We Went to Canada and Saw Toronto!

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

Here's our second stop at Lowell National Historical Park.

Here's our third stop at Acadia National Park

Here's our fourth stop at Hopewell Rocks

Here's our fifth stop at Fundy National Park

Here's our sixth stop in Halifax

Here's our seventh stop in Kejimkujik National Park

Here's our eighth stop in Prince Edward Island National Park

Here's our ninth stop at Green Gables

And here are the only photos that I managed to get in all of Quebec:

Why yes, that IS milk in a bag! In all of Canada, this is the one thing that Will wanted to do above all else: purchase and consume milk. From a bag.

It's a Canadian thing.

Buying milk in a bag was actually surprisingly hard to accomplish, considering that we were IN Canada. It only comes by the gallon, so I didn't want to buy it when we were driving hither and yon because we wouldn't have time to drink it, and whenever we stayed some place for two nights, by poor luck that place only had tourist-style convenience markets, with tourist-style amenities. No milk in a bag.

But the main feature of Quebec City, along with all of the French-language immersion, is that Matt flew out to meet us there! We picked him up at the airport (and no, I do NOT want to talk about the drive from Prince Edward Island to Quebec City. The bridge toll was over thirty dollars. I learned a lot more about lobsters. Everyone puts their hazards on and pulls over when it rains. I managed to survive the experience), checked into our hotel (every person I met spoke French to me, and I excitedly spoke French back, but as soon as they heard my terrible pronunciation they always switched to English, grr!), and then took him grocery shopping to show him all of the glories of Whippets and All-Dressed Ridgies. And since he was along, we rolled the dice on our stomachs and bought some chocolate mix and milk in a bag!

After all, that's only a quart of milk apiece!

If you're wondering how you actually drink milk in a bag, it looks like this:

You put it in a pitcher (here our ice bucket is called into service), snip a corner, and pour!

The next morning, very, VERY full of milk, we drove to a local mall and spent the morning shopping at Renaud-Bray, a French-language bookstore.

Friends, I was in HEAVEN.

Because our local libraries do not have a French-language collection, and it's hard to inter-library loan books in a language I don't know well, my goal was to select several early-reader French-language books for the girls to use in their French studies. Here's some of what I bought:

• Ou est ma licorne? (Are You My Unicorn?)
• Rencontre les poneys! (A My Little Pony title)
• French magnetic poetry kit
• Monsieur Joyeux
• Une Patate A Velo
• Je Suis Terrible
• Sabrina la sirene
• Mechant Minou n'aime Pas les Chiens (a Bad Kitty title!)
• Mon Tout premier Dictionnaire Larousse
• Ce N'est Pas Mon Chapeau (This Is Not My Hat, one of my favorite picture books!)

All those books, plus all of the brochures, food packaging, and various other bits of ephemera that we collected now make up a nice little starter French-language collection in our homeschool.

In the afternoon, we left Quebec City and drove on to Toronto, discovering on the way that we do NOT like Toronto traffic. 

It took more than double the time that it should have to get to Toronto Zoo the next morning. Soooooo much traffic!

Worth it, though:

This is the cage that they use to capture and relocate polar bears up north.

Will was SO excited to see a Przewalski's horse!

I mean, not this one. This one is a statue...

But there's one waaaaaay over there, so it's good that I keep binoculars in my backpack!

The kids could not have been more thrilled to have Matt back with us, and even though it poured down rain regularly, we just put on our ponchos and tromped on through.

The mental breakdowns didn't come until we were trying to drive from the Toronto Zoo to Medieval Times. Traffic was RIDICULOUS. It took hours. Streets were randomly closed. Other streets merged together with no traffic lights or signage or any direction whatsoever, everyone just left to fend for themselves and battle their way into the proper lane. We finally got there and ended up somehow parking in the employee lot, and could not for the life of us figure out where we were supposed to go in.

And then, and THEN, when we'd eventually discovered the entrance, and were let inside, freezing and sodden, I went to the bathroom to try to compose myself and dry off. It was a madhouse, but I used the toilet, flushed, and as I went to wash my hands I heard the lady who'd come into the stall after me say loudly, ostensibly to her small child but LOUDLY TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WOMEN'S BATHROOM COULD HEAR, "Oh, look, Honey, that lady didn't flush. That's too bad!"

