Built well into the 20th c. but designed in Victorian “classic Canadian riverboat” tradition, The Canadian Empress takes 56 passengers and offers beautifully-scaled (and informative) trips along both the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, with frequent stops for exploration ashore.
We board late afternoon, are taken for an early-evening cruise to view Montmorency Falls (taller than Niagara), and spend the night at anchor in the Louise Basin, before…
at 6:30 am, starting our journey. We pass through the 19th-c. locks that protect anchored craft from the river’s 6-metre tidal variations; we take one last look at the city, with the Château Frontenac en haut and three red-&-white Coast Guard vessels en bas…
and we settle in for life on the river, its waters already a-glitter with early morning sunshine.
The river is still broad but, even so, we can always see both shores, and the life that populates them. Sometimes industrial; sometimes, as here approaching Champlain, a scattering of homes.
First stop: Trois-Rivières — population now some 150,000 and both larger and more diversified than when I visited it decades back, to interview an innovative high-school principal for a CBC documentary I was preparing.
I mention “diversified” because for more than 100 years (late 1890s – 2000), this small city was at the heart of the Canadian pulp and paper industry. Drawing on lumber from the boreal forests of the region & the waters of the St-Maurice River, it helped make Canada the world’s largest newsprint exporter by 1913 and the world’s largest producer by 1926. Now a by-gone era, for multiple reasons — but that history is honoured, explained, demonstrated in Musée Boréalis, created within and around the footprint of the old CIP mill, in its day the world’s largest.
I marvel at the old machinery (here, in the Filtration Plant)…
in ignorance but with fascination and respect.
Also with tattered and probably inaccurate memories of a visit to a pulp & paper mill in my small childhood, taken on a personal field trip by my engineer father whose company sold machinery to these mills. I remember whoever-it-was detailed to show me around keeping a very firm grip on my overalls as I peered — amidst all the noise & heat & odours — into a swirling vat of pulp. Wouldn’t do to lose the kid overboard! That is not a joke. As they explained at the museum, occasionally a worker did fall in (safety standards being laughable, in the day), and there was no saving him.
But! But! We don’t just marvel and listen and learn, we get to make our very own little squares of paper! The lively young guide gives us the same cheerful instructions she offers adults & kiddies alike. Soon we are dunking our frames in the pulp, lifting them, finger-wiping a margin, blotting (both sides), covering & ironing (both sides)… and then, squealing like kiddies, we flick-flick-flick our frames…
and our little rectangles of paper drop onto the mat. You betcha I’m taking it home with me.
Dinner aboard and then — bless these long June evenings — still time, light and warmth for those so inclined to go wander the town on their own.
Isn’t non-plane travel the best? No security rigamaroles, just a reminder to be back onboard by X hour, and meanwhile, go amuse yourself. So I do.
Up on the three-tier Esplande de Trois-Rivières, I — in the company of assorted Tri-fluviens (and their dogs) — stroll and admire the view. This freighter, for example (bound for Iceland & Greenland, our captain tells us), bathed in the golden glow of early evening.
I turn slightly inland into the old city, walk a stretch of Rue des Ursulines, parallel to the waterfront…
looking east toward both Parc des Ursulines and Cimetière des Ursulines. I don’t go that far; I amble a few more residential streets and return to the Empress.
It’s only the next morning — this morning — that I remember the captain also said something-or-other about “squalls” to come.
I admire Île des Barques, off Ste-Anne-de-Sorel, through rain-bright steps under a rain-wet canopy.
16 June 2026 – And so, at 6:15 a.m. as promised, I’m off VIA Rail in Ste-Foy, then onto the shuttle bus, and…
across the St. Lawrence River into Quebec City.
I decide a walk will do more for my addled head than extra coffee. Out I go, up to the surviving section (4.6 km) of stone ramparts that, as of 1608, were being built to encircle and protect Nouvelle France.
The Kent Gate is still imposing, still a witness of Then, living with us in the Now.
I walk on along to Porte Saint-Jean, look back at the juxtaposition of Then and Now:
young bums on ancient stones, intercut by ancient canon, their owners busy on 21st-c smart phones.
I begin to wonder a bit about the inherent balancing act for old cities. How do you honour and protect that heritage, without freezing into a museum that denies modern life?
I can’t answer the question, but I do see more examples of this city’s balancing act all around me. A new building sliced in between old ones, for example, here in Place D’Youville, just outside the ramparts…
and, also in Place D’Youville, young-culture skateboarders twirling past one of the city’s abundance of old-culture statuary (here, Les Muses).
All this history, all this European ambience. Quebec City is a magnet for tourists.
Another balancing act.
On near-by Rue Ste-Anne (where tourist me happens to be staying), I look into an alcove and see some local push-back:
Indeed. How does a tourist-magnet city welcome and please tourists, without being overrun and turned into a cartoon? I head downhill on Rue Saint-Jean — a tourist thoroughfare — and see something of the current mix. It’s eclectic and strongly patriotic, both Québécois and pan-Canadian.
