South Of The Border

Toni got to get up close to the Falls

When Toni took this photo I was about half way across the Rainbow Bridge
America and the American Falls are on the right

When we moved from New York City to Toronto we shipped a few large boxes to ourselves using FedEx. It was a bit pricey but manageable. We had the contents list pre-approved by customs when we made our earlier apartment hunting trip. The documents were attached to the boxes as instructed and they were supposed to fly right through and be delivered to our new apartment. That did not happen and FedEx held the boxes for a week. They wanted me to come out to the depot, pick up the documents, take the papers to customs for approval and then back to FedEx in order to get my packages released for delivery. This would have racked up well over $100 in cab fares. After about four days of phone calls I was finally able to speak with a person who understood the situation and that the documents had already been stamped approved.

We still had a few more boxes in storage in Kansas City. These contained non-essential possessions, mostly photo albums and sentimental items. Wishing to avoid another potential problem with FedEx I found another option. I figured there must be a way to ship them almost to Canada and thereby eliminating the customs problem. Sure enough I found that in every border town there is some business willing to accept and store packages for Canadians and they can be picked up and brought back by car. We set up an account with one of these services in Niagara, just across the US border. By shipping to this American address and not into Canada we paid just a fraction on the shipping and the US depot only charged $23 to receive and store the boxes for up to 15 days or 30 days for just a bit more. Toni had never seen Niagara Falls and neither of us had been to the town of Niagara On The Lake so we thought we could make it into a mini vacation at the same time.

Once we confirmed the boxes were delivered we rented a car. Monday morning I went about a mile to the agency to pick it up. I can’t fully describe the odd feeling of suddenly being behind the wheel of a car and driving the streets that I know so well but only ever as a pedestrian on the sidewalk or in the crosswalks. All the landmarks were in the same places but the vantage points were way off. Even traffic lights looked different. Everything was incredibly familiar yet strange at once. I picked Toni up at the apartment door and we were on the Gardiner Expressway in minutes and on our little adventure.

Once we were out of Toronto proper it looked like any highway in North America other than the highway names. Queens this and Kings that and Winston Churchill something. The British Commonwealth influence still looms large here. As we approached the border the signs for Niagara Falls came more frequently. At the same time the signage shortened the name to simply “The Falls” and finally just “Falls”. Coming into town you instantly get that familiar feel of a resort/tourist location. I noticed some changes right off with the “Times Square” influence. A giant Hershey store right next to the obligatory Hard Rock Café for instance. Then you turn the corner and there are the Falls. It is not a gradual buildup. It is just BOOM and there they are. You see the whole thing at once as if you just pulled a blindfold off. I won’t try to describe them. I simply don’t have the words.

Now the mission part of the trip really kicked in. I had no time to stop and enjoy the view. I pulled into an area marked for buses only and dropped Toni off. We didn’t see any reason for her to go with me across the border and back. We picked an arbitrary time of an hour and a half later for me to pick her back up; a quick kiss and I was off. I should mention that neither of us have cell phones anymore so there wouldn’t be a chance to adjust our meeting place or time. We were locked in and committed.

I looked off to the distance and could see that the Rainbow Bridge leading to the border was backed up with traffic that appeared to be hardly moving if at all. I felt my US passport in my front shirt pocket, fastened the seatbelt and headed to America. I followed the circuitous signs through town to get to the bridge. When I got to the right place the traffic was backed up for blocks behind me and I needed to somehow merge over a lane to the left rather quickly. I spotted a three foot gap between two cars and suddenly just whipped the front corner of my car into that spot without thinking about it. The back car couldn’t proceed and I was in the correct lane. It is like putting your foot in a door that someone is trying to close. As I straightened into the lane and started the long crawl across the bridge I realized that I had picked up this maneuver from the NYC cab drivers. I had observed it a hundred times but never used it or even knew it was in my bag of tricks.

After thirty minutes of inching across the bridge I finally was “greeted” by the border patrolman. I was careful not to keep my passports together so I was sure to give him the US one. He was rather brusque and intimidating. He started firing off question in a staccato machine gun style faster than I could possibly even answer. Where do you live? Where are you going? What is your purpose? How long will you be? What kind of work do you do? Why do you live in Canada? Boom, boom, boom. I stayed right with the interrogation although I knew I up against a pro. He even started asking questions a second time. I realized he wasn’t even waiting for the answers nor did care about them particularly. He was observing me and my reactions trying to trip me up. I can see how difficult it would be to stick to a made up story. He checked the trunk and finally waved me through. I couldn’t be upset with him at all since he is the first line of defence keeping bad guys from doing their thing.

