- Every town—no matter how small—at a minimum must have a couple of pubs. No real restaurants with proper food, mind you, but at least two pubs with the same menu as all the other pubs in the country. Pubs are to Canadians what Misty Pearl is to biting flies.
- For a land that’s frozen 90% of the time and whose mascot should be Olaf the Snowman, there’s very little ice to be found. Order ice water, and if lucky you may get two small cubes. We asked for ice at a breakfast place in Bobcaygeon and the waitress literally sneered at us for asking a stupid question. She stated—in a tone that made clear what should be obvious to any imbecile—that they had no room for an ice-maker. We gave away an ice-maker that fit in a boat, however, so we found the whole experience sketchy. Maybe Canadians just get tired of cold stuff, but warm orange juice isn’t yummy.
- They also don’t brew iced tea up here. In fact, ask if the tea is freshly brewed and they look at you like you just asked for an ice cube or something other than pub food. Dana possibly would trade Benny for an AJ’s tea right now.
- Don’t count on cell or internet service. When the Russians deploy the electro-magnetic impulse bomb that destroys all electronic forms of communication, Canada won’t miss a beat. Pinpoint bombing the LCBOs would be a much more effective way to bring Canada down.
- The people are super nice. We can’t emphasize this enough.
- They care about the planet, as evidenced by the lack of litter and the aggressive recycling programs.
- The scenery is epic.
Ok, on to Orillia, a decent-sized town just north of Lake Simcoe. Home of Gordon Lightfoot. If we tried hard enough we might be able to work in a line from The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald after all. We didn’t pass a Carefree Highway, but there’s a Gordon Lightfoot Avenue.
It may not be as busy as The Tragically Hip Way, but the music is way better.
Speaking of music, we hit Orillia during Scottish Festival. Which meant a pipe and drum parade. We would bet that Howard Jones isn’t big in Scotland. Here’s a wee bit o’ the good stuff.
It also seems that many of these towns have some sort of art theme. We’ve seen fish, flowers, and assorted other things. Orillia’s thing is sailboats, perhaps because Lake Simcoe is a favored sailing spot. In our little area alone there probably were a dozen of them scattered about, many of them claimed by the boys—several times—as their own.
Another day spent cleaning the boat. Where the hell do the spiders come from? Spiders, spider webs, and spider poop everywhere. Misty Pearl looked good for a short while, at least in dim lighting.
The marina doubles as a seaplane taxi-way, so we got to watch planes land and take off several times. Way cool.
The marina also was jammed with Loopers, which was both good and bad. The good is that we caught up with some old acquaintances and met some new folks. The bad is that a bunch o’ boats leaving on the same day in the same direction will just clog up the system. Some of them left in the rainstorm today, but we stayed put. One of us worked on important stuff. One of us binge watched Ken Burns’ Vietnam docu-series. We’re keeping our plans for tomorrow on the down-low with the hope that everyone other than Second Wave does something different.
The boys finally took us out on the kayaks. (And yes, Benny is sleeping on the pink pillow. Please don’t judge us or him.)
