More on Toronto and Sundry Items

Okay, I learned something new about the size and diversity of the city of Toronto relative to other Canadian cities this past week. If you were to consider only the immigrant population of Toronto, it would constitute the third largest city in Canada (Toronto followed by Montreal). Amazing, isn't it ? As noted in an earlier post, 50% of residents of Toronto are foreign born. I guess that I qualify since I was born in the US ! :-)

We are slowly making progress in our new abode. Sod will be laid down in our subdivision in June or July. So there is not much yardwork to do for the time being. We don't have mailboxes either. A supermailbox (a community mailbox) was just constructed. I imagine that we'll soon be notified. In the meantime, we are picking up our mail on a weekly basis at the post office until further notice.

Will write more later !

Victoria Day

There are two long weekends coming up....one here in Canada (Victoria Weekend) and the other in the USA (Memorial Weekend). There was an interesting opinion by a columnist, in today's Toronto Star regarding Victoria Day, which itself explains the origins of this holiday. Read it at:

Victoria Day

A Look Back at the Winter

A brief look at the near record setting snowfall this past winter via pictures !!

The top picture is Mary-Anne's house, which we lived in from last June (when I arrived in Canada) through the end of April. The next two pictures are representations of the kind of snow fall we experienced during this past winter. This was the day after the last big snow storm of the season. As one can see, the day was remarkably beautiful when I took these pictures. How about that Mary-Anne sprawled against that snowbank ? :-)

Easter Weekend

This is long overdue ! I went out to Seattle over for a special Easter Weekend as 5 of my nieces and nephews were baptized, had first communion and had confirmation all in a single Mass called a "Triduum Mass" on the Saturday before Easter. It was a beautifully conducted Mass by the presiding priest. One concern that we had was the length of the Mass (approximately 2 hours) and whether any of the kids would have a meltdown. Never happened. All of them were behaved incredibly well and made all of us proud. Mary-Anne and I are on record as Andrei's godparents although only one of us had to be present. As this was the weekend before we closed on our new house, Mary-Anne stayed behind to take care of things and in case anything house related required immediate attention. I had a great time hanging out with Andrei over the weekend and he made me awful proud to be his uncle. It goes, without saying, that I'm awful proud of EVERY one of them !

On a final note, Happy Birthday to my niece, Elizabeth !!

Yabba Dabba Doo !!

Mary-Anne and I finally accomplished the task of moving out of her triplex into the new house last night. We had done most of the exhausting work, taking numerous trips between both houses, culminating in a last weekend frenzy on Saturday and Sunday as we had to be out of the house by today. The movers (Two Men and a Truck) came on Sunday to move the major items and that was accomplished relatively quickly. Now we can finally focus on unpacking and organizing the furniture in the new house. As you can see by the pictures, the sod has not been laid down in our subdivision. We have been informed that will not be done until June or July. So given that we will not be able to do yardwork on the weekends for awhile, we will have time to work on the inside of the house, including resuming the staining of the staircases. As of now, we have only one neighbor but expect that the neighborhood will fill up in the next few months.

The first picture was taken in front of our house, facing north on Pennel Drive. Note how dusty and dirty it is.

The second picture is our house. The house on the left side contain the only neighbors that we currently have.

The third picture was also taken in front of our house, facing south on Pennel Drive.

The last picture was also taken in front of the house, facing east onto Clearbrook. No one is currently living on this street.


More pics coming up !

The New Abode

Just a short update on the house. We have been extremely busy moving from Mary-Anne’s house to the new house and simultaneously doing the staircase project. We have decided to suspend the staircase project and shift our focus to moving the rest of the stuff from Mary-Anne’s house over to the new house. We have made quite a bit of progress but have more stuff to do. We’ve also had to deal with delivery of my Columbus stuff out of storage, delivery of new appliances,. installiation of satellite tv, installation of security system and other miscellaneous chores, all of which is taking up a lot of time. However, we are knocking off the “to- do” list bit by bit. We have until April 30th to vacate Mary-Anne’s house. Right now, the new house is just a mess but we don’t mind. I suspect that, after we get everything moved into the new place, it’s going to take time to sort out and organize the household items. For example, we need to sort through some of the pots and pans I brought up from Columbus in conjunction with her stuff and figure out what to keep and what to donate to charity. Just a small example. However, we are looking forward to the challege. Sorry folks that I haven’t had time to take pictures but will do so soon as the weather has gotten a lot better up here recently.

In the meantime, as a way to relax through all of this, Mary-Anne and I have become big fans of the tv show “Lost” and have been renting DVDs to catch up on the show. We had never watched it until a co-worker of hers urged her to check it out. We’ve been catching up since and are currently watching Season 2 DVDs. Great show ! I’ve commented to Mary-Anne that we are in a situation somewhat similar to those on “Lost” in the sense that we and our new neighbors are going through the same experience of moving into new houses at more or less the same time. There is a young couple next door we are starting to get acquainted with. The house on the other side is not yet complete and so it is vacant. Quite a few houses on our street are not completed. Consequently, there aren’t many neighbors. We have a subdivision map and are going to try to list people’s names in the corresponding lots; easier to remember names that way. It would be very awkward to say “Hey, we’ve met before, what’s your name again ?” Ugh.

So that’s the latest on the new abode. More later !

Miscellaneous Facts about Canada

(1) Mailboxes in the US are blue; those in Canada are red
(2) Mail is delivered six days a week in the US; here it is delivered 5 days per week.
(3) “Checks” is spelled “cheques” here
(4) Stephen Harper is the prime minister of Canada.
(5) Canadians occupy only 2% of the total landmass of the country
(6) Hockey is big here...surprise !
(7) So is curling :-)
(8) Kitchener was formerly called New Berlin and has the second largest Oktoberfest in the world outside of Germany.
(9) The top elected state official in the US are called governors; here it is “Premier.”
(10) The Premier of Ontario is Daulton McGuinty.
(11) Ottawa is the capital of Canada.
(12) Catholic schools in Canada are publicly funded by government and this is perfectly constitutional under the Canadian constitution. This funding, no doubt, has a lot to do with the issue of Quebec. Such a scheme in the US would be a clear violation of the 1st Amendment of the Bill Rights of the US Constitution.
(13) The most populous province is Ontario.
(14) Canada has ten provinces; they are British Columbia, Alberta, Sascatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador. Canada also has 3 territories (Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon).
(15) According to the Economist magazine, Alberta is estimated to have the second largest reserves of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia. However, it is in a form that is difficult to extract and requires expensive technology. Some have suggested that if the US would be dumb to try to reopen NAFTA as Canada would be in a very good bargaining position considering the price of oil these days (having reached a record $112 per barrel last week).

More later !