Once upon a time in Canada - big city, new experiences

The train from Montreal to Toronto was much more ‘normal’ in that it was essentially an intercity, travelling during the day for 5 hours with a trolley food and drink service. But the big differences to our intercity trains are the size and comfort of the seats, big comfortable things that are also recliners. So I had an ordinary journey stopping at a variety of stations and I could quietly sit back and watch this world go by. It also stopped at ‘passing places’ because some of the route is single track, and trains heading in the opposite direction needed to get past. That astonished me as I had been told that this route was not just the main route for Canadian export and import goods accessing the Montreal port facilities but also a route for American import and export goods as it is much closer to the American industrial heartland. So single track areas, and the disruptive effect on services going in both directions this causes, astonished me. It’s not like the ground the track goes over is difficult in terms of cutting into or building up to accommodate double track. The freight trains are enormous and they have priority and are run by a separate company to the passenger trains. These issues and more were to loom much larger later in my trip, so I will try to explain the problems then as they played a big part in the way those experiences played out. What struck me most forcefully at the time was how flat, table top flat, the landscape was, farms, forests, towns, all spread over this oh so pancake flat landscape. It even occurred me that such landscapes might encourage some to think that this apparent flatness proved the world was flat. Yes I know, but some seem to really believe this daft idea, I am just entertained by such daftness. As we started out from Montreal I noticed long, very long and high piles of broken concrete. Mile after many miles of these dumps with no obvious reason for them, as for example the result of buildings or structures demolished by the tracks. Later on, in conversation with someone in Toronto, he suggested they were from the roads and flyovers in Quebec that had to be taken down and rebuilt due to faulty workmanship in the past. Apparently there had been a scandal of corruption in letting of road contracts in years gone by, that had resulted in seriously substandard construction work. This tied in with what I recall from my previous visit to Montreal where, looking out of the coach windows travelling between the airport and town centre, I had noticed massive areas of road bridges, elevated roads and flyovers where there was serious concrete cracking, exposed rusting reinforcement, and in many cases wire mesh wrapped round structures to catch falling concrete dropping onto the roads and areas beneath. For the second half of the journey the track follows the shoreline of Lake Ontario, which is vast, yet another element of this country that almost defies descriptions adequate to explain that vastness. It being a calm clear sky sunny day the water stretching to the horizon was just one flat sheet of pale blue.

But then we entered Toronto and there was no mistaking that we had arrived in a big high density metropolis and such a contrast to the wide open spaces. Then the usual taxi out into town with no idea which direction you are going in and no clue as to where you hotel might be in relation to this dense city centre. Getting to it the hotel looked rather drab and low key even though it was said to be part of the Eaton Centre complex. It was not, being on the other side of what was described as the Toronto equivalent of Piccadilly Circus, to the Eaton Centre. The hotel was unpretentious with a simple reception counter at one side of a smallish lobby, and a quirky looking café/restaurant at the other. Arriving in the late afternoon and then moving into the room the next priority was to find a place for a decent evening meal. The café/restaurant next to the lobby had an illustrated menu chart up by its doorway with each dish looking like it had been cooked in a frying pan and then turned out upside down as a cohesive pan shaped lump in a wide bowl. For me that seemed too odd and unappetising when I felt I needed a meal that was welcoming and familiar, and so asked if the person on reception could recommend a nice nearby restaurant. They suggested three, all within a short walk, so off I set through the milling crowds and, still very much disorientated about which direction to go stumbled upon Joey, the first and most welcoming to a single diner, place I had been suggested to. A very busy, active bar and restaurant of a place, sport on big screens above the bar, the sort of embodiment of the buzzing after work environment you would want to go to, to deprogramme yourself after a hectic day in the office. I was sat at a quieter table at my request, offered to taste alternative wines when I asked for a local dry wine, and yes Canada makes some delicious and affordable wines, selected a robust meal of steak and chips, and sat quietly hand writing up my daily travel log. They chatted to me about the wine, asked where I was from and what I was in Toronto for, and so began a warm, friendly and varied set of conversations with whoever came to my table re the meal. What more could I have asked for in terms of a delightfully relaxed welcome to a stranger landing in the midst of a big bustling city. Over the next few days I fell into my growing routine of getting out into the town and walking in various directions from the hotel to get to grips with a new city to explore. Toronto being a city adjacent to, rather than on, the shoreline of a vast inland sea, Lake Ontario, with so many differing aspects to it, I had plenty to explore, and my preferred way is to walk map in hand, have a particular target or direction in mind, and then just walk and look for interesting places, building, shops, whatever, on and around the route chosen.