Niagra (pictures)

Our Experience of Toronto

Toronto like I said is the big city type of place, so not much to report in terms of landscape, but there are a few things about Canada I would like to share with you. So the first one is that I do not think this whole country has ever heard of small or medium cars. Every single car takes up at least one and a half road lanes and is half a bus long. I understand the need for such big cars when you live in the country but right in the heart of Toronto city? I also learned that our car the Chrysler Voyager is called a Dodge Grand Caravan over here, (it makes it sound like a motor home but in fact it is tiny in size in comparison to the usual cars here.)

On our fourth day in Toronto we had an earthquake that measured 5.5 on the Richter scale. Downtown, everybody was standing outside their work buildings talking about the earth moving underneath their feet. At this stage I had no idea what had happened, I was taking Roxy outside to the grassy park for her morning ritual when I saw the masses of people. I remember thinking 'gee these people are lazy, it's only 10 am and they are having a very long morning tea break'. It was only until I was back inside the hotel that the front desk staff explained to me that there had been an earthquake. I didn't feel anything and ran up to see if Tim had. Well Tim didn't believe me that there had been an earthquake and thought I was trying to trick him until he saw it on the news.

I have to say my biggest complaint about Canada so far is that they do not have any understanding what a good espresso coffee is. Now I have a certain addiction to Caffeine and I had to leave my coffee machine at home with my brother, thinking I will just buy my coffee over here, no problem. Well no one here drinks espresso coffee they all drink brewed coffee. Espresso coffee here comes with burnt milk so hot that you burn your tongue every time you take a sip. The coffee itself is so weak that for a decent coffee you need to order a double shot and then you pay double. So needless to say I miss my aussie 'Cafe Go' coffee.

My other obsession in life though is shoes, and as soon I saw in the tourist brochure that up the road was the Bata Shoe Musseum, I pushed Tim there so quickly that he lost his shoes on the way! The musseum had over 10,000 shoes dating back 4,500 years ago to more modern day 20th century styles. These were the ones I was mainy interested in, especially the celebrities shoes. Check out Elton John's, Gerri Halliwell's & the Buble's!

Our second night in Toronto we went to a baseball game, Toronto Blue Jays against the Cardinals. Tim had been itching to get to a game and I was pretty excited as well. Baseball brings back fond memories for me as a little girl, when my big sister Karen used to take me to night games to see the Perth Heat play. We used to rug up in our blankets sitting there eating hotdogs and donuts. Ahh I miss those days. Tim wants to be the one to tell you all about our baseball phenomena. So here it is.

It's been one of my dreams in life to see every type of sport played live in it's home of origin so to speak. While over this side of the world I hope to tick off as many of those as possible. Golf at an Open in the US, NBA Basketball, Ice Hockey & Lacrosse here in Canada, Grid Iron & Baseball! We were in the hotel I saw on the TV that the Toronto Blue Jays were playing at the Rogers Centre just around the corner. I immediately started sing to Mel "Take me out to the ball game" until she caught on, then I booked it straight away on the net. We also asked Richard to come along as well. I spoke to a really nice guy on the phone who wanted me to do a Crocodile Dundee impersonation, the whole "that's not a knife scene" and in return he managed to organise some awesome tickets directly behind home plate. I was so excited and couldn't wait to get thrown some nuts buy some seller walking down an aisle, sing the song during the seventh innings stretch & yell "batter, batter, batter" at the opposition. We caught the subway & walked about a km to the RC all the way passing scalpers about every 10 metres trying to sell cheap tickets. There were hundreds of them selling hundreds of tickets, it was amazing. Our seats were even more amazing & the stadium would rival our Telstra Dome..woops, Etihad Stadium. You felt so close to the action. Mel got the Blue Jays mascot to come over for a snapshot with Rox and he pulled a brave face because he was afraid of dogs. Speaking of which, we got our own hot one in a bun complete with sauce & mustard (man they do good hotdogs here), sat back & watched the ball game in front of us. The Blue Jays beat the St Louis Cardinals 5 nil. 3 homers with 2 RBI's. The home plate umpire also got knocked out with a knicked fast ball at 150km/h. I sang the song in the middle of the seventh while the other two just hummed. I remembered some of the players from watching the baseball back in Oz on Channel One HD and it was great seeing it in real life. We all had a great time & I can't wait to get back to the ball park again.

We happened to arrive in Toronto at the same time as the G20 Summit, so there were Police and Security galore everywhere you turned in down town. Unfortunately we did not get to see any of the important people, I would have liked to run into Obama or the Queen, but no such luck. I thought the Police and Security were about guarding the dignitaries but it was more about keeping the protesters and potential riot threats at bay. Just goes to show you how much I know about Politics!