Picking up the boxes was pretty uneventful. They were very nice and even loaded the boxes in the backseat of my car. Five minutes later I was at the Canadian border again. I had switched out my passports again to keep things simple. This direction there was no waiting at all. In fact there more open lanes than occupied. I was asked a few questions and told to pull over to a stall to be checked out. Another agent came out and asked to see the trunk. He didn’t bother with the three large boxes in plain view practically begging to be cut open. Satisfied with the trunk I was waved back into Canada.

Mission accomplished.

I zipped over to the meeting place and there was Toni and I was only about five minutes later than the appointed time. I thought about parking the car and taking in the view properly but we have plans to be back in less than a month so I figured that could wait.

On the way back we took a detour to the town of Niagara On The Lake. It is a bit out of the way in the middle of a large wine making area but it is well worth the time. Most of the buildings date to 1850s and older. Lush flowers line all of the streets and shop windows. I grabbed a quick bite and Toni had some local wine and we really got the vacation vibe. Despite it being a touristy spot we found the prices were actually much more reasonable than what we find in Toronto. We checked out the shops for a couple of hours and started back home. On the way out of town we came upon a small lookout point and saw the Toronto skyline from across the lake.

This is a typical restaurant in Niagara On The Lake at the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets

The Toronto skyline from about 45 miles away

MORE PHOTOS HERE

Justin Townes Earle

Friday evening we went to see Justin Townes Earle perform at the famous Horseshoe Tavern. Justin is the son of Steve Earle. He has managed to become successful without trading on his father’s name and has remarkably developed his own style of songwriting and playing. He has no doubt been influenced by his father’s musical tastes without copying Steve’s sound at all.

http://www.justintownesearle.com/

This venue, The Horseshoe Tavern, has been around forever and has hosted a ‘who’s who’ of incredible acts over the years. The building itself is 150 years old and originally housed a blacksmith shop. Since 1947 it has been a bar/honky tonk and artists like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Loretta Lynn played there early in their careers. More recently The Rolling Stones kicked off their Bridges To Babylon tour there in 1997. This was an ‘invite only’ last minute affair as the place will only hold 300 standing shoulder to shoulder.

http://horseshoetavern.com/glory_days.htm

While waiting for the doors to open, I received a small tap on the shoulder and a tiny female voice saying, “Hi Bill”. Now keep in mind that I know exactly six people in the metro area and I am 1,000 miles from my hometown so to hear my name called out is just impossible. To my complete surprise, I turned around to see my little friend, Amanda Shires. If you were a faithful reader of our New York blog you may recall that we saw her perform on two occasions there last year. Once I was able to recover from the shock of seeing a familiar face in my new city, I found out she was not the opening act, but would be the fiddle player and backing vocalist for Justin. What a great bonus! A little later before the show, Toni and I were able to separately have brief conversations with her and she told us how she and Justin go way back to the beginning of his recording career in Nashville and that she played on his first CD. Justin had to cancel some dates last year and when he rescheduled them he contacted her to see if she was available. She had a few days off from her own shows with Rod Picott and booked them with Justin. She was a fantastic addition to the lineup. Bryn Davies was recruited likewise to play standup bass.

http://www.amandashires.net/Amanda_Shires/HOME.html

We arrived early so we could snag one of the few seats to be had on one of the tables. We were able to share a booth with a U of T Professor, his son and his son's friends who were all huge fans of this genre. So we had some interesting conversation before and between acts to ease our impatience of not getting to see JTE until 11:15.

Little did we realize this was a venue without a good seat in the house. Only the people standing in front that arrived later would be able to get the complete experience. Luckily our booth had a ledge above it where we were able to perch ourselves and get fairly good views of the musicians. Being a sold out show, there were hundreds of people packed into this small venue so Toni's usual attempt at wriggling up front failed after a couple of minutes.

In addition to the less than comfortable seating, we endured a lot of drunk attendees. Upon our perches we were getting a decent amount of A/C cutting through the growing humidity and feel pretty relaxed and relieved the sound system was a great one. At that point about half way through the opening act, a very intoxicated woman standing behind us who was yucking it up with a couple of hippie bikers suddenly did a Danny Thomas spit take. Luckily, Toni only was hit with enough drops to get her attention, but one of the bikers good naturally took the brunt of it resulting in a soaked t-shirt.

About 20 minutes into JTE, the A/C could not keep up with the humidity rising from the damp basement cave below and the heat of the crowd. This was the perfect environment for Justin performing "Working For The MTA" because it was just like being in the worse NYC subway station on a muggy day.

