July 23 - 30 Southern Ontario to Home - Reflections on Canada

Kingston, ON  2017

On the 23rd, we left Montreal and headed southwest to Toronto.  We were expected for dinner and knew we would be fighting Sunday night return-from-cottage traffic, so we limited our stops. We made a brief visit to Kingston, where we explored the free portion of Fort Henry (which provided a good view of the city, fortifications and Lake Ontario), took a driving tour of historic sites, and had a picnic lunch along the lakeshore.

Big Apple, 2017

We also made a brief stop at the Big Apple in Colborne to pick up some apple pie and cider, and generally, take the place in. The kids got candy apples to occupy them in the back seat, and we were off to battle Toronto traffic for the next several hours.

From this point forward, the trip took a different turn - our focus now was to spend time with friends and family. The kids spent hours with their friends or cousins on trampolines or in swimming pools. The adults visited and drank wine. We still spent plenty of time on the road as we travelled from Toronto to Erin to Windsor to Sarnia to fit in a visit with as many as we could in five days.

Canada's Wonderland, 2017

We also fit in a day at Canada's Wonderland. This had been the kids only request for the trip, and after being troopers for so many hours of driving and historic sites, they earned their chance to play.  Their cousins also joined them, which made the day even better. Even the weather cooperated - it threatened to rain all day, which kept the crowds and heat at bay, but held off aside for a few sprinkles. As a result, the kids got it an unprecedented number of rides and had a great day.

Five days went by too quickly, and the morning of the 28th it was time for us to pack up and make the power drive home. We crossed into the US from Sarnia and took the route through the upper peninsula of Michigan and Wisconson, stopping in Duluth for the night. It was a long day of driving, but the scenery was beautiful and everyone's spirits were good. The next day we trekked through Minnesota, North Dakota, and into Saskatchewan.

North Dakota, 2017

We pulled into  Moose Jaw in the midst of a wicked lightning storm and narrowly adverted a thorough soaking as we unpacked the car (unfortunately, Jay wasn't so lucky as he had to park the car, and was drenched in the short walk from the parking lot). Making it to Moose Jaw in two days, meant we were relatively close to home on the third day, and after a leisurely seven-hour drive, were safely back home before dinner.

It was an exhausting end to an incredible trip, but I wouldn't have done anything differently given the constraints we had. We saw so much of Canada, had so many amazing experiences. My eyes were opened to the true vastness of this country - in terms of literal distance (we drove over 14,000 km), but also in terms of how much wild, open space there still is. I was saddened to see the wasting away of small towns throughout the country (in the prairies, Northern Ontario, the Maritimes) - even though Jay and I were both part of that migration, and heartened by the growing cosmopolitan nature of our cities.

Most of all, I was struck by the "sameness" of Canada. The landscape was certainly a part of it with the bulk of country sitting on the Canadian shield and housing boreal forest. I didn't appreciate how fortunate we are in Calgary to be surrounded by so many different landscapes and ecosystems, to have so much diversity on our doorstep.

More than that though, no matter where we went, regardless of population or language, there was an indescribable undercurrent of Canadianism; a je ne sais quoi that connects us all together, that makes us more similar than we are different. I noticed this most when it was gone, when we were in the United States. I became fascinated by John A. MacDonald - what could have inspired him to connect this land mass into a country. Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces made sense economically and politically, but why extend the reach across the then Northwest Territories to BC? Why bank on a railroad that wasn't conceptualized, let alone built? There was a huge cost, unfortunately, to the First Nations and Metis, to the Chinese immigrants who came to work on the railroad. Yet, somehow he did it - he and subsequent generations built a nation that spans the second biggest area on the planet, and still holds a singular identity.

My final word - we live in an amazing, beautiful country, go out and explore it.