Si in Toronto, Feb 2007

Hi Everyone!

I’m in Toronto again for some training on some products that our company sells.

The trip over was pretty standard, except that flying out of Melbourne to LAX now means you have to go through even more stringent security checks reminiscent of going to Israel. Your bags get searched, any liquid style products are removed sealed in a plastic bag and then replaced.

You’re separated into lines of males and females and then you get touched up by a security guard who also wants to study your shoes. While I’m all for making sure terrorists aren’t on the same plane as me, it’s starting to get pretty ridiculous nowadays…

TORONTO/TRONNO

Toronto (or if you’re Canadian, ‘Tronno’) is the financial and business capital of Canada and borders the great lake of Ontario.

It’s currently winter here and Canadian winters are serious. Very serious. Flying up over the northern states in the US you look down and see it’s all white and frozen over. You could look around the plane and work out who had prepared ahead. A couple of people in t-shirts and shorts obviously hadn’t!

Canadian customs are always pretty intense, they want to know who you are, where you’re from, where you’re staying and what you’re here to do.

Stepping out of the airport the intense cold smacked you in the face like rioters at the Australian Tennis Open. Luckily I found a taxi pretty much straight away.

I’m staying at a hotel in downtown Toronto that is attached to the Rogers Center which is the Toronto equivalent of the Telstra dome and is right next to the CN Tower which I’m told at 553 meters is the tallest free-standing structure in the world.

The Canadian Motor Show was also being held in the Rogers Center. There are a tonne of cars sold in North America that we never see in the South Pacific region, brands such as Saturn, Buick, Pontiac, Hummer etc.

Dinner had been organized after our first day’s training at an Italian restaurant in downtown Toronto.To get there we needed to take the train and tram system. The Toronto central train station is underground and is pretty large. It’s full of shops, cafes, coffee shops etc. What was different from other train stations is that the people didn’t flee the station as soon as they got off the train. Instead they milled about, went to the many retail and food outlets available before braving the cold outside.

With dinner done we caught a ride back to the hotel and had a few drinks in the bar. People from various parts of the world were attending our training course so I was quizzing them on the way of life in their home country. I always like to interrogate foreigners to see if their country has any good ideas for if I become Prime Minister.

A guy called Rich had just finished telling me how in Iowa interest on your home loan is tax deductible (he swears he was telling the truth), when a pint of beer landed on the bar infront of me.

“Are you from New Zealand?” said the voice which was attached to the hand which was attached to the newly arrived pint.

At this point I wasn’t sure if being from New Zealand was a good thing or not

I turned around and said that I was.

At this point the guy launched into a speech where he’d met a New Zealander somewhere in his travels around the world who had bought him a beer on the condition that he buy one for a random New Zealander who he encounters somewhere in the world. He said that I now had to buy one for a random Canadian, “It’s like paying it forward” he said, then turned and left.

The Canadians in the group I was with immediately started volunteering that they should be the benefactor of this deal. However I pointed out that the fine print was they had to be out of Canada.

Canadians are nice people.

THE HOUR

Because the company we all work for sells equipment to television stations, the training co-ordinator had organized for us to visit the taping of a television show called ‘The Hour’. It’s on the Canadian equivalent of the ABC and the show is really a much better version of Rove Live. The host is a guy called George Stroumboulopoulos (all one word) who is a pretty clever guy, he interviews interesting people and asks them interesting questions and doesn’t use lame comedy to fill in the gaps.

George is pretty popular with the 16-26 year old women and during the ad breaks when he would come over and talk to the audience they would whip themselves into a frenzy of giggles and craziness if he answered one of their questions.

The guest on that show was a guy called Wade Davis who is an explorer for National Geographic, music mogul Russell Simmons and strangely, the Von Trapp children who were the of the children of the children who were in ‘The Sound of Music’. The following day, Terri Irwin was going to be on.

With the taping over and the over stimulated girls gone, we were hungry.

WAYNE GRETSKY’S

Wayne Gretzky is a national hero in Canada. For those who haven’t heard of him, to Canadians he is undoubtedly the greatest Ice Hockey player of all time. They’ve dubbed him ‘The Great One’ and if you ask a Canadian who ‘The Great One’ is they’ll look at you like you’re a dumb ass.

Ironically though, Wayne spent much of his career playing for American hockey teams after he was ‘traded’ in 1988. Apparently this resulted in national uproar. A Canadian MP called Nelson Riis even demanded that the government step in and block the transaction. He’s a real big deal here. A real big deal.

Wayne has since retired and lives in LA, but has opened a chain of restaurants which is where we had dinner after ‘The Hour’.

As you’d expect, Gretsky’s is full of memorabilia that you can purchase, if you have a strong credit card…

It’s here that I developed a taste for real North American chicken wings with medium sauce. Mmmmm!

HOCKEY

Back at the hotel a hockey game was playing in the bar so the Canadians took it upon themselves to educate me in the ways of their national sport.