I was in the middle of wiping my glasses down with a paper towel, but I had HAD it with that militant Canadian politeness bullshit. I immediately whipped around, glared somewhere in her general direction, and barked at her, "I did, too, flush!"

The woman replied, "Well, there's some toilet paper there. You know what I meant."

Oh, DID I?!? It was the last freaking straw. I was all first-world problemed OUT!

Seriously, I could barely enjoy the town crier or the royal procession. It took about half my fruity alcoholic beverage, half my hot tomato bisque, and the sight of these sweet faces to get me out of my funk:

And then? I started having a really, really, REALLY good time:

You might remember me mentioning that I have a Master's in English with an emphasis on the Medieval period. Heck, if you've been reading here since the beginning, you remember when I WAS in grad school studying the Medieval period. Good times. Kind of...

Anyway... I am very interested, academically, in the Medieval period, but I found during my studies that I'm actually much more interested in "Medievalism," which is representations of the Medieval period that take place after the Medieval period. They sometimes try to be accurate, which brings up a billion more issues of how you can portray or define accuracy in regards to a historical time period, but mostly they really just want to reflect or modify various non-canonical aspects of the period. These new artifacts say a lot of interesting things about the cultural context in which they were created, and just about nothing about the actual Medieval period.

But... they're FUN!!!

Whenever we explore Medievalisms as a family, I spend half my time furiously hissing historical corrections to Matt and the kids and the other half beaming and cheering wildly.

I did both constantly at Medieval Times, and it was AWESOME:

This guy is our knight. He did NOT win, though I cheered him hard.

I had been especially super excited to come to Medieval Times since they replaced their kings with queens. Yay to more positive female role models! Here she is:

I hadn't realized it before, but Medieval Times is really the place to go if you want to see a lot of horses. There were several really beautiful performances, although the kids and I talked for the rest of the trip about how on earth the horses get nice outside time in the middle of downtown Toronto. I hope they walk them over to the park a lot:

Also, falcons:

And fighting!

Oh, my gosh, it was SO fun. Afterwards, both kids assured me that I had cheered louder than anyone else in the arena.

I don't think they were necessarily going for a compliment, but that's how I took it!

We Went to Canada and Saw Green Gables!

Here's what we've done on our trip so far:

Here's our first stop at Steamtown National Historic Site.

Here's our second stop at Lowell National Historical Park.

Here's our third stop at Acadia National Park

Here's our fourth stop at Hopewell Rocks

Here's our fifth stop at Fundy National Park

Here's our sixth stop in Halifax

Here's our seventh stop in Kejimkujik National Park

Here's our eighth stop in Prince Edward Island National Park

I'd originally been inspired to plan this trip to Canada with the kids because I wanted them to see and hear native French speakers, but it wasn't in our budget to go to France this year.

But when it came to actually planning this trip, I moved heaven and earth to make sure that we'd spend time on Prince Edward Island. It's far away, took a huge effort to get there, and I would have worked a lot harder than I even did for the chance to see Green Gables.

Will, too, is a huge Anne of Green Gables fangirl, and has read all the books, too, even the ones that aren't really about Anne.

Syd isn't a fan of Anne--she thinks she's annoying, gasp!--but once upon a time, several months ago, I was re-reading Anne of Green Gables and when Matthew dies, I unexpectedly found myself weeping, unable to calm myself. Oh, my gosh, I'm crying right now just to think of it. I hadn't re-read Anne of Green Gables since Pappa died. I don't know if I'll ever be able to bring myself to read it again, frankly.

Anyway, the kids attended to me, as I tried to comfort them and tell them I was just sad, and eventually I got them to head back off on their own business. Except that a little while later, Syd came to me with a story for me to read. She'd written me a piece of Anne of Green Gables fanfiction in which Matthew does not die, but instead heads off to travel the world, sending back much love to Anne and Marilla.

It's the best gift I've ever received.

So on the most beautiful morning of our entire trip, we drove two miles from our motel and paid our admission to Green Gables National Heritage Place so that we could see where Anne lives.

Here's Green Gables!

