Canadia Pictorial part 5 Toronto Part 2

I noticed this last year too: how Torontonians love their barbers and psychics. I was on Bloor St in a neighbourhood called The Annex. I went looking for a psychic barber but was unsuccessful, but I did think of asking a psychic which barber was the best.

In Chinatown on Spadina I saw a shop that advertised "Palm-face-reading". What is Palm-face reading? Is it noticing the body language when someone 'face palms'? Or is it the next step in technology where a psychic reads your facebook page.
"Hmmm, you are popular with strangers. Also eighty of your friends made 132 assorted extraneous comments on stuff."

They advertise soccer as 'the beautiful game' I guess because Canadian football and ice hockey are ugly.

I confirmed the bad news in the Royal Ontario Museum that although T Rex could high two and allosaurus could high three, that most charismatic of dinosaur predators, the velociraptor, also could only high three.

AvenueQ was not on yet but whilst on the metro I saw that Dirty Dancing the stageshow was. To celebrate I stole as many babies as I could and piled them up in the back left of the carriage.
When the distraught mothers demanded to know what I was doing I replied that _someone_ had to put babies in the corner.

The metro is $2.75 to go anywhere one way and the security guards are polite yet firm and hand you over to the police efficiently.


Toronto is divided East and West by Yonge St. I walked extensively round the West. Much of it looks like the prettier parts of Sydney's innerwest. A long winter with the second highest snowfall on record was followed very quickly by a week of about 20degrees. Spring erupted spectacularly. The flower of the city is the tulip.

Queen St West is fairly similar to King St in Newtown.

I really like Toronto.

Canadian Pictorial Part 4

Toronto (Well, derr.)

Blue Jays! High Five!

Be Yourself!

Kensington Market street sculpture showing that, indeed, Australia is at the arse end of the world.

I agree.

Harry goes Bananas

Bananas are $1.69 a kilo.
$1.69!
I remember the wailing in the streets after that cyclone a few years back when bananas went up to $500trillion dollars a kilo payable only in family heirlooms and the ashes of your ancestors. I distinctly remember pundits shouting that it was the end of the world, while the less hysterical among us were moaning that it was merely the end of the entire capitalist system.
Done. Dusted. Adam Smith's experiment over.

So, at $1.69, where is the joyful dancing in the streets and the cries of "MANA FROM HEAVEN! God has remembered his children! We are saved etc etc" followed by a pogrom against smug socialists?!

Where are the street closing processions of delighted families converging on speakers shouting extracts from Paul Keating's speeches about us being a banana republic and everyone carelessly getting it exactly wrong like middle-class kids wearing Che teeshirts and designer shemags around their necks?

Canadia Pictorial 3

Halifax has beautiful scenery nearby.

Happy tourists at the beach.

And sexy pumpernickel. This, I guess, is what you get when you mix Germans with ummmm ummmm drugs?

But it embraces the whole Maritimes spirit of redefining the rules; for instance, tin the Maritimes you are free to...

...put asparagus on your wife's head.


Particularly if your wife looks like this..

..and you look like this.

Who would know that this young lad would become an associate professor of microbiology?

Canadian Pictorial 2

Montreal has nice buildings...

They also have breakfast of tea, chocolate coissants and a pretty girl. Sounds perfect, right? But does it have somewhere where I can really be myself?

BE YOURSELF!!

Canadia Pictorial 1

THIS IS BELGIUM!!

Well, actually it's Ottawa.




But they do have some Greek influences.


...and they do have tea fit for heroes.

They have nice scenery.

And some guy being slightly cliched.

Passerby: Are you trying to find yourself?

H: No, to be myself.

Overseas Homosexual Hilarity

On a flight from Toronto to Halifax the cabin adress was by a delightfully camp man.
His gold was:
"We ask, ladies, that when you put your purse under the seat in front that you ensure the straps are fully under the seat. And gentleman if you have a purse we ask only one thing.... that it match your shoes."
Plane erupts in laughter. Flaming-death-on-takeoff fears subside.

The Canadians have the same maritime patrol aircraft that we do but instead of calling it the P3 orion they call it the Aurora. The maintenance crews and any other pilot, however, call it 'The Great Grey Slug'.
In return the GGS crews call F-18s 'Twin tail Plastic Fag Jets'.

I guess that means that our next fighter aircraft are Sthuuuper hornets!

Happy Star Wars Day

May the Fourth be with you.

American WW2 poster

Random wanderings around Toronto

East meets New World West

The worst:

Chinatown in Toronto just off Spadina

The best:
History of Origami store, Narita airport, Tokyo.