A year-end look at eastern skylines

The Manhattan skyline from the Empire State Building in August

2014 has been a year of discovering cities in eastern Canada and the U.S. 

From Halifax to Detroit and from Ottawa to Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to visit nine cities in the region this year. 

For this blogpost, a visit means at least one overnight stay. My excursions in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New York, District of Columbia and Michigan totaled 23 hotel room nights this year – 26 if I include a January trip to Las Vegas, but that’s another story.


I described all my trips in detail in various blogposts this year. So for a recap, I chose to take another look at those adventures by focusing on my photos of skylines of the east.


U.S. Capitol with the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Toronto skyline from the Beaches - first warm day in May

Quebec City with the St. Lawrence River in June

July in Niagara Falls, without a view of the falls

A July cruise along the Ottawa River provides a view of the Chateau Laurier Hotel and Parliament Hill

Fine late September weather in Montreal

Thanksgiving weekend in Windsor



GM headquarters dominates the Detroit skyline in this Thanksgiving weekend view from Windsor

On the ferry in Halifax Harbour on chilly November Sunday afternoon

A November visit to Detroit revealed an empty Woodward Ave. waiting for revitalization





Historic Halifax

Halifax has been on my list of places to visit for years in order to see the spot where my parents and sister landed decades ago to start their life in Canada.
 
As more than a million people did between the end of World War 2 and 1971, my family arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax.

Unfortunately, Canadian Museum of Immigration is closed for renovations.  But I was able to imagine what my father, mother and sister felt when they arrived in Canada after a long boat journey across the Atlantic Ocean. 

The experience is shown in a new statue called The Emigrant.  The bronze and marble monument depicts an emigrant leaving his home country to start a new life in Canada.

Speaking of the Atlantic, I certainly had a great stroke of luck when I signed up at the visitors centre on the harbourfront for a tour of Peggy’s Cove.  I showed up for my 2 o’clock tour to find that I was the only participant. Only in Halifax, would a tour run for just one person!

 

My guide, Blair Beed, is a Halifax historian.  He runs Dtours Visitors and Convention Services. For $40, I enjoyed an excellent adventure along the shore to Peggy’s Cove with its rugged coastline, fishing village and famous lighthouse.  What a way to experience the Halifax area with a one-on-one conversation with a great storyteller.

No visit to Halifax is complete without sampling the local seafood.  I did my part with five bowls of fish chowder.  Every bowl was different with a variety of creamy textures and flavours and seafood.  My highlight meal was a lobster clubhouse sandwich at the Stubborn Goat Gastropub.

There must have been more than a half a pound of lobster stuffed into the sandwich!

In addition to seafood, Halifax is home to fine beers including the famed Alexander Keith’s.  Another benefit of travelling in the low season, only half a dozen folks were on my tour of one of the oldest commercial breweries in North America. So we had plenty of fun participating with the actors who took us back in time to the mid 1800s to learn about Keith and the brewing process.  The tour included two glasses of beer. 





Joseph Howe statue at Province House

And as I do in capital cities, I visited the legislature. Legislators have met every year since 1819 in Nova Scotia’s Province House, making it the longest serving legislative building in Canada.  As I was the only tourist on a rainy Monday afternoon, the commissionaires let me wander around the building. 

Inside the N.S. Legislature

I learned about Joseph Howe, a newspaper editor who was acquitted of libel in 1835. He is noted in history as a defender of freedom of the press and a champion of responsible government in Nova Scotia.

In the words of a popular folk song, here are a few more pictures as I say "Farewell to Nova Scotia!"

 

Georges Island in Halifax Harbour

 

Farmers Market on a busy Saturday morning

  

The Halifax skyline

 

Windsor/Detroit: Whisky, Casino and Hockey

Folks may question my choice of Windsor/Detroit as a Thanksgiving weekend getaway destination. But the area has at least three things I like:  a casino, a distillery and hockey.

Windsor

Detroit

Again, my mode of transportation for my continuing tour of eastern cities was Via Rail.  It’s a convenient and comfortable way to travel for these four-to-six hour trips.

To be honest, I was somewhat surprised that the major structure you see next to Windsor’s Via station is the Hiram Walker and Sons Distillery – a series of tall brick, industrial buildings.  I didn’t know that Windsor is a major centre for whisky production. I guess my pre-trip research was lacking. I learned all about it during a very informative $10 tour of the Canadian Club Brand Centre.

 

Successful grain merchant Hiram Walker founded the distillery that would produce Canadian Club in 1858. This distillery was established in Walkerville (now part of Windsor). During the 90-minute tour of a grand building, we see the offices, furniture, ledgers and bottles of the late 1800s. We learned how Walker built his business on 468 acres of land and all the interesting activities that took place during the prohibition era.  The visit includes a look at the “speak easy” room in the basement where meetings took place with Al Capone.