Well the G20 was underway and there was a lot of talk on the street about the protesters. Tim and I decided we would go into the heart of the city to Dundas Square (it is a mini New York Times Square with big TV screens and music...etc). At the corner of every intersection there were Police forming a line across the street like a barricade. People stopping to look at what was happening. I must admit Tim and I were very intrigued but we did not stop we kept going as were not sure of how safe it was. We arrived at Dundas Square and did a spot of shopping. We decided (as it was so hot) that we would go to the movies.

After the movie, which was in a shopping centre in Dundas Square, we were surprised to see that the movie theatre had closed. It was only about 6pm. We thought this was very strange as everything in Toronto is 24 hours. We couldn't imagine the biggest shopping precinct was closing like normal Geelong shopping time. Anyway we made our way to the exit of the building only to discover Security everywhere and that yellow tape used on Police crime shows when there has been a homicide, taped all around the building we were in. We had no idea what was going on.

We were meant to meet Richard (Top Dog from ADA) for dinner so Tim called him to find out that there had been major riots in the city due to the G20. The Police had closed the city down. Apparently there were protesters smashing up shop windows, setting police cars on fire, looting, you name it. It was all happening and we missed it. Tim and I walked down the street towards out hotel (all the streets were blocked off). There were hundreds of people filling the streets, some protesting with their placards yelling out for their cause, some just staring in fascination and lost of people putting themselves in danger just to get a good photo. Gives a whole new meaning to your danger shots Noni . There was broken glass everywhere, I had to try and dodge all the glass that was on the ground just so Tim would not end up with a flat tyre or Roxy with glass in her paws. It looked like a crazy scene out of a movie. We could see for miles the damage that had been caused. We saw a group of protesters all dressed in black jumping on a Police car trying to set it on fire. Police trying to use tear gas to stop the chaos very unsuccessfully. Tim and I just stopped and watched in amazement totally speechless. You hear about these sorts of things, but it is so differnt to have it unfold right in front of you. Things continued on way into the night. Tim and I retreated back to out hotel and watched the rest of it on the news.

There were no more riots but more protests continued in the days to follow. The Police and security numbers had quadrupled as they had flown them in from all provinces in Canada. We even had Police and security in our hotel montioring any safety risks.

The next couple of days we spent in our hotel trying to locate accomadation and care in Montreal. This appeared to be very difficult as there didn't seem to be much accomadation that was accessible. We ended up finding a hotel after three days of searching, a university residence. We figured this would be a safe bet given out last university stay in BC was great. We hoped that this difficulty of getting accomadation was a one off and not going to be standard. So with all of that organised we could plan a bit of touristy sight seeing.

That night we had dinner with Richard and Jenny from Assistance Dogs as they were flying out the next day. It was a nice evening that ended with the boys going home and Jenny and I ticking off some of the things on our Toronto wish list.

The next day we headed out on a tour to Niagara Falls (We'll add a couple of photos here, but Tim will do a seperate photo post). We boarded a big coach that has been made accessible in the middle. It was very clever. Toronto does very well with their accessibility. We headed out to the falls which took about an hour. Our coach had a tour guide that looked and sounded exactly like James Earl Jones. Our first stop was lunch at the Sheraton. Then off to the Falls on the Maid of the Mist boat. We made our way on the boat doned in our beautiful light blue ponchos. We sailed into the centre of the falls, surprisingly it wasn't loud but we certainly got wet and took some great photos too.

Niagara town itself is trying very hard to be a mini Vegas, there is so much to do but we did not have a lot of time. We both loved it and would love to go back and spend some time there, possibly with Rick and Rosie (hint hint).

It was time now to go and check out some of the wineries. On our way we stopped at a large clock made with different floral arrangements. It was quite sensational and the hands of the clocks were crutches and a walking stick as a bit of a dedication to those who live with disabilities. We tried to get a photo of Roxy next to the clock but she was a bit afraid of the 100 or so monks that were also there.



Along our journey we also passed the smallest church in the world. There is only enough room for the minister, bride, groom and two witnesses. Tim yelled out asking if it was accessible & got a laugh from James Earl Jnr.

We continued on our way to the wineries, they have these new wines called 'ice wines' which won all of these French awards and is the only place in the world currently that make both white and red ice wine. it is incredibly sweet and is served as a dessert wine. Carly you would love it!

After the wineries we headed home and of course Tim fell asleep with the big head nods and snoring, of course I filmed it much to his disgust!

The public transport in Toronto is great, everything is accessible apart from a few subway stations and it is free for Tim and I if we travel together. They also have a transport system called Wheel-Trans which is set up like a Taxi service. You order it and it comes to pick you up and will return you if need be all for $3.oo per person. It doesn't matter how far you need to go. It makes it very affordable to travel, rather than having to pay for wheelchair taxi's.