High on the wall, half-way up the block beyond the Rue Sainte-Angèle sign in the foreground, you’ll see the Cows logo…
a PEI brand, offering terrific ice-cream along with a range of whimsical cow-image clothing & accessories.
Right across the street…
less nutritious, and surely just as popular, the lure of Mary’s Popcorn.
Cheerful kitsch here at my elbow, with its own patriotic statements…
from the red “not-for-sale” Canadian cap, to the mock Quebec licence plate, with its chosen example of distinctive Quebec swear words.
(Flashback: when I joined the fledgling Oxfam-Québec as Director of Projects, the rest of the team, all francophone, promptly taught me how to swear “comme une bonne Québécoise.” And I still can.)
Yet more patriotism, a classy clothing shop with its proud boast in large letters on the window.
Yay for that, but it’s a bit confusing, no? A Canadian enterprise that chooses to name itself San Francisco?
At the next intersection, an old building whose lettering and style live up to the elegance of the building itself…
plus, across Saint-Jean in a second-storey balcony window…
a curious moose, keeping track of us all.
Enough musing. I’m hungry.
I park myself at a Bistro Hortus patio table and listen to the young, stylish (and stylishly tattoo’ed) servers switch smoothly from French to English as the occasion requires.
My choice is the “Salade biologique au chèvre des neiges” (goat cheese). I speak French with the server, and she offers me the same polished charm she offers everyone else. She does break composure, however, wrinkling her brow slightly when I ask her to bring back the menu for a moment — until I explain I want to take a picture of the salad description “comme une bonne p’tite touriste.” This causes her to burst into genuine laughter, and after that we have an amused good time together.
Fortified with salad plus café au lait, I walk on and discover Artisans Canada. Since I’m already wearing a Tilley hat with a little wooden chickadee pin on it and a MEC backpack and my Newfoundland earrings (thank you again, DJ), I fit right in. I make a few purchases, and I now suggest that — should quality Canadiana interest you — you might have a look for yourself.
Looping ’round to head back uphill to my vielle-ville hotel, I cut through the very modern plaza skirting the slightly old City Hall (1890s), which sits on the site of the very old Jesuit college (1730s). Trees, shrubbery, spring blossoms, and seating from which to admire it all.
Plus fountains of water that shoot into the air at regular intervals…
and have these two little girls in fits of laughter.
Judging by speech patterns and body language, these are local people relaxing in a local park, even as tourist season rumbles into high gear.
14 June 2026 – How better to title a blog post being written as I roll toward the St. Lawrence River, than with words from a paddling song of early voyageurs?
And I am rolling along, on board VIA Rail. Just the latest phase of several days of travel, all on the surface, and running the gamut from ferry to bus to train.
Ferry!
The MV Madeleine II at dock in Souris, PEI, after our morning crossing from Cap-aux-Meules, Magdalen Islands. She’s 124 m. long, 6 decks high, can carry 750 passengers and 200 vehicles per trip, which in a year totals some 100,00 people and 41,000 vehicles.
I have time to learn this, also time to admire the red beaches besides the terminal…
because I have a four-hour wait before my local-route bus ride on up to the capital of PEI, Charlottetown.
Bus!
It all goes well. It is the start of my pleasure in the continuing presence of inter-community busses here in the Maritimes, something we used to enjoy elsewhere in Canada but no longer do.
Sunshine throughout the stay on the Magdalens, and now — gusty, drizzly rain.
I brave it for a morning walk to Victoria Park, then — hat and hood pulled tight around my head — turn back into town. My reward is this dramatic mural en route.
At 1 pm my next bus takes off, one that (via a connection) takes me off-island to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with a little slice of New Brunswick thrown into the mix.
Until 1997, the only way off-island was to fly or take a ferry. That year, a new option opened up. Thanks to the new Confederation Bridge, vehicles could now drive a 12.9 km. link across the Abegweit Passage of Northumberland Strait between the island and New Brunswick.
We’re on the bridge. It is very foggy.
But eventually there it is: the New Brunswick shore.
We’re soon in Nova Scotia and, late afternoon, I drop off in Dartmouth, just short of the final stop, neighbouring Halifax. Next morning, I’m in Halifax, at the waterfront train station
Rail!
Not quite yet, I’ve 20 minutes to kill, so I walk a bit of the Halifax Harbour front.
It’s an important harbour, and I’ll let the signage concisely tell you why.
(Apologies if all this data causes you to resonate with the very cross little boy slapping down a very large book on the library Returns desk and complaining: “This book tells me a great deal more about penguins than I want to know!” On the other hand, I am not looking over your shoulder, so let your eyes skitter on down the page, if you wish.)
Still foggy, which somehow seems exactly the sort of weather we should be having…
… though perhaps lifting slightly. I can now, faintly, make out the lighthouse on the little island directly ahead of us.
