02/13/08: Ottawa and snow

We had three wonderful days in Ottawa with friends Guy and Mike in their lovely house. They were grand hosts, driving us here and there to sightsee, have lunch, meet their friends, etc. We saw Parliament Hill (and the cat hotel there), stood under the giant spider outside the National Gallery, and relaxed in the lobby of the old and rich hotel Chateau Laurier. We liked the larger-than-life bronzes of five middle-aged women who challenged laws that said women were not full "persons." The Rideau Canal (the longest skating rink in the world) was very impressive, especially realizing how far above the river level the boats are lifted by a series of locks. We walked on the frozen canal, mingling with ice skaters of all ages, saw a bed race, and enjoyed "beaver tails," a fried-dough confection unique to Ottawa's Winterlude festival. The ice sculptures were ambitious, but a little tumbledown in their second weekend.
On Sunday we all visited the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which features numerous detailed replicas of houses, stores, streets, etc. from Canada's past to walk around in. Good lessons for us new Canadians! We were sorry to say goodbye to Mike and Guy, and to Ottawa. (In this picture you can see Parliament Hill from the CMC across the river in Quebec. Click to enlarge. I'll post more pictures soon on another site; stay tuned for the URL.)

There are some very cold days here in Toronto, but most days are not so cold. We've gotten used to bundling up and carrying an extra sweater and socks when we go out. It's the amount of snow that makes life difficult at times -- and we don't even have to shovel! In Ottawa (and on the train going up), we were surrounded by white, rounded mounds of snow covering everything. Fumiko has never seen so much snow in all her life. Streets in Ottawa were plowed, and Mike and Guy drove without apparent difficulty, but we were still amazed by the constant surrounding whiteness. Back in Toronto, it had snowed a lot, and then snowed some more. Homeowners have to shovel several times a day when that happens (although many don't, so walking means pushing through 4-6 inches of snowfall in places). I don't want to exaggerate it; it's more like Boston, I think, than Alaska. Compared to New York, it's a question of frequency rather than degree. New York has big snows, but not often, and they don't last long.

Fumiko is working hard at her English class, but getting impatient to find a job and start working. I have been keeping my eye on apartment ads, going to see one now and then (we have to leave this apartment by May at the latest), and using the Internet to research various problems of Toronto life: where to buy good challah bread; how much is postage; how to get a Canadian driver's license (woops! licence), and so forth. I'm finally sending out New Year's cards, slowly; I just couldn't fit them in in December or January.

I realized that when I went to New York and returned, my passport was never stamped. I can think of advantages and disadvantages to this state of affairs, but I wonder if it's policy or oversight. I sent an email to the U.S. border agency, but they replied that it may take them a month or two to answer me!

As a linguist, I notice usages that are new to me:
• "the 905-belt": I looked for a highway 905, but found none. Finally, Wikipedia tells me it's a telephone area code, which at one time distinguished Toronto proper (416) from the surrounding suburbs (905).
• political terms (they use the British parliamentary system here): "riding" (election district); "stand for election."
• "ratepayer" = taxpayer
• in sports reporting: "Chargers are in tough" "Tigers in tough against strong" And in a non-sports story: "Residents are in tough" (My sports-savvy son assures me that he's never seen this before.)
• funny spelling: "tonnes of people"

Pictures

January 7th, waiting to be interviewed by Canadian Customs:

February 1st, Fumiko in the blizzard:

02/05/08: Snow in Toronto

Lately we've had real winter weather. When I arrived back from New York, it had snowed and High Park was beautiful. Then it warmed up for a couple of days, but on Thursday it was extremely cold and windy. Friday there was a blizzard. It snowed heavily all day, and when it stopped at night, there looked to be about 5 inches of snow everywhere. Our landlord shoveled gamely several times that day, though others on the street did not. I got no newspaper on Friday, and we had little or no television most of Friday and Saturday! Schools closed on Friday (Fumiko came home from hers midmorning), and many stores closed early. This is all rather surprising, since presumably snow is not unusual here. We bundled up and went to the shopping street in the afternoon, enjoying the drama and the beauty of the whirling snow. Many others also seemed to enjoy it -- shoppers were smiling. Only those waiting for the trolley seemed grumpy, as surface transportation had a lot of delays apparently. By Saturday, melting had started, which meant large puddles and slush everywhere. Our feet got wet and cold during our Saturday outing to see some East End neighborhoods near the lakeshore.