I learned terms such as “Checking” (you pound your opponent into the wall as hard as you can, as long as you don’t hit him with your stick it’s all good), “icing” (sounded similar to being offside in soccer, but if you get caught ‘icing’ then the puck goes down to the opposite end of the ice rink which puts your opponents right next to your goal – not good), “power play” (when someone gets sent off for a penalty they don’t get replaced so the opposing team will play as hard as they can to take advantage).

Apparently also, you’re allowed to fight with your opponents (and they do) and as long as you don’t fall over (ie you both remain standing up) then the refs don’t care. Certainly in any of the games I watched the refs were just standing around waiting for them to fall over.

As hard as the Canadians looked, they couldn’t find a Hockey game for us to see in Toronto, even if there had been one on, it would have been very difficult/expensive to get tickets.

So we did something else instead.

NBA – CANADIAN STYLE

The following night our training co-ordinator had organized us all tickets to go to the NBA Basketball game featuring the Toronto Raptors vs the Indiana Pacers. The Raptors are apparently the top team in their division and the Air Canada Center was packed out.

There’s no boring parts to an NBA game. If the game isn’t on, then something else is happening such as a dancing competition (people in the stadium dance to see if they can win courtside seats worth $500 per game), fireworks will go off, cheerleaders come out and put on a show that’s very much worth watching, and various other things happen.

The Canadians were right in it. The closer the Raptor’s score got to 100 the louder they got. One of the people I was with then explained that if the Raptors got to 100 points then everyone in the stadium would get free pizza. I thought she was having me on. How would that work out logistically?

Well the Raptors did reach 100 points and the place erupted, I was more keen to see how the pizzas would be distributed, but it turns out that you take your admission ticket to the pizza place and they give you pizza. A little bit too logical for my liking…

What was really nice is that there weren’t any idiots that I could see. No racial riots by dumbasses, no drunken idiots either, but I think this is due in large part to the fact that beer was CAN$10 a glass… Everyone lined up for the toilets in an efficient and orderly fashion. It was just a real hassle free event. You’d absolutely take your kids there and you’d be fine. Plus, when you left, you got given a free razor!

PHILTHY MCNASTY’S

Everyone was hungry after the Raptors game and chicken wings seemed to be a good idea (because it was my idea) so we set off for a place that was known to have decent wings.

It was cold. Really, really cold. I would say it was probably around -15 to -17 degrees, maybe more. I’m used to a good level of cold having come from the South Island of New Zealand, but this was intense. I was rugged up with about two jersey’s on and a big jacket and looked much like the Michelin Man however I didn’t have a hat. In the 20 minute or so walk to get the wings I was becoming increasingly more enthusiastic (and slightly concerned) about getting inside quick.

Just before we got to the restaurant we came across a girl with a group of guys who was just wearing a skirt and a jersey. I couldn’t believe it! You could see she was frozen and really, she was being really, really stupid being dressed like that. As one of the women that was with us said “Don’t feel sorry for her! It was her choice!”.

Dinner was good. Two pounds of chicken wings in hot sauce do wonders to warm you up.

After dinner we went to a bar, on the way there I got so cold I ended up jogging beside the Canadians in an effort to keep warm. On the way home from the bar I was pretty much moonwalking up and down the street cause the Canadians didn’t seem as driven as I was to get inside. It gets really cold here.

TOURIST TOUR

I had nothing planned for Saturday so decided I’d make the trip down to the Niagara Falls so I got the hotel to organize me a spot on a tourist bus. It was $150 for a full day trip including lunch which I didn’t think was too bad.

The little bus came and picked me up from the hotel and away we went, picking various people up from other hotels in the downtown area.

I was quite keen on a little nap on the trip out to the falls, except it did not appear that this bus was equipped with any suspension of any kind. It certainly felt like the axles were welded to the chassis as each time we hit a pothole (and there are lots on Canadian roads) it felt like I was in danger of losing my fillings…

The one and a half hour drive out to the falls was pretty run of the mill. The driver explained the various parts of scenery as we bounced past.

We stopped at a place called Niagara-on-the-Lake which is a pretty cool little historic town on the shores of lake Ontario. It’s surrounded by of all things, wineries. I thought that wineries couldn’t operate in frozen wastelands as in New Zealand when the potential for frost looms vineyard owners go and hire helicopters to hover over their vines to prevent the frost from destroying the crops. Apparently though, the grapes do very well here without helicopters and the resulting wine is a big export.

My fingers pretty much froze to the metal casing of my camera. A the grill of a Chevy Tahoe (great big pickup truck) reminded me that you look LEFT instead of right when crossing the road.

Further up on the side of the road is the World’s smallest Catholic Church. You can fit four people inside it. A rich guy (who owns some of the vineyards around which obviously do better than I expected) built it as a bit of a joke for his Spanish workers. Apparently though they use it a lot.