The tour concludes with whisky samples.  But, because of provincial regulations, you can’t purchase whisky onsite. I did pick up a pair of logoed whisky glasses.  On a side note, as with all such family businesses, the distillery is now owned by multinational companies.

Walkerville is being revitalized with shops, bars and restaurants that embrace the area’s history. It’s good place to wander around and have lunch before the tour.

My two-night stay was at Caesars Windsor.  Is it like Vegas?  Yes!  It is a well-appointed facility with all trimmings of a Vegas casino: big rooms with views, friendly staff, lounges, entertainment and, of course, enough food and gaming action that one expects in such properties.

As for downtown Windsor, frankly, it’s a little faded. But I did support a local business and had a tasty home-made burger and fresh-cut fries combo at Simon's Prime Hamburgers.

Business from another era in downtown Windsor

The only part of Detroit I saw, beyond the skyline view from Windsor, was the Joe Louis Arena – to catch the first Saturday night home game of the season for the Detroit Red Wings. No fickle fans here – they love their Wings.  It quite an experience heading over to Motor City in the Windsor/Detroit Tunnel on a bus filled with Canadians wearing Wings gear.

Windsor embraces its waterfront with a five-kilometre trail.  I walked the trail to work off my Thanksgiving buffet lunch.


Waterfront Trail and the Ambassador Bridge - the busiest border crossing.

Windsor, looking northeast towards Lake St.Clair

Touring in summer weather during the first week of fall

My friend Monique timed it right for her Toronto visit.  During the last week of September, we were fortunate to have some of the finest weather of the last few months for the first week of fall – plenty of sunshine and mild temperatures.  The weather was perfect for our long list of activities as we explored Toronto, the Niagara Peninsula and Montreal. 

Niagara-on-the-Lake: a pretty town

Over the last year, I’ve been to Niagara Falls several times. However, I hadn’t ventured off the main highway to explore the wineries of the Niagara Escarpment and Twenty Valley. I think one can return multiple times to the area to meander along the country roads to discover the wineries.

For this trip, we focused on testing white wines. We sampled many fine Rieslings, said to be Niagara’s most important variety that withstands the summer heat and the severe cold of Ontario’s winter. A big thank you to my colleague Elissa (a native of Niagara), who provided us with maps and tips. 

Old Montreal

The early fall colours were especially brilliant in Montreal.  After arriving by train, relaxing strolls in Vieux Montreal, shopping along Rue Sainte Catherine and enjoying Blanche de Chambly beer on a patio on Rue Crescent were the order of the day.

My friends Ginette and Yvon took us on a drive around Mount Royal that included a stop at St. Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal. And Yvon brought us to, what he says. is a little-known viewpoint on the Mount on the west side to see some sweeping views of city.

St. Joseph's Oratory

Merci Ginette et Yvon!

 Time to say au revior Montreal and à la prochaine!

 

A Taste of TIFF

I wasn’t going to write about TIFF 14, but my NYC Broadway show buddy Jen suggested this blog. So here are my impressions of my first Toronto International Film Festival.

I knew TIFF was a big production from my years of watching reports on entertainment programs.  Experiencing it while living in the Toronto gave me some perspective on the magnitude of this festival. For weeks leading up to TIFF, the local news programs created the buzz. And once the TIFF got into full swing, TV stations had live hits each evening from the many red carpets.

I haven't been much of a movie-goer in recent years, but the excitement of TIFF got me back into the cinemas. I saw four films over the last week.

A Second Chance: A Danish drama about a cop who makes fateful decisions involving a pair of junkies and a baby. Set in winter around Christmas, the film had many foreshadowing scenes of frigid, grey waters off Denmark’s coastline.  Academy Award-winning director Susanne Bier and star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau were on hand for a Q and A at this world premiere.

 

Cut Bank:  This film, set in Cut Bank, Montana (said to be the coldest spot in the USA), is about a crime scam gone wrong.  Performances by veterans Bruce Dern and Billy Bob Thornton were highlights in an otherwise basic movie. It didn’t help that I nodded off during this 10 p.m. showing and missed a few minutes where there was an important plot development.

Kill Me Three Times:  From Australia, this black comedy was engaging and entertaining. Lots of plot twists, schemes and scams in this murder tale, but all is logically linked. Of note is the cinematography described as “sun-punched.”

Cake:  I’ve never seen Jennifer Aniston in a dramatic role.  I was impressed with her performance (a departure from romantic comedies) as a woman dealing with physical and emotional trauma.

The only star I saw on the red carpet was John Travolta, on my way home along King St. on Friday night. I joined the crowd and took some Smartphone photos, just like every other star-spotter!

 

 

Thanks to @erin_braincandy for arranging all the tickets and being my #TIFF14 viewing partner.