Canadiana Backpackers Blog

There are a lot of Irishmen at the hostel at present. And like a lot of true Irishmen they love their native games.

One of our guests goes outside to play with his “Hurley” and “Sliotar” which I suppose corresponds to the hockey stick and puck in our National Sport. He brought these things to Canada with the hope of finding a team to join.

Damien is here on a working/holiday visa and, as a result, intends to be here for the better part of the year. Sadly, he found out that no one participates in the sport of Hurling in Canada.

In Hurling, players use an axe-shaped wodden stick “Hurley” or “Hurl” and a ball called a “Sliotar” (pronounced “Slitt-er) to try to put the ball over goalposts for a point or under the posts for three points.

The sport predates the recorded history of Ireland and is arguably the fastest team sport in terms of game play. As one of Ireland’s native Gaelic Games, it shares a lot with Gaelic Football such as; the field; goals; number of players and a lot of the terminology.

Fortunately, they do play Gaelic Football here in Canada. Damien and another Irish working visa lad by the name of Paul have each joined one of the six Toronto area teams. Paul is heading off to Ottawa this weekend to play a team located in the Capital City.

Gaelic Football has certain similarities with Australian Rules Football or “Footie” as he Aussies call it. The field is a different shape and the ball isn’t the same either.

Apparently, there are enough similarities that an “International” form of the game can be played (with modified rules).

Like “Footie” Gaelic Football can get pretty rough. So we’ll try to get a photo of Paul when he comes back from Ottawa if he’s all banged up!

A typical defensive formation in Gaelic Football; but, to the untrained eye has all the tactical sophistication of a street fight!

“Gay Pride Week” in Toronto just ended last weekend with a parade attracting over 1,000,000 people! The parade marks the end one of the largest annual festivals for the Gay, Lesbian and Trans-gendered.

There are now Gay Pride Celebrations all over the world; from Sydney to Sao Paulo; Chicago to Calcutta.

In Toronto Pride Week is a fun and festive occasion; but it wasn’t aways so. This is the 28th edition of Pride Week in Toronto. This vibrant festival that actually began as a protest march against police raids on “gay bathhouses”.

As recently as 1990, the then Mayor of Toronto refused to sign a proclamation declaring “Pride Week”. This year, parade participants included the current Toronto Mayor.

Pride celebrations take place the world over and usually in late June. This is to commemorate to the 1969 “Stonewall Riots” in New York City that were in response to the continuous police harassment of homosexuals.

That was the same year that a confidant and forward thinking Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, made his famous statement: “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” He then acted to have homosexuality decriminalized.

This year recruitment booths were set up at the festival by, at least four regional police forces and the Canadian Armed Forces. You see, at Toronto’s Pride Festival “Don’t ask and don’t tell” is not what is required or even asked.

Now what they are saying is you are what you are and you will have the same rights and opportunities as anyone else - no more, no less and as it should be.

We’ve had a lot of people coming to the hostel after taking canoe or camping trips in Ontario’s “Cottage Country” a mere two or three hours north of Toronto.

As always, they all return with reports of how the scenic beauty of the wilderness left them breathless and how the mosquitoes and black flies drove them mad!

The black fly is an exceedingly annoying pest. They swarm about your face and head and their bite is sore and bleeds copiously and itches like mad! The good news is that the black fly cannot survive intense heat and the first truly hot days of summer spells their demise.

The weather conditions and vast water supply in Northern Ontario are ideal for breeding the pesky critters and this years’ mild temperatures and high rain/snowfall accumulations have conspired to produce optimal breeding conditions!

A lot of regular cottagers and local residents aver that this year is particularly bad for biting insects. There is no “official” report stating as much because, to the best of my knowledge, there is no official monitoring of mosquito/black fly concentrations.

There is no disease vector known that can surpass the lowly mosquito. Since the stone age, they have been the cause of more human deaths than anything else. Fortunately the Canadian variety does not transmit malaria, an annual killer of millions of humans.

There have been cases of West Nile Virus and forms of Equine Encephalitis in Canada; however, they are exceedingly rare occurrences.

If you are planning to visit our northern woods (and I highly recommend you do!) a few simple precautions will ease your suffering:

Wear light coloured, long sleeved shirts and long pants in the evening. Use a good repellent with the active ingredient N.N-diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET) in as high a concentration as possible. It is the all-time champion of insect repellents!

Commercial products are available with concentrations of 5% to 100% DEET. But be warned, although it is by far the most effective, a 100% DEET concentration will melt plastic!

Swelling caused by a Black Fly bite!

The time was that hearing the distinctive clipped accent white of Southern Africans at the hostel was a rare occurrence indeed. To the untrained ear it could easily be mistaken for a New Zealand accent with which it has strong similarities.

Of late, more and more white South Africans have come to the hostel. Most of them are young backpackers on working holiday visas who are intending to stay for a year.