Time to catch my train. It runs a route now named The Atlantic, but which began in 1904 as the Ocean line. That date, I later learn, makes this the longest continuous-service passenger service in North America.
I’ll be going almost all the way…
getting off in Ste-Foy for the short connecting ride to Quebec City.
Did you notice that use of the present progressive tense? (“I’ll be going…”) Yes, my friends, as promised above, I am still on board, swaying gently with the train’s motion as I type this post in the WiFi service car.
We have just pulled out of Moncton (consult your map, above)…
and I think I’ll say good-bye. I want to spend my time falling into the passing landscape.
11 June 2026 – Still on the Magdalen Islands, leaving very early tomorrow morning by ferry for Souris, PEI. But for the next 9 hours, I’m still here, and I’m still all about here.
What I really want to do — and will do — is take you with me to Farmer’s Island. That’s not the official name, but by the end of this post you’ll see why I have invented it.
But first, a few quick moments from everything else I’ve been doing since my last post.
* My solo walk to Le Bassin, from La Salicorne, the inn where we’ve been staying on Île de la Grande Entrée, down to Bassin aux Huîtres (Oyster Bay). It took me down a pebble/dirt path, with boards for the boggy bits…
past various exercise stations off to one side…
out to the bay…
with more athletic options, lounge chairs, roped-off areas where they are propagating more Myriques des îles (Morella pensylvanica, Northern Bayberry), a native species but one that needs encouragement.
* Our group walk along the Camarine Trail, in the Pointe de l’Est National Wildlife Area on Grosse Île. Here we walk a sandy path, for this is a sand dune environment…
but one where forest is slowly, steadily encroaching…
although — as we discover in the part of the trail called The Soup Bowl…
there are massive sand blow-outs still being created that continue to re-contour the land.
* And then there’s the sunset over the water!
It’s an easy walk from the opposite side of La Salicorne, to watch the sun apparently drop into the waters of Havre de la Grande Entrée, and it’s a nightly ritual for many people. I can see why.
* More fiery colour, for a different reason: our visit to Le Fumoir d’Antan (The Traditional Smoke House), on Île du Havre aux Maisons.
Those are herring, slowly turning copper-coloured, over the wood fires below.
* Same island, different emphasis: cheese. We visit La Fromagerie Pied-de-Vent, which is able to create delicious, artisanal, award-winning cheeses thanks to…
their herd of Vache Canadienne (the Canadian Cow), a now rare breed that first came to Quebec when it was still New France.
* We walk a beach near Pointe aux Loups (not wolves, but loups-marins, or seals)…
and marvel at the water-scoured caves in the sandstone cliffs.
* Later we visit the sweeping 8.5 km sandy beach on Old Harry Island…
prosaically known in English as Old Harry Beach, but more descriptively known in French as la Plage de la Grande Échouerie. I had to look this word up, I had no idea. Here’s what it means: a littoral area, rocky or sandy, that serves as a gathering place for marine mammals (e.g. seal, walrus). Aren’t you glad to learn that?
I’ve just whooshed you through everything until today. Today we took the 45-minute ferry ride from Cap-aux-Meules over to Farmer’s Island. Only they don’t call it that. Every map, every conversation, knows it as Île d’Entrée — Entry Island. Just tuck that “farmer” reference aside for the moment. We’ll get back to it.
Our group is just 17 of the people on this full-load ferry, about to leave Cap-aux-Meules. The others are, far as any conversations I have, tourists from mainland Quebec. With their babies, and with their woofs. I meet Willow, a Scotch (not Irish) Setter and her owner from the Saguenay area, and the appropriately-named Angus, a Westie (“Bien sûr ‘Angus.’ Il est écossais!”).
It’s a holiday mood. Everybody is clearly delighted to be making this trip.
And here is the local museum’s model of the island receiving this accolade.
We pull in to the harbour you can see in the model above…
and everybody, le gang Salicorne and everybody else, either heads into Chez Brian Josey (“OPEN”) for supplies…
or starts hoofing uphill toward their various destinations. No busses, strictly foot-power.
I lolly-gag, I do, and pretty soon I’m wandering along on my own. Past a pile of lobster traps…
past endless sweeps of the distinctive Magdalen dandelion, tall and so densely petalled…
past a lighthouse…
past a long view of the little Anglican church on the hill, and a sign whose lettering you can’t read without spreading the image. DON’T DO THAT YET. Not yet.
I turn a corner, onto the school-house road, and take in a long view of “La Big Hill”…
deserving its name, at 185 metres high — not only highest on this island, highest in all the Magdalens.
And here I am, at the school…
except it is no longer a school. It is now a museum — and doesn’t that tell you something, about demographics on this island.
Permanent residents now, in 2026, are 50 or so, and aging. Numbers swell to 120 or so in summer, when younger family members return for the season.