One of the funniest and coolest sights we saw while here in Toronto was late one night walking back to our hotel when we heard this rhythmic beat. Tim sighed, as he does when he sees or hears 'rev heads' driving with their music blaring out of their car windows (he is such a grandpa some times, and as Noni tells it, he did the same at 18, it was just soundtracks from muscial theatre shows blaring from his car). Anyway this beat was getting closer and closer to us but we could not see a car that it was coming from. I stopped and turned around and to my astonishment saw a guy in a electric wheelchair bopping away to the beat coming from his inbuilt stereo and sub woofer, and to top it off he had flashing disco lights going on the back and sides of his chair. All that was missing was a smoke machine and hydrolics to lift his chair like those amercian rappers do to their cars. Tim was in awe, so you better be prepared to do some modifications to the electric chair Uncle Pip and Uncle Jamie cos I think a request is coming.

So I have to share, that I have been dying to try out Taco Bell. I am a very big fan of the show Will and Grace. The character Karen on the show is a multi millionaire who shops and eats only where she can be noticed in her Gucci, but will dress in disguise to go downtown to eat Taco Bell. The fact that she would go to this effort for this fast food delicacy, I had to try it. I have to say that it is full of artery clogging, cholesterol raising fats but it was worthy of the risk of a heart attack!

It was our last day here in Toronto and we decided to go down to Queens Quay. Everyone we had come across had remarked about the beauty of it. We were on our way in anticipation of this landmark and it's beauty, we arrived and walked and walked looking for this glamorous harbour everyone had been talking about. We passed a dock, some shops a restaurant and still had not found the Quay. We decided to stop and ask someone and to our surprise what we had just walked past was the so called 'glamorous harbour'. We laughed with delight at the Toronto interpretation of a glamorous harbour, but I guess us Aussies are very spoilt to have exquisite harbours in each state.

It was now the time to move on from all our exciting adventures in Toronto to finally settle down in Montreal.

Toronto - ADI Conference

Arriving in Toronto was like arriving in an Australian city centre, sky full of industrial smoke, mobs of people, street cars (trams), taxi's and traffic banked up like a game of tetris. But we were here to participate in the International Assistance Dogs Conference.

We met up with Top Dog Richard and found out what our roles were here at the conference. I bet it was the most service dogs any hotel have ever had at one time.

The conferences included workshops, panels, information sessions, the conference foyer looked like a doggy market with tables dressed like market stalls selling and introducing their doggy business for all the canine corporates to drool over.

During morning tea time we got the pleasure of meeting some of the different canine helpers and understand just how clever our fury friends can be. There were service dogs in various variety like Great Danes trained as Balance dogs (I may need one of these as my balance is quite questionable), Collies, Golden Retrievers, Labradors, Samoyeds, Poodles and even a Boxer. These clever creatures were trained for different reasons like, balance, hearing, epilepsy, autism, mobility issues, visually impaired, diabetes, emotional or mood issues.

Tim was part of a panel with ladies from International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP) foundation. The topic of the panel was 'How to cope with Successor Dogs'. On this panel were two visually impaired ladies and two mobility impaired people (one being Tim). For me being part of the succession process with Tim, Buster and Roxy it was really interesting to hear Tim's view on how the process went as well as to hear others. It was really beneficial to hear the other's journeys and the emotional roller-coaster they experienced as well. I think it was great that the canine foundations were able to hear their effect from the other side. Such great openness and collaboration to further enhance the company/recipient relationship.

We met some great people from all over the world. I met this Chilean lady Cecelia who works in the same line I do (with children who have suffered trauma) and her company has dogs trained to work with trauma based behaviours in children. She gave me a lot of great information about how the dogs work with the children and the psychologist. I was wondering how they were able to achieve this. Cecelia told me they have a centre that the traumatised children attend for sessions and the dogs are kept their with the trainers. Depending on the need of the child the dog and trainer may come in with the psychologist or sometimes it may just be the c hild with the dog and trainer and the psychologist watching the child's behaviour through a two way mirror. Cecelia was saying that they have had great results. An area that my field have just started looking into and I suspect will explore further now that there is positive outcome evidence.

There was a dinner on the second last night of the conference and Tim was the entertainment. Also at this dinner there were a lot of presentations for companies that obtained accreditation into ADI. As usual Tim sang the house down and did a great job, Roxy laid right next to Tim looking adoringly and making the whole audience fall in love with her. She is a great partner for Tim as she loves the lime light just as much as Tim. The dinner ended with Tim singing 'Time to Say Goodbye' and a standing ovation from the audience followed. It was great to be able to show off Aussie talent at a North American ADI conference.

It was a great confe rence and it was really nice to represent Australia and be there with Richard and Jenny.

Banff Fairmont Springs Castle Pictures

Banff Scenery

This photo is for Georgie. Roxy auditioning as a Reindeer!