Green Gables is real, even if Anne, herself, isn't. The real house inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery so much that she set her book there, and now it's restored to look the way that it would have looked then (although I bet with better landscaping).



The site also has some of Montgomery's belongings, such as her typewriter:

Will wandered off somewhere or other, which means that she didn't have to sit in the buggy while I took her picture. Syd looks like she wishes she had wandered off somewhere, too!

Does this house look magical? I need to tell you that it was. It was absolutely magical. It's exactly right in every detail.

Inside, there are period furnishings, although if you look closely, you'll also see details taken expressly from the books:

This is one of the bedrooms, but look--there's Matthew's vest! It's MATTHEW'S room!

See the raspberry cordial on the shelf?

Guess who's room this is, with that dress with puffed sleeves hanging in the closet?

There was an older couple behind us, who I'd seen come in on a tour bus earlier. When we paused in front of this room, the guy was like, "Okay, this room belongs to..." and, referencing his brochure, "uhhh... Marcilla?"

Without even thinking, I turned right around and informed him, in an outraged tone, "It's MARILLA!"

And then I stopped, and said, "Ahem. Sorry."

They forgave me, but then the guy was all, "So, that's her, what? Aunt?"

I did not trust myself to reply.

Back outside, we took a break in the shade and enjoyed our VERY EXPENSIVE drinks. Since we were going to a place, not a national park, I didn't ask the kids to bring their water bottles; I'd assumed we'd just find a drinking fountain whenever we were thirsty. Except... there weren't any drinking fountains! Talk about culture shock! Instead, I bought my dehydrated children VERY EXPENSIVE bottled drinks, and we all commented periodically that they were the BEST drinks, SO delicious, VERY MUCH worth the lots of money that I'd paid for them.

The children also expressed emotions ranging from mild distaste to horror when I informed them that it was time to go to the folk singing, but I know for a fact that they enjoyed themselves:

There was a range of songs, many of which the children didn't know--

--but we were delighted to see (well, *I* was definitely delighted; the children experienced emotions ranging from mild enthusiasm to resignation) that one of the songs on the agenda was an Irish folk song that I'd taught them last year:

We could all sing along to that one!

I know that it looks like I'm filming that random woman, but really I have my eye on the guest behind her: 

It's ANNE!

Afterwards, we spent hours wandering the grounds and various walking paths:

This kid always finds a place to grub:

It's very bad to carve into trees. But also--look!

And then we were drawn back to Green Gables, Syd to finish up her Xplorer book--

--and Will and I to do some more fangirling:

Here an example of a hard-earned Xplorer badge!

I have told you before that gift shops never have what I want to buy. I'd had it in my head that I would splurge on a complete set of Anne books here, the nicest that they stocked. But you know what? They did not carry the full set of Anne books! I'd be very interested to know why.

Oh, well. I'd spent most of our souvenir money on those drinks, anyway!

I can't quite work out whether I think it's weird or not to visit authors' graves, but this cemetery was so close to our motel that we walked there that evening:

Lucy Maud Montgomery struggled with depression for much of her adult life. Rilla of Ingleside is her darkest book, and much of what happens in that book--World War I, the death of a beloved son--are written from her own experiences. When Montgomery's death was discovered, there was also found a note that may have been a suicide note--even if it was, as others contend, simply an excerpt from her journal, it's nevertheless deeply upsetting, and revealed much more about her inner struggles than one can see on the imagined face of a brave, spunky, determined optimist of a red-haired orphan girl.

So whether it's weird or not, we pilgrimaged to Lucy Maud Montgomery's grave by foot, there to pay our respects to her life and legacy:

We were not, it seems, the only ones to do so:

Wandering further, we also found the graves of the grandparents who raised Montgomery after her mother died and her father abandoned her:

Huh. I've just realized: Montgomery was raised by her grandparents, just like me. It makes all the sense in the world that Anne was rescued and raised by an elderly couple. I wonder if Montgomery, too, struggled to re-read Matthew's death without weeping? I do know that she later wrote in a memoir that she regretted writing his death, and wished she hadn't done it.

Back to the motel, then, for more swimming and Sharknado and real live raspberry cordial:

Seriously, whoever got the trademark to sell that in Cavendish is a genius.