The oddest thing about these “Saffas” (as they refer to themselves) is that the majority seem to be Afrikaners; members of the only white tribe on the African continent. They refer to themselves as “Boers” which means “Farmers” in their native tongue, Afrikaans.

They first settled in Africa more than three centuries ago and have developed a unique culture with an almost pathological connection to the land. They are the only whites on the continent that do not claim to be European. Their language is an odd admixture of Old Dutch, with Huguenot and German influences. They have even developed their own literature.

We have two young South African brothers working at the hostel. The brothers have relocated to Canada. By virtue of the fact that their mother had been born in Canada allowed the brothers to claim Canadian citizenship.

Both brothers, Wouter and Evert, have been imbued with the strong Boer work ethic and are both a strong asset to the hostel. With recent events in Southern Africa (like the land seizures, hyperinflation and stolen elections in Zimbabwe) and the election of an avowed racist and alleged rapist as the President in waiting, many South Africans are seeking alternatives.

The brothers are fortunate, because they have one.

Most Boers would have to look back as many as 10 to 15 generations to find European roots. And contrary to popular belief, they do not, in our experience with them, tend harbor overt racist attitudes.

It is a sad reflection on the future of Southern Africa; but, if the hard-working brothers, Wouter and Evert, are typical examples of Afrikaner immigrants, it seems they should prove to to be most desirable migrants to this country.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City did not harm only the USA. It did, in fact, alter the way we all live and interact in the western world.

What were once free, open and welcoming societies have become suspicious and paranoid, almost to the point of xenophobia. So many backpackers have come to the hostel with horror stories of encounters with customs officials in Europe, the U.S.A. and right here in Canada.

We’ve been hosting backpackers (thousands upon thousands of them) for over a decade now and we’ve yet to come across and “terrorists”. A few football hooligan types (maybe); our fair share of drunks and the odd less than bright traveler. But the vast majority are just young, adventurous and well-behaved “kid next door” types.

Some are first time backpackers, while others have been badly bitten by the travel bug and often have been globe trotting for years!

Canada and the U.S.A. form the world’s largest trading partnership. And whether we like to admit it or not, share a lot of cultural similarities. Since the 9/11 attack, we’ve begun to share even more.

A lot of the horror stories of border crossing encounters concern customs officers in the United States because that’s where a lot of our backpackers landed first in north America. But we also get tales of a good many nasty run-ins with Canadian border officials.

Canada and the U.S.A. once boasted the world’s longest “undefended” border. Citizens of both countries could cross over very easily and without a passport, to shop, eat, holiday or simply visit friends. After 9/11 that has all changed.

Canadian Customs officials (according to a lot of our visitors) have become suspicious, aggressive and less civil in their dealings with visitors. But I think the most telling example of change is the fact that we are currently in the process of training our Customs Agents to use firearms as a prelude to issuing them guns!

In fairness, it is not the fault of our governments or border officials. Machine gun toting cops at major airports are now a common sight. No country s immune to foreign and domestic terrorism. It is merely a sign of the times.

The job of maintaining security has just become a lot more important and immeasurably more difficult. That is the post 9/11 zeitgeist. And all an innocent traveler can do is to try to understand their position and, above all, co-operate!

How much freshwater does Canada have? The answer is about 9% of all the renewable freshwater resources in the world!

It’s virtually free at your tap too. The average cost per thousand liters of tap water is about fifty cents!

So why are people paying a dollar for 375 ml of water in a plastic bottle? If you think about it, that’s more than you pay for gasoline and everybody complains about the cost of gas!

Last year, 700 million liters of bottled water were sold in Canada at a cost of almost one-half billion dollars!

What people are not aware of is that one quarter of all bottled water in Canada comes directly from the tap and it is perfectly legal to do so.

Scientists have stated that in Canada, there is virtually no difference between bottled water and tap water and that tap water is totally drinkable.

Firms that sell bottled water claim that their industry is more tightly regulated than municipal water supplies. Scientists disagree.

Pierre Payment, an internationally recognized microbiologist at the Universite du Quebec, says, “There is more regulation in fact, for tap water. If you look at the number of samples that must be taken for water that reaches your tap, it’s huge! Each system is tested on a regular basis, almost daily.”

So why have people (especially visitors to Canada) taken to bottled water? The answers are simply, marketing and fear.

Two of the largest selling bands of bottled water in North America Dasani and Aquifina are owned by Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola respectively. Together hey account for billions (literally) in North American sales every year.

However, it was revealed that both companies were selling little more than filtered tap water. In fact, their bottles contained virtually the same water as your toilet. Scandalous!

The bottom line is that not only is tap water as good as bottled water; moreover, in 25% of the cases it is exactly the same product!

 

Times have changed for young travelers. In the past a backpacker on a limited budget was subject to the same visa restrictions as any other tourist.

Today, because of reciprocal agreements between governments, young people (usually under 32) from a developed country, can apply for a one-time, one-year. working holiday visa. This gives therm the right to work and travel within the country for a full year.