In the past week, we have participated more in "Toronto life": I went square-dancing at the gay SD club here (Triangle Squares), watched an Irish film shown at a nearby library, and went to an academic talk at the University of Toronto, and Fumiko attended a supper for retarded adults, staff, and volunteers at a social center -- not to mention intensive socialization for five hours each day with her ESL classmates, women from many countries. We both went to a panel and discussion about gay neighborhoods and community in Toronto, which was very interesting. On Saturday, after sloshing about the East End, we went to a performance on stilts at the City Hall plaza, part of the city's winter festival. It was quite original and charming, with music and humor, and both adults and children were delighted with it. See www.gajestheater.nl and http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/01/30/ alice-in-wonderland-at-torontos-new-city-hall/

I have subscribed to a Toronto daily paper so I can gradually get used to the Canadian point of view, and be aware of local issues and events. It's delivered to the front door (or thereabouts) every morning about 6:30. Although they missed Friday, the day of the blizzard, I got two on Saturday! Oddly, the "fat paper" of the week here is Saturday, not Sunday, as in the U.S. And it even has a TV section with complete listings for the coming week -- something that the New York Times abandoned a while back.

Fumiko is working hard on her English lessons, and I have been putting a lot of energy into researching printers. I had a hard time deciding between laser and inkjet (cheap to buy, expensive to run), multifunction vs. simple, networked vs. normal, etc. Then Fumiko found an ad for a laser single-function printer on a Japanese bulletin board here, and it was well-reviewed according to my research, so we decided to go for it. I went to check it out last night; it happened to be during rush hour and there were other transit problems, so it took me two hours to get there! Coming back was only one hour. The young Japanese woman selling it has been here for a year on a "working holiday." She said she would rather have gone to the U.S., but they/we don't have such a thing. She's been working part-time at a coffee shop and enjoying Canadian life, apparently. The printer is a Brother HL-2040, which is currently on sale downtown for about $72 (after tax and mail-in rebate), and we paid $45. We have now got it working on both computers (though only one at a time), so that solves that problem for the time being. Maybe later we'll buy a color inkjet multifunction for other tasks, but I like having a quiet fast text printer that isn't an ink-guzzler.

I also spent a morning setting up the VCR I brought from New York last trip. Not trivial, since I had neglected to bring the manual and the remote, and it's been a while since I used it (having gotten a DVR last summer). But eventually I got it working, and I've taped a couple of TV shows that were broadcast at times when I couldn't watch.

We continue to enjoy High Park, and walk there often, snow or no snow. (The lightweight "crampons" that Sarai gave us work wonderfully well on icy paths!) There are still beautiful geese to be seen there, and on the weekends there are so many dogs that I wonder if one is required to bring one in order to walk there! One day I jogged along the shore of frozen Grenadier Pond and saw some people skating in defiance of the "danger" signs, and a large snowman built on the ice. Checking the relative sizes on the Internet, I find that High Park is about half the size of Central Park; there seems to be only one other woodland area in Toronto as big, so I'll have to go and investigate that, too, as a possible place to live.

I was shocked to learn that vitamins are very expensive here -- at least Vitamin E, which I am low on and didn't bother to get when I was in New York last, thinking that it would be cheaper in Canada. Not! I finally found a Rexall (house brand) version for only twice what I normally pay.

We've been getting new neighbors in our building -- which is a rambling three-story-and-basement house that seems to have five or six apartments carved out of it. Our newest neighbor is a lesbian violinist who is considering moving back to Toronto from Vancouver, partly because of a new romance with a woman here. We met her when she knocked on our door, frantic to reach her girlfriend by phone. That afternoon we had no Internet (it happens, it happens...), and the landlord had given her a VOIP phone that also needs the Internet. We loaned her our cell phone to make the call.