Toronto & Stratford Remain Part of the Dominion

The walking tour of Kensington Market could easily have been designed by SK staff. First, we took a little walk to a park to get the blood flowing. Our Harbourfront guide, Tim, asked for some background on immigration, which the kids were able to comfortably supply. (Hooray, diaspora study!) Then they were given a handout with a few really good questions and a map of the two-block area. The kids then toured the neighborhood--the most multicultural place in the world's most multicultural city--for an hour in small groups. Afterward, Tim facilitated a highly sophisticated conversation on controversial topics like graffiti, locavorism, and big-box stores. The kids were amazing! Very smart, expansive of mind, and articulate.

We walked to Trimurti, an Indian restaurant on Queen Street, for a buffet lunch. En route we stopped at the Dragon City Mall in Chinatown. After lunch we headed back to the university for a little R & R. Then it was back on the 510 Spadina Avenue streetcar to the CN Tower, where we spent a happy hour oohing and aahing at the city below and doing push-ups on the glass-bottom floor, a thousand feet above the city.

Back on the 510 uptown to the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, where we got a primer in First Nations history from Rozella Johnston, NCCT's cultural director, then joined a gathering that featured an Ojibway prayer, a men's Big Drum Circle, a women's Hand Drum Circle, singing, dancing, and a pot-luck dinner. This was possibly the oldest activity in Toronto. The name means meeting place, as both Tim and Rozella pointed out, and it wasn't hard to imagine the exact activities we observed taking place amongst a gathering of First Nations travellers on the same site four thousand years ago.

After a decent night's sleep and some trouble-free packing, we drove a couple of hours to Stratford for a fine Festival production of Hamlet. (The cartoons above are from Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant comic. She has great stuff on the Brontës and Canadian history, too.) The kids were enthralled, even in the first act when I was a little bored (then again, I've seen this play many times). In this, as in every other activity on our trip, the kids arrived ready to find it interesting, and so they found it interesting. They were just as articulate and passionate in discussing Hamlet as they were about everything else on the trip. What an experience.

We drive over a different bridge, the Blue Water, after pizza and pop in Sarnia. Then we made it home. Then most of us slept straight through the weekend.