Toronto Tornado

When we left Ottawa on Friday, I said to Sarah that we had picked the right weekend to be out of the city as the weather was bad when we left and forecast to be worse over the weekend. I should know better than to make such bold statements because as we arrived in Toronto’s outskirts we got stuck in a full blown tornado! The rain was horrendous and the wind was so strong that the rain came at us horizontally. I thought about telling Sarah to sit in the seat behind me as I was worried about debris being blown into the passenger side of the car. A lot of people pulled their cars over under bridges to wait out the storm, but we crawled on at 20km, wipers on full speed.

When we eventually got to our B&B, we saw the news and found out that the road we used to get into the centre of town had flooded not long after we used it. There were pictures of cars in water up to the roof and a man had to be rescued as he’d got trapped on a little newly formed island. After we saw this news, we were very British about it all and headed out to walk around town. The neighbourhood that the B&B was in is quite colourful, even the street signs had rainbow colours on them.

We had planned to visit Toronto islands but with the rain still coming down we decided to look round the indoor shopping centres. We had to walk a little way in the pouring rain to get to the underground station but we thought we’d be ok with our big umbrellas. We hadn’t reckoned on the taxi that drove through a deep puddle right as we walked past. I only took a small hit, but Sarah got drenched from head to toe a la Carrie Bradshaw in the title scenes for Sex and the City. Oh how we laughed. But not after two hours walking round the shops with squelching shoes and jeans rubbing in all the wrong places. We were very sore by the time we got to one of our favourite restaurants in Toronto, Superior on Yonge Street. Fact of the day for you: Yonge Street, at 1700km is the longest street in the World. A tenuous claim to fame as what is the difference between a street and any other tarmaced thoroughfare? And who decides where one street ends and another starts?

Saturday was very exciting. I had been looking forward to it for weeks since I read about this particular attraction in the guide book we’d bought. The Bata Shoe Museum! Actually this was Sarah’s choice of activity, but I have to admit it was interesting. The museum was well put together and had shoes from all periods of history, all religions and all corners of the World. There were also strange looking shoes for particular professions or purposes, like the clogs with the heel carved in the front of the shoes so that the footprints left by smugglers would lead in the wrong direction! There were also some special exhibits on the history of Inuit and native people’s shoes. Sarah left her own mark at the show museum, (photos 9h. Toronto).

After the shoe museum we had a look at the expensive shops on Bloor St and met up with Sarah’s friend Jen. Jen is from Toronto so recommended a really nice Thai restaurant for lunch. Afterwards we met up with Jen’s parents for coffee and while the girls talked about shoes and bags, Jen’s father and I solved all the political problems in both Canada and England.

Sarah had done her research on Toronto and had found out that they have an Accesorize store. This is one of many shops Sarah misses from the UK so we had to visit. It was a good way along Yonge street’s 1700km, but Jen’s parents were kind enough to give us a lift there. Sarah was very excited about all the bags, jewellery and hats and found it difficult to decide what, if anything to buy. We decided on a grey tweed bag with blue trim and bow.

We caught the tube back into the centre of town and, as the weather was at least dry we caught the ferry across to the islands. There isn’t a lot in the way of facilities on the islands. They are more for getting away from the hustle of the city. So of course, as soon as we good off the ferry I found that our camera batteries were running out. Then I found that we hadn’t packed the recharged batteries in our bag – on reflection I realised that they weren’t even at the B&B as I could see them in my mind’s eye still plugged into the charger at our flat in Ottawa. D’oh! We bought some disposable batteries to get us through the day. The islands aren’t that big and we walked from the central ferry port to Hanlan port on the West of the islands. A nice quiet walk which included a trip to the clothing optional (not nudist) beach. We saw a couple of birds with no clothes on…but they flew away when they saw us.

There is a statue at Hanlan point to commemorate Edward Hanlan’s achievements in rowing. He won 300 consecutive races including national and international events at the end of the nineteenth century. We left Hanlan looking out over his bay and got the ferry back to the mainland and caught the tube to Union station and then on to city hall before returning to our B&B neighbourhood where we had pizza at Volo restaurant, which we would recommend.

On Sunday we visited Casa Loma, a stately home built by Sir Henry Pellat in the 1910’s. Sir Henry made his fortune when we realised that Edison’s electric light bulb would be sought after by the City and its residents. He created a company and won the monopoly on supplying electricity in Toronto. Once he’d made a few million dollars he set about building his dream home of a castle overlooking the city. Casa Loma cost $3.5M to build and is impressive to see even now. Unfortunately for Sir Henry and his family, he lost his fortune after living in the house for less than ten years. His fortune was lost because of the effects of World War I, the loss of the electricity supply monopoly and some ill-fated land deals. He was forced to sell the “castle” and its contents at auction in 1923. We enjoyed looking round the castle but it did annoy us that some of the information boards at castle told about life in a medieval castle. This has nothing to do with Casa Loma and is just confusing and would make the poor American kids think that Casa Loma was hundreds of years old or that knights on horseback were a regular sight in Victorian Toronto. We did our bit and complained about this in the visitor suggestion box.