Canada 2020
On Wednesday, March 18th I returned to Tokyo after a 17-day visit to Canada. It is the first time I ever bought Traveler’s Insurance. I was frightened both by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the state of my own health. Now I think that in the future I will make it a habit to buy insurance when I travel. I’m just at that time of life, I guess.
On Friday, February 28th I flew to Vancouver, British Columbia and spent one night there. On Saturday, February 29th I flew to Toronto and used an airport limousine service to travel to my hometown, Guelph, Ontario. That was a near disaster. What should have been a one-hour drive turned in to a two-and-a-half-hour trip through endless rural routes due to the driver’s lollygagging driving. I ended up yelling at the guy, and not giving him a tip at the end.
I spent 2½-days in Guelph organizing, downsizing, and purging my storage locker there before leaving by Greyhound bus at 4:10 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3rd. I returned to Toronto and spent the night in a downtown Howard Johnson’s Inn to position myself for an early morning train to Montreal on Wednesday 4th. The railroad disruptions in Canada had just finished days before, and service was still in the process of resuming. I was damned lucky my train excursion to the Maritime provinces - whic h I had been planning for a year - went off almost as scheduled. But my scheduled train - the Number 60 VIA Rail at 6:40 a.m. - was cancelled and I was rescheduled on the 8:40 a.m. Number 62 train instead. (The company informed me by e-mail.) I spent the afternoon of Wednesday, March 4th walking around Montreal’s Old City, the Ville Marie. Specifically, I visited and photographed the Basilica Notre-Dame and Old city street scenery. The same day, I boarded the 7:00 p.m. sleeper train from Montreal to Halifax, Nova Scotia, a train nick-named “The Ocean.” I’ve taken the western VIA Rail sleeper train, The Canadian, eleven times eastbound from Vancouver-to-Toronto (never westbound from Toronto-to-Vancouver), and this year I redeemed most of my accumulated VIA Rail Preference points to get a free train trip with a private cabin, private shower and private toilet. It is the first time I’ve ever had a private cabin on the train. The cabin was designed for two - a fold-down bunk bed - but I found it plenty narrow and tight with just me in there.
I arrived in Halifax, NS 24-hours later, on Thursday, March 5th and spend 2½-days visiting the city. My hotel there (the Westin Nova Scotian) plus the plane ticket back to Toronto were paid for by redeeming my accumulated Air Canada Aeroplan points. I was disappointed that Halifax was much smaller than I expected. Wikipedia describes a city of 410,000 people. But that’s not very large once you’re on the ground there. I spent all of my time downtown, which is easy to get around because it’s so small and compact. Very historic and overflowing with fantastic old architecture. I really enjoyed the city. Of special interest to me were the Titanic victims’ graves in Fairview Cemetery, the Citadel (a star-shaped British fortress on a hill overlooking the Halifax Harbour), and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. I also enjoyed Point Pleasant Park, the Nova Scotia Art Gallery, a ferry ride over to Dartmouth so I could see the Halifax skyline properly, and a short excursion to Peggy’s Cove.
On Friday, March 6th, while having dinner in the restaurant of my hotel, I observed a marriage proposal at an adjacent table. I’d have liked to have a picture of that, but ….
I left Halifax on the afternoon of Sunday, March 8th on Air Canada and once again used an airport limousine service to reach Guelph.
I’ve been planning and looking forward to this Maritime train excursion for an entire year. But in the last weeks, after I had already bought tickets and made reservations, it almost disintegrated before my eyes as indigenous people’s anti-oil pipeline protests across Canada brought all train traffic - freight as well as passenger - to a halt. The Ottawa government’s disinclination to seek “reconciliation” rather than to confront these illegal protests ground the country’s economy to a halt. Very fortunately, negotiations ensued that saw the resumption of train traffic, and my trip came off almost as planned - but only by the skin of its teeth. I had to check the Internet daily to follow the evolving situation. Passenger service resumed only days before my scheduled departures from Toronto and Montreal.
From Monday, March 8-Tuesday, March 17 I stayed in Guelph and resumed working like a frenzied maniac reducing and purging the contents of my storage locker there (a project that I’ve been working on incrementally since 2017).