That was the 1960s. Still, even then, a remote and poorly serviced life.
I relate to this one! The signage places it before my time, but in my time — in my life as a small child in the Laurentians village of Morin Heights, my mum hung laundry out to dry in winter and brought it in “frozen hard.” I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the sight that so fascinated me as a child: stiffly tented frozen sheets slowly thawing and collapsing into soft piles on the floor.
Remember that photo of La Big Hill? Most of our group truck off to go climb it, their lunch boxes in their back packs. A few of us say an unabashed “No thanks,” and stay below. But we don’t just sit there like lumps. A companion and I set off for a gentler, and much more horizontal, walk of our own.
It gives us a closer view of the Big Hill…
before we veer off to the left, and find a pretty satisfactory long-view-over-water of our own.
And now — and about time too, you may think — I shall introduce you to Farmer.
Meet Farmer.
Part-Clydesdale, indeed a farm horse here on Entry Island back in the early 1920s — and one who now has a sign pointing to his burial site (scroll back to that photo with the Anglican church in the distance, and read the sign). Not only that, Stompin’ Tom Connors wrote a song about him (which Farmer entirely deserved, though I’ll add that Stompin’ Tom was married to a woman from Entry Island).
Here’s the story. Well, here’s the version we heard, and details vary, as befits a legend. So don’t sweat the details, because the core facts are true and every legend earns some embroidery.
When a new foal was born on Richard McLean’s farm, and emerged with a white F-shaped blaze on his black face, the McLean children promptly named him Farmer. They were devoted to the horse, and vice-versa. All went well until McLean, who had a bit of a gambling problem, got in over his head during a game on Grosse Île, wagered the horse on the next throw of the dice — and lost. He paid his debt. It being winter, he brought the horse from Entry Island to his new owner via the “ice bridge” that formed every year, and gave Entry Islanders access to the other islands.
The McLean children were devastated. Farmer wasn’t too happy either because, one day when the gate was left unlatched, he took off.
He then walked the entire stretch-C length of the chain of islands, from Grosse Île over the top of that northern curve, down the beaches and long middle stretch, and around the bottom southern curve, right out past Havre Aubert, to water’s edge facing Entry Island. He smelled Entry Island on the wind and — it now being summer, no ice bridge available — plucked up his courage, plunged into the water, and swam home.
Here’s the map. Trace it for yourselves.
The new Grosse Île owner agreed that Farmer deserved to live out his days back home. That is where he stayed, and where he now is buried and honoured.
On the ferry-ride back to Cap-aux-Meules, the steward asks our boat-load of day-trippers if we enjoyed ourselves. “Ouais!” we roar. Fine, he says, and did you all learn about Farmer? Silence, blank faces (except for our little group). And so the steward tells the story. With gusto. At the end, there is a round of applause.
He adds one more apocryphal, but who cares, detail — every legend needs its apocrypha. “Richard McLean was so moved by the horse’s courage and devotion that he never gambled again. He was cured.”
So that’s Farmer’s Island for you. I yield to the temptation to add… maybe if Farmer could do the impossible, maybe the island can as well? Maybe, somehow, it will rebuild to a stable population that can sustain a school and a community?
Probably not. But I like the idea.
*****
P.S.: read about Farmer here … and listen to “A Horse Named Farmer” by a current singer here (I can’t find any Stompin’ Tom original online, but maybe you can).
P.P.S. Yikes, by now I’ll be leaving this morning, 4 hours from now.
9 June 2026 – No, no, don’t start multiplying those figures. It’s my shorthand for what got me from there to here. Namely: 6,085 km, over 2 days, through 4 time zones. And here I am: on Grande Entrée island, in Auberge La Salicorne (Salicornia europaea, Samphire aka Glasswort aka Sea Asparagus, in the northern curve of the stretch-C that is the Magdalen Islands.
A couple of moments, en route…
Dramatic clouds & contrasts as we climb out of Trudeau International Airport (Dorval Airport, in my childhood) for my second flight that first travel day, onward from Montreal to Quebec City…
and a happy hour of fresh air the following morning in Parc Robitaille, near my hotel in turn near Jean Lesage International Airport in Quebec City. A little googling and navigation brings me to greenery and a creek…
and a children’s playground that offers some intellectual exercise along with the physical.
Fill in the missing letters! (Which are helpfully listed on the right.)
Give it a try. Exercise your French.
That afternoon, back to the airport, meet some of the group who will also be on this week of eco-discovery, and finally our Ligne Pascan flight is called. I feel an absolute surge of joy when I realize we’ll be walking across the tarmac, and up the steps of a sturdy little twin-prop plane. Yes!!!
(It’s a Saab 3408B+, says the seat-pocket card, and I invite Lynette to tell us if, and if so why, this is a good aircraft choice for this kind of local run — in this case, 1 hr 40 min to a location known for fierce winds.)