The show was great though. Justin was entertaining not just with his music but with his between songs banter and self deprecating humour (much of it directed at his demons that led to the rescheduling to begin with). The highlight of the evening was the title track, “Harlem River Blues”, which the entire crowd sang along with from beginning to end unprompted. Usually I don’t care for the singalong bit but in this case the original song incorporates a gospel style backing so it was enhanced by this participation.

We really wanted to stick around and say goodbye to Amanda after the show but we were exhausted and anxious to get out of the sauna. It was nearly one in the morning but it is a snap to grab a cab at Spadina and Queen and in five minutes we were delivered to our door.

Another Canadian Cousin

Gordon Nosworthy, me, Dawna Wightman

Gord and Charlene with one of Gord's paintings.

As soon as we were settled in Toronto I looked up another one of my cousins here, Gord Nosworthy and his wife Charlene. They invited us along with Cousin Dawna and Jay over for dinner. It took a few weeks of emails but we got a date set and Dawna and Jay gave us a ride out to Markham, a suburb just north of Toronto. We had never really been outside the core of Toronto, let alone 30 miles from the city centre and five miles beyond the last subway stop. The ride was a real eye opener as we got a taste of how sprawling the metropolis is. The funny thing is that once you get out that far it looks like every other suburb I have ever seen anywhere in North America.

We had a wonderful get together; cooking out on their deck. I can’t say that we were catching up because it was a first meeting for Gord and Dawna, and Gord and I only met once nearly fifty years earlier. It is funny how this works, virtual strangers meeting face to face for the first time but the barriers evaporate simply knowing there is a common ancestor binding us in some invisible way. If you were to see us you would think we had all grown up together.

A little backstory:

Gord is my first cousin once removed. Neither of us can remember it but we first met on our big family vacation in July, 1963. Gord’s father Roy and my grandfather Donald were brothers. Roy and his family were the first of the family to move away from Montreal in 1947, the year before my grandfather moved his family to Kansas City. When we came to Canada in 1963 our first stop was to see Roy and his wife Margaret (still living nearby, age 97 and sharp I am told) in Toronto. We spent a couple of nights there before continuing on to Montreal. Their home was a semi-detached house in the Beaches area east of downtown on Silver Birch Avenue.

Gord grew up in this house in the Beaches, theirs was the unit on the right. I once spent the night in the third floor dormer.

Twenty years later Toni and I came to Toronto to visit her sister and brother-in-law. They had just moved into their 1940s era semi-detached…on Silver Birch Avenue. It is only four houses up from the house Uncle Roy once lived in! That is a huge coincidence for a city this size. Now, to add to this story Dawna moved to the Beaches three years ago and is just three blocks east of Silver Birch Avenue. That is a lot of connections to one very small part of a neighbourhood.

Summer 1953. Gord, my Uncle Donald, my Mom, all at Lake Ontario.

Gordon in high school.

Health Care Part Two

I had my first real encounter with the Provincial Health Care system on Thursday. This initial visit was simply to set up my account and meet my doctor fact to face. The appointment was for 3:00 but I arrived a half hour early anticipating there would be forms to fill out. I presented my health card to the receptionist and she proceeded to check the computer for my appointment. She did not have me down for 8/11 at all. After a little further searching she saw that my appointment was for Monday the 8^th and that I had missed it. Toni had made the appointment a couple of months earlier in person. It is not like her to get something like this wrong. Later at home we pulled out the appointment card and saw that receptionist had indeed been correct. She had handwritten the date: Aug 8/11. Exactly like that and Toni noticed just the numerical part and eventually entered it in the calendar for the 11^th instead of the 8^th.

At the doctor’s office I was prepared to reschedule but the receptionist assured me that it was no problem at all and the doctor would still be able to see me that day. She gave me my forms and clipboard and I went over to the waiting area to dig in. Despite what you hear about the long waits and so on there were only a couple of other people sitting there. As I worked on my medical history and personal information I found that it was a little odd to not be pulling out credit cards and insurance cards and copying down all those numbers. I was about ten minutes into the forms and about half finished when the doctor popped out and waved for me to come back. I explained that I hadn’t quite finished yet and she told me not to worry and come on back.

In the course of our interview we scheduled a physical. Part of this was an order for blood work. She gave me the form and two addresses of labs that could do the job. I asked about setting up the appointment for that. She told me there was no need for that. You just pick a day to fast for 12 hours and then just show up with the form. No prearranged time at all. She noticed my puzzled look and said, “Welcome to the Canadian Health Care System”.

To recap, I show up three days late for my appointment and still get in without waiting at all (in fact was seen earlier than planned) and then I can walk in anytime I like for blood work. It is not exactly the way it is portrayed in the States. More later.