I began my last week as a Netjetter skipping down the steps of a 747 at Toronto's Pearson Airport. San Francisco was nippy when that fog rolled in, but Toronto took the cake and iced it. I learned to love this snowy, chilly city and as I sat bundled up on the tram, with Ukrainian babooshkas having a barny on the next seat, it was very Doctor Zhivago.
The sponsors of Netjetters 2 always throw in a classic day trip on my first day in each destination, and Toronto kicked off with Niagara Falls. I generally get a good night's sleep on the tour bus, and sure enough our driver-guide's mumbly Italian accent and insane memory for statistics sent me off nicely.
I snapped awake when the bus stopped and, as always, I took the role of the group's lone wolf and slunk away. I was intrigued by a huge gift shop just for Japanese tourists. I couldn't find anything to buy for even my most kitsch friends until I saw the pot of maple syrup suspended in mid air, pouring solid syrup onto plastic pancakes. "Oh, how much is this?" I cooed. It was the display.
Though the town of Niagara Falls is a bit of a karzi, the falls themselves are an awesome sight. While I was there, all the signs, railings and staff were festooned with icicles, and the observation platform covered with a sheet of ice. I was sure someone would go flying at any moment, and those railings are pretty low. Even the locals were complaining about the bitter weather, and I was starting to feel I must have brought it with me, like the wicked witch of the west.
I escaped into the tunnels behind the falls, where portals caked with ice gave a view into the back of the torrent. These tunnels carved out of the rock had water taps along the walls, quite high up but still reachable. I wonder what would happen if I.... no, better not!
I became fascinated by a group of young Mennonites at the falls, all in their teens and twenties, and I stalked them for a while. I took a couple of photos, pretending I was innocently shooting past them, and went whistling on my way. The women had long, ugly padded coats and black bonnets, and the men wore old-fashioned caps and hats and my old school trousers from 1978. I know their creed says they should dress plainly, but they really should go for Gap classics rather than navy polyester.
I have found that subway systems all over the world have their own little quirky rules. In Toronto, it's backpacks. An announcement tells you that backpacks must be carried when travelling on the subway, and a rolling message on the dot matrix board tells you to "Carry your backpack like a shopping bag". I didn't want to walk along swinging it like a big girly, so I went more for a clutch bag grip.
In a strange, slightly seedy, but apparently desirable part of town, called The Annex, is Honest Ed's. This shop is unbelievable. It covers a whole city block (like Harrods), sells everything (like Harrods), but Honest Ed's knows how tacky it is (unlike Harrods) and has fun with it.
Ed Mirvish opened the shop in the 1950s and made his fortune from piling it way high and selling it mega-cheap. There is theatrical memorabilia everywhere and it turns out that Ed had a hand in saving London's Old Vic theatre a few years ago.
A block or so away, the bell clanged as I stomped into a Hungarian deli for some warmth. The place was hung with salamis and horrible paintings of bug-eyed children, and I ate sensational chicken paprikas and rice with a spoon, followed by a cheese strudel. Further down Bathurst Street, a posher restaurant has a clipping that says it is "the last Hungarian outpost in the Annex". Codswallop!
Months ago, when I was still in a vest and flip-flops somewhere, Snowdiva left a message on the talkboard about breakfast at Maggie's on College Street in Toronto. At the time, I was living on fragrant Lao curries, and almost heaved at the thought of peanut butter and banana-stuffed French toast. But on a well-below-zero Sunday morning, with the Shoe Museum closed until noon, and the Police Museum closed until further notice, I found myself on College Street. The French toast arrived in a reeking cloud of cinnamon, with its own silver gravy boat of warm maple syrup. I practically had the glaze off the plate.
The Bata Shoe Museum is my sort of museum: almost deranged in its devotion to its rather narrow topic. They have done a great job, but I had a free and frank exchange of views with the woman at the desk about their Lotusflower exhibition. It was about footbinding in post-imperial China. Maybe I am more PC than I thought, but it seemed to me that there was a place in this exhibition to question whether binding women's feet as toddlers is possibly not such a great idea. As it was, the displays of tiny Barbie-like shoes left me with a queasy feeling, and I told them so.
In San Francisco, my previous stop off, I had been invited to some fabulous and glamorous Oscar parties but had been forced to reply sheepishly: "Thanks but I'll be in Toronto..."
I was forgetting that Toronto is a big film town, and that the city itself is an actor, playing New York, Chicago and LA in many a Hollywood film. There were certainly plenty of Academy Awards dos to choose from. I'm helping out as a steward at London's Lesbian and Gay Film Festival when I get home next week, so I plumped for a fundraiser for next month's Toronto version.
On arrival I was shown to the chi-chi Moulin Rouge table, and we looked with pity at the poor buggers sitting at the Jimmy the Neutron Boy table. The Toronto Mariott ballroom was kitted out with a big screen, and there was free champagne, hors d'oeuvres and some rather limp entertainment during the commercial breaks. In the sweepstakes, I predicted 11 out of 24, which won me nothing.
Every day this week I looked up at Toronto's CN Tower, only to see it disappearing into the clouds and flurries. Would I really go home without going up to the world's highest observation deck?
Marvellously, on my last morning the sky was clear as a bell, and roaming around the 360-degree deck, I could see across the US border to Buffalo and beyond.