Frédérique reads the usual instructions, in the usual official languages, and away we go.
And we leave the sunshine behind us. We land at fast-dropping dusk, in gusty drizzle. One last streak of setting sun as we motor off to La Salicorne…
and the day is pretty well done.
Next day, yesterday, our first day of activity and lots of us are doing it with heads still scrambling through the time zones. Tant pis! We don’t care, we are up for this.
(But you’ll have to excuse the fact my impressions of the day are few & scattered.)
Morning visit to La Musée de la Mer, tucked far south (some 100 km south) in the bottom curl of the C, where we stand ’round a splendid nautical floor map of the islands for the start of our private visit.
Quick highlights of history: visiting indigenous peoples from millennia ago, travelling back & forth from the mainland to hunt & fish; two significant Acadian settlement periods (after their expulsion from the mainland by the British conquerors); further accidental arrivals via shipwreck (helping to populate the anglophone pockets); further deliberate arrivals; waxing/waning/etc of fisheries; something of a current up-surge, including among young people choosing to stay and develop new small businesses.
Why does this tiny island chain out in the Atlantic belong to Quebec and not to one of the Maritime provinces? It all goes back to 1774 — when the British authorities were busy sorting out What To Do with their newest acquisition, New France. Yes, fold it into British North America. Ummm, what about these islands? While we’re sorting things out, maybe reassign them? Ohhhh, who cares… leave ’em with Quebec. And so an Act was passed, by Imperial authority, and les Îles de la Madeleine became, and are to remain, part of Quebec.
We pass two lonely wind turbines along the highway, and ask the backstory. Given this particular day has 35 km/hr winds gusting to 50 km, and given that although this is enough to keep some fishers in port, local people, les Madelinots, rank their strength as merely “moderate”… given all that, you’d think wind power would be a good option. No. Pilot project not pursued. Partly environmental issues (impact on birdlife), partly aesthetic (the whine, the visual impact on the landscape), partly demographic (very small population base) and very much financial. By the time the initial costs had been recovered, the turbines would have reached their life span and need to be replaced.
Nature on all sides, all day.
Cliffs…
and pebbly beaches…
and salt marsh pushing into the narrow interior of the islands, often up again forest.
And, and… the first Toe Tap of this trip.
Some of you may remember, during my fall trip last year to Winnipeg, up to the Arctic, back down and east to Toronto, that I made a ritual of tapping my boot toes in water all along the way. Pacific Ocean, Red & Assiniboine rivers; Hudson Bay; Lake Ontario.
Yesterday, on the sandy curves of La Grave…
I tap those boots into the Atlantic. Just as I promised them.
Plan was, a minimalist little post titled Tended & Wild, contrasting much-pampered Tended…
with plucky little Wild…
and noting that, much as I appreciate well-tended gardens, my heart is with the spindly alley plant smack up against a grubby window with wonky blinds.
That was the plan.
But then I zagged right, landed myself on Quebec Street, kept walking south, crossed East 19th, and came up against The Fence.
The Fence! The Fence of happy memories! The Fence I can never find on purpose! The Fence with its — admittedly now deteriorating — wildly exuberant artwork. Like this:
And this:
A block-long demonstration of this identity:
I toss Tended/Wild aside, and plan a little tribute to Quebec Street.
I keep walking Quebec (BC), right until it swerves west…
and morphs into East 24th Avenue.
When I turn back north, I decide to follow, not Quebec, but, let’s call it, Back of Quebec — the alley beyond Quebec Street.
And then I laugh. All this is the perfect tease for posts to come, next week and all month long.
Because.
Because tomorrow I will exchange Quebec (BC) for Quebec (QC)…
in a two-flight bounce from Pacific-coast Vancouver to mid-St. Lawrence Quebec City.
The next day, one more bounce will take me to the real Back of Quebec…
this red-tinted archipelago beyond mainland Quebec, poised in triangulation with PEI and Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean — islands that, despite their location, are part of Quebec.
The Magdalen Islands.
Les Îles de la Madeleine. I’ll be staying on Île de la Grande Entrée, but exploring more widely. Then, next Friday, I’ll take the ferry from Cap-aux-Meules and follow the dotted line to Souris, PEI.
After that? After that, the adventure continues. I’ll keep you posted.
14 September – And then, from morning to afternoon, I leave Toronto and land in Vancouver. Here I am, looking through slight drizzle to the mountains, with one last love-letter I want to offer “T.O.” (Tee-Oh, Toronto.)
My T.O., that is, nobody else’s — my own mix of memory and re-discovery, blind to what others would notice, alert to all my own triggers.
Glimpses from streetcars, for example.
A rampart mural by Shalak Attack, which I remember watching her paint, many years ago…
the distinctive two-tone brick and architecture I associate with my own decades in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood, but common to the city in that era…
and Streetcar Dog. Not unique to Toronto, but part of my own memory bank of riding the TTC.
