“Who is Tim Horton?” I asked the immigration official at the Detroit-Windsor border.I’d never heard of the chap and yet, within a minute of arriving in Canada I was being shepherded towards him by a pleasant young lady with a maple leaf on her uniform.
We’d just stepped off the ‘tunnel bus’, a vehicle which carried us under the Detroit River and across the US-Canada border.
It was only going to be the briefest of encounters with Canada (heading as we were to see friends in Ontario) but time enough, we hoped, to notice and appreciate some of the differences which Canadians seem so quick to stress between their homeland and the US.
Every Canadian we have met during our travels so far has seem anxious to put considerable distance between themselves and their cousins to the south. Without fail every item of baggage they carry seemed to be clearly emblazoned with the maple leaf flag.
I guess it for the benefit for ignorant non-North Americans like myself. Canadian and American, I’d struggled to tell them apart, the only clue being the accent which usually I didn’t pick up on. They spoke the same language, drove the same cars, ate the same food, indeed they seemed so inextricably entwined, did the differences Canadians friends had stressed to me really start with a simple hop over the border?
It started promisingly. There was none of the stony-faced procedures and paranoia in crossing the border here. Just patient smiles, efficient service and an explanation that Mr Horton was a popular purveyor of coffee beans and bagels.
We left the building and entered the bright sunshine enveloping Windsor, Ontario. Windsor…it seemed to ring a bell. Wasn’t it familiar?
I bought sandwiches from Tim Horton’s and glanced at the new currently. There was a imperious looking-lady stamped on the five dollar bill and her regal visage also gazed out from the dollar ‘loon’. Hadn’t I see her before?
Outside the Maple Leaf flag fluttered in the breeze, alongside the flag of Ontario. Something stared back at me from a corner of the latter’s design: diagonal crosses of red, white and blue.
It was coming to me now. Britain! That funny old place where I used to live. The Queen! The Union Jack! Had I taken a wrong turn somewhere?
It became more confusing as we caught our ride and headed north. We passed Charing Cross Road, another city called London, Aldershot, Chatham-Kent and Tilbury. There was Essex county, Middlesex and even Oxford.
I spotted a sign to Leamington ‘ Tomato-growing capital of Ontario’ and another for ‘Dorchester-on-Thames Golf Club’.
This was getting too much. Way back in the olden days, when the British arrived to nick yet another large chunk of land that wasn’t theirs couldn’t they have at least displayed more imagination?
Fancy coming all this way, braving storms and harsh elements, hostile locals and moose attacks, and then naming an their exciting new discovery after a nondescript town in the commuter belt.
I was still wondering about this when we passed yet another Tim Horton’s. That makes it at least fifteen by now in under two hours. These Canadians must really love their coffee.
Just who was this Tim Horton fellow? It sounded rather nondescript a name for a coffee empire magnate, perhaps more like the scrawny kid whom fellow pupils would try to set on fire with a bunsen burner during chemistry lessons.
I soon found out that he was a former hockey player, a sport which I am reliably informed in Canada rivals the world’s major religions.
This helped to explain the other names which weren’t derived from a leafy Surrey suburb. Wayne Gretzky Parkway for instance.Though many of the names were familiar, the locals had an odd way of pronouncing them. The broad accents of Chicago and Detroit were now well behind us and we found ourselves adjusting our lugholes to a decidedly Scottish-inflected manner of pronunciation, with plenty of ‘oots’, ‘aboots’ bouncing around, coupled with the uniquely Canadian mannerism of adding an ’eh’ at the end of every sentence.
The night closed in and I endeavoured to keep myself awake. It had been twelve hours since we’d left Chicago.
“What are you planning to do tonight”, I asked our ride.
“I dunno. Probably drink beer and throw axes in the back yard.”
Half an hour passed and the Niagara Escarpment rose up before us and soon we were in the streets of Hamilton, home of our friends Doug and Linda, and part of the large urban sprawl (fondly referred to by locals as the ‘golden horseshoe’) stretching around the south-western edges of Lake Ontario up to Toronto.
The next morning we ventured down to the lake itself, one of the five famous ‘Great Lakes’. Across the waters steam rose from one of the large steel mills on which the city’s economy is based. Another stood inactive, work recently stopped as the demand for steel plummeted. Down in Detroit they are not building as many cars as usual.
We headed up Queen Elizabeth Way and into Toronto (or ‘Tron-oh’ as the locals seem to call it). We ate a curry and watched Critical Mass cycling past HMV, Lush and the Black Bull pub.It could have been London. We had to try something different, something which we wouldn‘t find back home, something local, something Canadian.
“How about wine tasting”, Linda suggested.
Canadian wine. I learn something every day.
Soon we were passing between vineyards, the bright sun blazing down on the cold earth, before pulling up at a smart modern building, all crisp stark lines.
The company Prius stood in a reserved spot out front, smooth jazz played inside. Slender men in designer glasses and tight black tops moved with suitable sang-froid amidst the minimalist décor, polishing glasses and laying out breadsticks. Tim Horton’s this was not.
We were impressed by the sustainable features of the building and soon umming and ahhing over the tasting notes: their wines were ’not the least austere’, offered ‘great fruit parity’ and came ‘buttressed by beautiful acid’.
Oz Clarkeisms aside they did offer something I’d never encountered before: ‘ice wine’. This local speciality involves picking ripe grapes when frozen, yielding less water, the same amount of sugar and a more highly-concentrated juice. The result: a much sweeter wine, which comes in smaller bottles.
Suitably tanked up we headed for the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, just down the road from the famous falls themselves. Amongst the fine nineteenth century buildings stood the Prince of Wales Hotel, The Angel Inn, the Royal George Theatre…(and no Tim Horton‘s). Oh dear: it was all getting too British again.
I couldn‘t help but be drawn to a shop called ‘Taste of Britain.’
Welsh tea towels, DVDs of The Vicar of Dibley, Midsomer Murders and Only Fools and Horses, and a collection of foodstuffs that wouldn’t disgrace our village shop back home. There was Marmite and Typhoo, Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut and Bisto granules, Branston pickle and Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Yorkshire tea…
Yorkshire tea! A week ago I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, my body yearning for a decent brew. Yet now , staring down the barrel of our impending return to Blighty my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened.
Lara, on the other hand was dancing with delight, nostalgia and excitement sweeping her up into a giddy dance on the spot: “They’ve got salt and vinegar crisps! Ooooh!” she squealed as I dragged her outside.
Back in the street my nose sensed the heady waft of bacon sandwiches, my ears picked up the sound of clinking china and from somewhere, I could swear, drifted the solemn tones of a Radio Four announcer.
Was this Canada or the Cotswolds?
It was all too much, too soon: we had to get back to the US.
It wasn’t far - over the river in fact. Just turn left at the falls.
Ten minutes up the road the magnificent Niagara Falls thundered in a roar of mist and spray. Large chunks of ice still clung to the sides whilst on the Canadian side the skyline was pitted by a strange assortment of ugly towers.There was the usual range of ‘amusements’ somehow deemed essential complements to a natural attraction in North America: Guinness World of Records, Hard Rock Café and of course a sprinkling of casinos.
We shivered before the huge horseshoe falls, marvelled at the sheer volume of water plunging over the ledge and our friend Doug was robbed by a fortune-telling Gypsy (ok it was a plastic one in a machine but one that the Daily Express would surely wind itself up about nevertheless).
It was time to leave. We headed for the rainbow (bridge, that is, not the one hanging down below in the mist) and the joyous queue at the US border. Linda was nervous: she loathes crossing into the US.
“I could do with a cuppa before going there”, she said “Shall we go to Tim Horton’s?”
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