I had access to a borrowed family car every day except for Wednesday, March 11th. But with the use of a car, every other day was a flurry of work. I exceeded my expectations and managed to reduce ALL the collected books that I currently want to let go, plus a few more books and ephemera that didn’t fit my original plan - in other words, I accomplished more than I expected. The ephemera that I discharged was a real surprise because I gave them no thought before arrival. But once I was in the mood, I couldn’t help myself. In August 2017, I removed about 350 books from my mother’s house. (I donated them to a Christian high school in Fergus, Ontario.) Then in March 2018, with the help of the Elora Festival Book Sale staff, I removed over 200 boxes of books. In March 2019, my son and I working together removed 72 boxes of books, mostly bound for the West End branch of the Guelph Public Library. In 2018, we delivered books to the branch library until the manager there asked me to stop. This year, by myself, I removed 45 boxes of books, and I moved in 15 boxes from my mother’s house (on the advice of my brother, I set about emptying my possessions still in Mom’s home). In addition, I made ten trips to the local dump (Waste Management Centre) on Watson Parkway 1) to throw stuff out, and 2) to shred documents. I shredded a lot. The paper shredder at the dump operates on a 15-minute timer, so I could calculate roughly how long I stood in the cold feeding papers into it. The shredding of paper was not at all in my plan when I went to Canada, but I got so mentally and physically into the spirit of purging and it just happened.
A typical day in Guelph went something like this:wake up at 6:00 a.m.
- wake up at 6:00 a.m.
- Eat, watch TV, walk around the neighborhood.
- After 9:00 go downtown and take photos and drive to a local church (open at 9:30) whose librarian agreed to take my religion books.
- At 10:00 a.m. drive Mom’s car to a liquor store to pick up some cardboard boxes. I always asked permission to do that and was sometimes denied. Better to ask.
- Then go to the cemetery, where I visited four people more than once.
- After that, go to the storage locker for about 2½-hours of sorting and packing or, however long it took me to fill my available boxes.
- Then drive to the West End Branch of the Public Library.
- Then drive to a Thrift Store - there are four in Guelph.
- After that return to the downtown church once more with additional religious books that I rummaged out of my locker in the morning.
- Then drive out to the city dump to dispose of a collection of heavy corrugated cardboard.
- After that, go home to eat and to confirm continued automobile availability, and also upload my morning’s photographs into my computer and begin editing them.
- Next, load up some stuff from my bedroom in Mom’s house and make another run to a Thrift Store.
I was surprised to hear a lot of Spanish being spoken around town. One of my brothers taught me about Latino and Caribbean migrant farm and factory workers. I had never heard of or imagined such people in Canada. Spanish-speaking migrant workers have always been an American thing, I thought. But no more, apparently. Why are these people in Canada? Maybe, 1) the Canadian economy needs more labor, or 2) they fled to Canada from deteriorating conditions in the U.S. Both fine and noble reasons.
When I departed Japan, the country was in full COVID-19 crisis mode. Stores were sold out of face masks, and hand sanitizers, and toilet paper and tissues were soon to join them. Schools were shut down. Even Tokyo Disneyland closed its doors. And, while I was in Canada Japan began restricting some travel and forcing quarantine on all arrivals from some countries. By comparison, I was aghast at Canadian’s complacency. In my first stop - Vancouver - everyone seemed oblivious to what was going on in the world. Total dunderheads! Complacent, even negligent towards a situation that had been developing for months already, and that the World Health Organization had declared an international emergency. (A “pandemic” was officially declared during my visit, after my arrival.) I complained about the retarded Canadian reaction to the growing crisis, but my complaints (and criticisms) were not only not appreciated but vehemently rejected! My attempts to praise the virtues of surgical face masks were met with belligerence as most Canadians put their trust in idiot advice from media doctors. I bet they aren’t so complacent now.
That changed quickly, though, as the contagion began spreading quickly throughout Canada during my visit. By mid-March - as I was preparing to return to Tokyo - the country was in emergency mode, restricting air travel and preparing to close borders (which happened soon after I arrived in Tokyo). On the day of my return to Tokyo many flights had already been cancelled. In fact, my Tokyo flight (AC1) was cancelled just two days before I was set to travel, but subsequently reinstated. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, plus Cabinet Ministers, plus the Ontario Premier were delivering live news conferences shown on the big screen TV in the airport’s Departures lounge. I felt like I was escaping the Titanic, lucky to get home to my apartment, my job, and my health insurance. The Prime Minister’s plea for overseas Canadians to “come home” as soon as possible before the means to do so evaporated was partly predicated on the myth of universal health care. I don’t have health insurance in Canada, and the Traveler’s Insurance I bought for the trip was about to expire. So, time to go. Canadians’ lifestyle and complacency cultivated the rapid spread of the virus. By mid-March the virus was out, the bird had flown the coop, and calling for social distancing and isolation at that late time was like closing the barn doors after the horses had fled.
My first morning in my hometown was a frigid, snow-covered landscape. Icicles hung from my mother’s roof. (Icicles might look neat, but they’re really not a good thing - indicating poor roof insulation.) I immediately recognized the distinctive birdsong of cardinals in the garden. Down by the local river the air was broken by the honk of gees, and Canada geese were in the water, flying here and there over the city, and perching on the edge of building rooftops - flat rooftops. Despite a frigid beginning, overall conditions were mild. But March weather is unstable. It can be warm and spring-like one day, then quickly be revisited by one more winter storm the next.