Then there are my re-discoveries on foot, all around the Grange neighbourhood and the Art Gallery of Ontario, where I was for years a volunteer and therefore an area where I came and went, a very great deal.
Bronze turtle watching martial-arts in Butterfield Park, the new-since-my-time refurbishment of the land just east of Grange Park and south of OCAD (Ontario College of Art + Design) University…
Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms, looking very at home in its new home in the reinvented Grange Park, with the brilliant blue rear wall and distinctive Frank Gehry staircase as backdrop…
and, once inside, the soaring glulam arches of the AGO’s front-façade Galeria Italia.
Unchanged, these arches. Ditto, the way the Galeria invites you to look out across Dundas Street. Native son Gehry made sure his design honoured and welcomed the neighbourhood of his childhood as its own visual final wall.
I am in the AGO as much to walk old ground as to see current exhibitions, but in the end I do both.
The Joyce Wieland retrospective, Heart On, speaks not only to my memories of her bursting on the scene, but also to how current she now is, once again.
Wieland was a fierce ’60s-70s feminist and, despite (or perhaps because of) long years in New York, a fierce Canadian patriot as well. She often used the soft “feminine” skills of embroidery or quilting to express strong political convictions.
For example, with her 1970 work, I Love Canada – J’aime Canada.
Awwww. (Twist finger in cheek.) So sweet.
Now read the signage.
And read the embroidered fine print.
Wieland’s narrow definition of Canadian identity is now out-dated — but the rest of her analysis is Elbows-Up contemporary.
Some hours later, I leave the building. I still have more circling and prowling to do.
I check out the S/W corner of Dundas West & McCaul. It is also the N/E corner of the AGO footprint and, in my day, was still home to Moore’s Large Two Forms. For the first time, I see what now sits on that corner — Brian Jungen’s commissioned work, Couch Monster. (Read more, here, in a fine post by our WordPress colleague, Canadian Art Junkie.)
I circle the work, and also take in the larger view, including the top of an old mural by veteran Toronto artist Birdo, now obscured by newer construction and backed by even-newer construction.
Finally, and not with terrifically high hopes, I take myself across Dundas West and into the alley between Dundas and Darcy Street to the north. I am eager but also dreading to see what it’s like, these days. My memory is of an alley bursting with street art, full of the “garage-door art” that I associate with my memories of Toronto.
And…
there it still is. On and on, to the west, beyond the frame of this image. Not exactly as it was, of course not, but alive and current and so-very-T.O.
I turn right on a second, N/S, alley, passing delicate tendrils and other art as I go…
and emerge on Darcy Street.
Where I drink in an enclave of old downtown residential architecture, oh look, some still survives…
and then pivot on my heel to look east down the block. Out to McCaul Street.
Still some old brick homes, and still the spire of St. Patrick’s Church (the 5th-oldest Roman Catholic parish in Toronto) as well — plus the immediate examples of all the new towers now exploding skyward.
There it all is.
The whole jarring/exhilarating, cacophonous/euphonious, forever-evolving symphony of the city.
12 September 2025 – More old + new, here in Toronto. The joy of time with old friends and familiar places, but also the joy of discovery.
For example, Biidaasige Park — some 40 hectares once complete, down at the mouth of the Don River and part of an even larger overall program to re-gentle, re-green and detoxify the sprawling Port Lands for what we now understand to be wiser, more multi-purpose and more inclusive use. Read more about Biidaasige (“Bee-daw-SEE-geh” with a hard “g”) on the City‘s website, on an analytical design website, and in her 6 September “As I walk Toronto” post by our WordPress colleague, Mary C.
The park is very much a work in progress, but some elements are already in place. They include several imaginative children’s playgrounds, one of which has as its guardian spirit, Snowy Owl.
Not only is his open tummy a stage for all kinds of child-friendly events, the interior of his body is open to visitors as well. You can walk inside…
and start climbing. Stairs, then ladders, and up you go.
Bang-thwack-ouch! Smack your head a few times and you finally realize the structure is child-scale. You learn to bend and duck accordingly.
Your reward? You get to look out through the Owl’s eyes, across the undulating playground, across Commissioner St. and westward toward downtown.
I scramble back down. We take ourselves off to explore trails down in the marshy areas around the various channels.
I am awestruck. This grubby, much-abused waterfront is being transformed. We lean on the railing of this pedestrian bridge and admire the grace of the new vehicular bridges, the abundant wild greenery along the banks, the habitat all this must offer for so many species. (Plus the knowledge of habitat yet to come, in plans for housing and further human community and settlement as well.)
And then… we move on.
The day is hot, and sunny, and, thanks to on-going park construction, noisy. We want still to be close to nature, but somewhere that offers soothing shade and a lack of noise.
All of which leads us to discover…
Mailbox Spider.
He is only some 4-5 km. away, slightly south-west of Biidaasige Park…
but in a very different world. The world of the Toronto islands.