Steve, a young man from Australia, is in Toronto on just such a visa. But his aim is to make his year in Canada as big an adventure as possible. So he didn’t look for the same type of work he did back home.

Instead, he got a job washing windows.

What’s so special or adventurous about washing windows, you ask? Well it depends on where those windows are. The one’s that Steve will be cleaning are on Toronto’s high-rise buildings.

They start from the top windows and work their way down lowered from the roof suspended in a harness or bosun’s chair. So it often involves cleaning city-grime encrusted windows hundreds of feet above the pavement.

It is not a job for the faint-hearted or anyone who has a problem with heights. Part of the job interview is watching a video showing what can go wrong with the equipment for this job. It’s a process that rapidly weeds out the timid.

Steve is still in the middle of training which, as one might expect, is extensive, intense and exhaustive. But once it has been completed and he’s is ready to work solo on high-rise buildings, the job can be quite lucrative.

But all I can say is, better you than me, Steve. Better you than me!

Two window washers working their way down in tandem.

It looks like quite a drop if the rope breaks! (It’s a good thing he’s wearing a helmet!)

Toronto is well known for its’ up and down weather. They often say that in the winter, it is so cold, you can’t even breathe! And in the summer, it is so hot, you can’t even breathe!

Last week, the weather was around 31C. But when you factor in the humidity it felt like 41C! That’s the way it works around here. The temperature rarely goes above 34C; but, the humidity in Toronto makes it feel as if it were in the mid 40C range.

After weeks of warm (hot) humid temperatures, we have experienced a pronounced drop of the thermometer and this morning, the temperature is a mere 13C at 10 A.M.

We are less than 2 weeks from Canada Day (July 1) and the temperature is not expected to rise above 20C until, at least, this weekend. People have begun to pull their spring and fall jackets and “hoodies” out of storage.

There is, however, an upside to this cooler weather if you operate a hostel. Among the hostels in Toronto, we are centrally air conditioned and the monster units we have draw copious amounts of hydro.

The weatherman says that we cant expect temperatures even approaching seasonal norms until the middle of next week when a moderate 25C is predicted by mid week. All of this translates into substantial energy savings for the hostel!

Some say that rural or small town Canada is often a cultural wasteland. That’s probably partly true because they are usually ethnically homogeneous areas with minimal cultural diversity.

We’ve been fortunate to host (several times a year) various groups of high school students from West Ferris High School in North Bay, Ontario. For whatever reason, of all the hostels in Toronto, they choose to stay at ours and we’re glad to have them.

North Bay, as it name would imply, is situated in a northern bay of the beautiful Lake Nipissing in an area first explored by Samuel De Champlain almost four centuries ago. The picturesque little town is located about four hours drive due north of Toronto.

The area’s growth began in 1882 with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the town of a little over 50,000 souls is located close to where the first spike of the Trans Canada Railway link was driven.

The trips to Toronto are organized by a remarkable pedagogue by the name of John Hetherington. Each trip has a cultural link such as visits to a Mosque, Temple or Synagogue, or visits to ethnic shopping areas, like Chinatown, Little India or Greektown. The aim is to give students exposure to various cultures, their customs and different religious beliefs.

The theory is that if the students can’t be exposed to other cultures and ethnicities at home; then bring them to Toronto which is arguably the most culturally diverse city on the planet! John has been leading these excursions for the past nine years.

The student groups brought to Toronto by John are also remarkably well behaved and one gets the impression that they leave the city a little richer than they were when they arrived.

And that’s pretty much the aim of education; is it not? It’s also a program that other rural/small town schools would do well to emulate.

John Hetherington reclining outside of our front door in front of a group of his students here on a cultural outing here in Toronto,

Kym from NYC and her bike (with frame destroyed) after a run-in with a car door.
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A couple of posts ago, we told you about the Bicycle Messenger World Championships being held in Toronto. The event attracted hundreds of competitors from North America, Europe and Asia.

As mentioned before these guys and girls can really scoot on their bikes! Making a living as an inner-city bike courier depends on speed!

You might assume (correctly) that bike messengers are a pretty fit bunch. They are mostly young iconoclasts who’s antics on busy city streets can often border on the reckless!

Of the hundreds of competitors who came for the competition, about 20 stayed with us at our hostel in Toronto. And this group achieved some pretty impressive results!

Sixth to eighth place were taken by competitors staying with us! And the second fastest female qualifier was a guest of ours!

Eighth place was won by Craig Roth a courier from the crowded streets of Boston. What made his top ten finish so impressive is that at 38 years of age, Craig was twice the age of some competitors!

I mentioned that fact to him; however, Craig is quiet and unassuming! He told me that the ninth place finisher was a 52 year-old from Washington, D.C.!

Kym Perfetto, a lovely lady messenger from New York City, had the second fastest time in the qualifying heats. She might have gone all the way too! Unfortunately, Kym had a run in with a car door, opened into traffic by a careless driver after parking, the day before the race!

You can see a photo of her bike above (complete with shattered frame!).

A group of competitors on the hostel patio.