Toronto

Museum of Civilization

Here's what I've been up to the past few days. On Monday and Tuesday I was at my aunt and uncle's place north of Ottawa on the Gatineau River. Went for a long bike ride pretty much all afternoon and almost melted it was so hot. Rode by Meech Lake, Old Chelsea and the Mackenzie King Estate. It was a bit too hot for my liking and I should have brought along my swimsuit. I must say if you ever go to Ottawa and only have time for one museum, it should be the Museum of Civilization. You could easily spend two days looking around in there. I probably didn't see a quarter of it but the Canada Hall was really good. There was also a temporary exhibit on Pompeii that was pretty interesting. Well Ottawa was a fun place for a week and a half and it was great to see all of my relatives, but I had to move on.

It was only a couple hours to Kingston and I toured the restored fort near the downtown called Fort Henry. It was built to protect Canada from American invasion in the 1800's, but it was fortunately never needed in battle. What is neat about it is that all of the staff are wearing period costumes and they put on a demonstration/contest at three in the afternoon. Some of the soldiers compete to see which team can fire off their cannon the quickest but they have to go through an elaborate ritual first. What is most impressive about the whole ordeal is that they were wearing dark woolen clothing and it was over 30 degrees out and humid. One of the guys was taken inside because he must have been suffering from heat stroke. In the evening I went to visit my cousin Steve and his wife who made me a great meal. Steve is definitely a master with the BBQ.

I've arrived in Toronto now and I'm staying at my cousin Vanessa's place for a couple days until Steve comes out from Vancouver.
Cheers, Matthew