More specifically and of importance to me, we are on one small island within that larger cluster: Algonquin Island, which is reached by a pedestrian bridge close to the Ward’s Island ferry dock.
Trace your finger over that pedestrian bridge and tap the intersection just off the bridge: Omaha and Ojibway avenues. Got it? Right there on that corner lot, almost invisible within its own mini-forest of trees and shrubbery, there is a white cottage. The white cottage where, 60 years ago, I used to live.
So it’s heavy-duty nostalgia time for me, and my friend is generously indulgent.
We stop, immediately off the bridge, to explore the community take/leave stand. It was active decades ago and, to my delight, is still active now.
A couple of Algonquin residents are near-by, people about my age. We chat, I explain I used to live here, I name a few names and they smile. We three didn’t know each other, but we each knew these other people.
Then, my friend and I, we just weave slowly up and down the narrow, car-free streets. (It is on Ojibway that we meet Mailbox Spider, with his blue cottage tucked away in the rear.)
The atmosphere is leafy, and peaceful. It is now a world of pretty smooth relations between residents and City — the welcome resolution of the long fight by residents and supporters to protect any residential community at all, in the face of the City’s desire to remove everybody and make the entire islands cluster into one big park. Now most of the land mass is park, but residential communities are recognized and stable on both Ward’s and Algonquin.
We reach the foot of Ojibway Avenue, down at Seneca, which runs along the island’s harbour-side waterfront, and offers panoramic views back across the water to the city core.
Including that CN Tower. I gave you only a distant and slivered view in my previous post; here it is, front and centre.
Still on Seneca, a good example of visitor/resident co-existence:
a bench for tourists and residents alike; one of the island’s many art boxes, again for the pleasure of tourists and residents alike — and a hammock in a resident’s front yard. For that family only, thank you!
Finally, my nostalgia satisfied and our minds and bodies refreshed by the peaceful environment…
7 September – Continuing my new, but very happy, Winnipeg tradition, I go walkabouts on departure morning. Once again, art comes my way as a result.
I cross the Red River to neighbouring St-Boniface and, just as I’m completing a loop through the neighbourhood, I find myself pulled into a parkette.
By this.
It is Joe Fafard‘s 2011 sculpture, Entre chien et loup — a tribute to the French saying, to this francophone quartier, and to the mystery and energy of transition zones.
By 10:30 pm I’m in the train station, ready to board, eager for our 11:30 departure and all the new sights that will come our way.
Except we don’t promptly board, and we don’t leave at 11:30 pm. Instead, we board at 3:30 am.
By then we are the walking dead. (Including the staff change coming on board with us — just as tired as we are but, unlike us, required to be up and active and even happy-faced just a few hours later.)
I don’t know when we finally leave Winnipeg. I’m asleep.
8 September – When I awake, we are somewhere just over the Ontario border. It’s about 7:30 am, and Groggy Self doesn’t understand why she is awake.
But it’s very pretty, isn’t it? And still very northern-looking.
I could show you lots more photos of boreal forest and lakes. But I won’t! By now you know what they look like. So, instead, imagine you’re with me as I enjoy those stunning views, all day long.
And sunset, near Hornpayne.
9 September – We’re just leaving Washago as I slide up my blind around 7 am, passing a CN work station and a cluster of workers. I’m happy to offer them this tribute: maintaining, scheduling, running trains is hard work. Thank you.
A rusty-but-sturdy little bridge, as we pass Sudbury…
first flashes of fall colour among the trees, here near MacTier…
and also near MacTier, one example of the rocky islands that stud glacial lakes throughout the region. Complete with cottages. (You can see a white one peeking out on the left-hand side of the middle island.)
We’re on the Shield! The glorious, hard-rock Canadian Shield — more than 1 billion years old, and covering a good 50% of Canada’s land mass. Oh, I love this rock. This particular example near Torrance.
We’re now well into the transition from boreal forest to more southern, more deciduous, forest mixtures. Also in transition to gentler, but still water-rich, vistas — creeks, rivulets, rivers, marshy or rock-bordered, and flanked by forest. This particular example, near Severn Bridge.
Solar panels near Washago (northern tip of Lake Couchiching)…
and farmland. We’re back to farmland. This barn, near Brechin (east of Lake Simcoe).
I’ve loved this segment of the trip, dropping us down through Muskoka, one of Ontario’s “cottage country” regions and one where I have many happy memories.
We continue south, and as we enter Toronto, I’m into another rich cache of happy memories.
The tracks here run alongside the east branch of the Don River (just south of Eglinton Avenue East). I clap my hands like a child, in delight. I’ve walked these trails, walked that foot-bridge, stepped across these train tracks. Ohhhh, just look.
The scenery goes on being familiar, and then, as we round into Union Station, I hit old + new.
