toronto.  The underground shopping malls were impressive and warm in winter because of their subterranean nature.  Many Canadians, including the Frickers, build underground rooms to retain warmth.  I bought a booklet of subway tickets and managed to negotiate the city using these.  On one occasion I took myself to a city nature reserve at Rosedale and had an enjoyable walk through grass and trees rather than urban Toronto.  I still have some leaves of Norway maple collected there.

At the end of the conference we had one more day to wait in Toronto before our flight to London,  Searching around for something to do I discovered that The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair was on at the Toronto Exhibition Place.  We took a taxi out there and it is an understatement to say we were bowled over by what we found and surprised that no one had mentioned it during our ABTA conference. It is now, and I am sure then, the largest agricultural show in the world.  Mostly undercover there were wonderful displays of pumpkins and other veg, animals ranging from mice to horses, axemanship demonstrations, endless food stalls and retail opportunities including First Nation people selling wild rice and what to us were novelties.  It was a noisy world of colour and excitement and we could have spent days there but the airport called and in the Canadian darkness we were soon flying  east back to London.