The bus driver commented that the illegal immigrant trade is still alive and well with people paying thousands of dollars to be smuggled across the Niagara river from Canada into the US, even though Canada openly welcomes illegal immigrants (probably more than they welcome harmless New Zealanders!) and invites them to stay, they still want to go to the States where at best they will be shafted by miniscule wages, or at worst, they’ll be thrown back into Canada. Crazy idiots. Stay in Canada, people are friendly here! It is cold though.

Niagara itself is very developed with big casinos, towers and huge hotels. The tour included lunch at a big hotel on the banks of the Niagara River over looking the falls. The view was spectacular.

I sat down to lunch with a German called Michael who now lived in Switzerland, so I got to talking with Michael about how things work in both of those countries. However Michael had to first express his disgust at how the Spanish people on our tour bus had been far too late in getting back on the bus back at Niagara-on-the-Lake. This had been at odds with his German sense of punctuality. I had thought nothing of it as I expected nothing more from Spanish people. I’ve been to Spain.

NIAGARA FALLS

To say the Niagara Falls are impressive is an understatement of unholy proportions. The noise is incredible!

There are actually three parts to the Falls, the American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls and the most famous, the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Together they’re known as the Niagara Falls.

The Canadian Horseshoe falls alone flows at a rate of 2.16 million litres per second! The falls are as deep as they are tall (about 55 meters tall and 55 meters deep).

Unfortunately the bottom of the falls was frozen solid so we weren’t able to go on the Maid of the Mist, but you can go down into tunnels that open up behind the falls which was very, very cool.

A few people have tried to go over the falls, only a couple have made it alive. Nowadays if you try to do it and you get detected, the Canadians and Americans have hydro dams upriver which they can shut off and kill the flow of water to the falls in five minutes. So if they see a dumbass paddling off down the river towards the falls they can literally strand him. Then the Americans will come out from their side of the river and issue him with a US$10,000 fine just as the Canadians are arriving with their invoice of CAN$10,000. I don’t think many people try anymore…

We were then taken to an IMAX theatre to watch a VERY CHEESY movie about Niagara Falls, but it sucked so much I won’t discuss it any further.

When I got back to the hotel I met up with some helicopter mates I have in Toronto. Whenever I know that I’m going to be in another city or country I’ll contact some of my helicopter mates who live there and meet up. It’s a great way of seeing the place from a local point of view.

WATERLOO, HOME OF THE BLACKBERRY

On Sunday I had to get to a town called Waterloo, about an hour and a half out of Toronto so I decided to take the bus.

I eventually made it to my hotel despite the best efforts of the bus driver (who wasn’t a Canadian, and I suspect was probably French) who dropped me off in an Arctic Wasteland out the back of Waterloo University with no idea or interest in helping me find a taxi. I was left there with my bags and no clue. A couple of squirrels cruised past and didn’t even give me a second glance, they had business to attend to somewhere else.

Thankfully, a Canadian student walked by and I asked if he knew where I might find a taxi. Cheerfully he said “I’ll call you one”, flipped out his cellphone and within a couple of minutes I was in a taxi on my way to the hotel.

Canadians are nice people.

Waterloo is a very technical area, it is the place where a company called RIM Technologies lives. RIM is famous because they were the inventor and are the producer of the Blackberry email device which is hugely popular with business people all over the world. The people here are very proud of this. So proud I was surprised there wasn’t a statue of a Blackberry at the entrance of Waterloo.

Again I met up with some helicopter friends who took me out to dinner in the middle of the snow storm that was currently happening.

One thing I was really surprised at was I saw no car crashes even in all that snow. The cars would slip and slide everywhere but no one ever hit each other. They’re very good drivers over here. Back home in both Australia and New Zealand this kind of thing would cause a national shutdown as everyone crashed into each other.

TIM HORTONS

On the taxi ride in when I first arrived in Toronto I noticed a large number of places called ‘Tim Hortons’. I didn’t think too much of it, until I continued to see a Tim Horton’s store EVERYWHERE.

Tim Horton was a hockey player and basically they sell coffee and donuts. The coffee isn’t even very nice, but they have lines upon lines of people out their door in the mornings. It’s not unusual to see a Tim Horton’s on opposing sides of the road either.

Tim Horton’s however is a very community based business. They sponsor a hockey league called the “Tim Bits” which is basically to allow young, under privileged children the chance to play in a hockey league.

Scott and Lauren took me to a Tim Horton’s so that I could at least see what the fuss is all about. I’m still not sure I know what it’s all about. The coffee was average at best, but it is cheap, $1.49 for a regular size. But you can’t argue with their success.

BACK IN TORONTO

I’m now back in Toronto at another training course and fly out on Friday night to spend a couple of days with my uncle in Wisconsin which should be good. Equally snowy I expect, but good. Then back to 40 degrees in Melbourne…

Si