New construction, new towers — but back there, its silhouette slivered in between the two left-hand buildings, back there is the CN Tower. No longer new, but still iconic: it opened in 1976 and, at 553 metres, reigned as the world’s tallest free-standing structure until 2007.
It’s still handsome. And it still says Toronto.
Here I am.
In Toronto. Land cruise ended, magic beyond belief.
Thank you, all of you, who have crossed the country with me. I’ve enjoyed your company.
Epilogue – I want you to know: by the time we reach Toronto, we have made up all that late-time in Winnipeg. These few passenger trains have so little control over their running time! They share over-burdened train tracks with a great many freight trains — all of which claim priority. When push has to come to shove, as it often does, it’s the passenger train that sits on the siding. This explains why passenger train departure times are meant to be honoured, but arrival times are fiction. “Fiction” in the sense they are not the straight running time; they always have padding built in. Siding-waits are as much part of the trip as every station along the way.
5 September – Now I’m doubling back across the same terrain, this time south, Churchill to Winnipeg. It will surprise none of you that even though we’re travelling the same tracks, passing/stopping in the same places, the trip is entirely different. There’s the same train culture around me, but with different people. Perhaps because I’m slightly less obsessed with the landscape this time, I’m more aware of the people — who, because we’re still between tourist seasons, are again individuals rather than job-lot packages on tour. Such a range!
the trio who trained as nurses in Winnipeg long ago and as a result have been friends, and attending reunions and sharing other adventures, for more than 65 years
the young Parks Canada IT/AI specialist, who works summers based in Churchill and winters back in Winnipeg
the Australian couple (she originally from Ireland) who are this side of the world to attend a wedding in the Caribbean but decided, having come this far, to explore Canada while they’re at it
the deep-south American who “hates heat” and therefore does advance reconnaissance each year for the following summer’s travels in Canada with his wife (so far, Newfoundland is his hands-down favourite)
and… Origami Man. Oh, I’ll save him ’til later.
I think the other reason the reverse trip is different is precisely because it is in reverse. You approach from a different angle, you come at a different time and probably in different weather, and you yourself, even if only slightly, are already a different person. So, you notice differently.
For example, I notice the young man dis-embarking in Thompson, sporting the cap his wife found for him on the internet…
and the bilingual aisle signs in a Thompson grocery store.
Soon after Thompson, ’round about Mystery Lake, I come through the dining car and see Origami Man teaching the basics to two VIA staff with a rare moment free of obligations.
It’s another day before I learn he and his wife (she knits, while he folds) are from Detroit, and have their own deep Canadian memories, including ferry travel some 17 years ago down the north shore of the St. Lawrence River east of Quebec City.
We roll into The Pas at 10:30 pm. This time, I’m awake. I raise my blind a smidge…
take in the sliver of train station, and decide our steward is right. The location means there’s nowhere interesting to walk, especially this time of night. I pull down my blind once again.
6 September – I meet Calgary Alex going into the dining car, also with breakfast on his mind. He tells me he saw a deer, when he looked out his window shortly after dawn. I saw no deer — but now, in the dining car, we both see cranes.
Origami Man strikes again!
Talking with him later, I learn that, maybe predictably, his career was in the spatially precise world of engineering, and that this skill has become his passe-partout worldwide. “I start folding paper wherever I am. People gather. I spent a whole afternoon with kids in Mongolia.”
I’m startled when, at about 7:30 am, our cabin attendant announces we’ll soon roll into Kenora for a 10-minute stop. I smack the side of my head. Kenora? We’re in Ontario? She smiles, sorts me out: “Cee-ay-nora. Canora. Not Kay-ee.”
At the station, the display caboose and its signage complete the story.
No, a comment from fellow passenger Sue completes the story.
She is from the other one, from Kenora, and she explains that its name is also an acronym. In their case, for local communities & history: KE – Keewatin; NO – Norman; RA – Rat Portage. I tell her I want to visit Rat Portage; she says it’s now Kenora. Kenora was called Rat Portage until Maple Leaf Milling Company said they wouldn’t build a mill there if it meant putting the word “rat” on their flour.
Back to Canora-with-a-C. The town has an historic main street…
and a this-minute communications tower.
Approaching Dauphin, early afternoon, I don’t have to gawp at the 1912 train station — I’ve done that already. I’m free to notice brightly-graffiti’d box cars…
and the RR-themed parkette, with its plaque-bearing benches.
The arrival of the first train in 1896, says the plaque, “sparked the binding of over 550 communities across Canada, and forever changed the landscape of immigration, settlement, agriculture and commerce.”
{While all this 2025 train travel is going on, Origami Man is teaching Parks Canada AI Man some serious skills. The young man bends his head to the task. There is much laughter and an accumulation of geometric, and beyond-geometry, shapes.}
And then, pouf!, we’re in Winnipeg.
By 5:30 pm, I’m physically out on the street….
but mentally/emotionally…
I’m still back there with the birch and the black spruce.
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 