August 10, 2019 – August 19, 2019
One of the best things about travelling the way that we were was the flexibility and freedom we had….if we liked a place, we would stay an extra day or two, if we didn’t like a place, we would move on. Plans were never written in stone, and we had altered our route many times on the trip in order to avoid areas where there might be a bit of civil unrest, or to take a detour to see something of interest that was previously unknown to us.
When we decided to finish our trip by driving across Canada, I had thought that we might try to be in my home town of Blyth, Ontario for the Thresher’s Reunion, an annual event that brings old steam powered equipment, antique cars, and vendors of all sorts to the small village the second weekend of September. It’s not so much that I am into steam engines and such…it would be more a trip down memory lane. I have lots of memories of running around the fairgrounds with one or another friend over the years, happy that there was something different to do for the weekend, and I thought it might be fun to see it again, as an adult.
But we changed our plans. We were now on a schedule. We decided that we were going to make a run for Alberta, to attend a disc golf tournament being held at a course owned and designed by my brother, Ron (Rudy) Falconer, held over Labour Day weekend (first weekend of September). This year would be the 10th year that my brother had hosted the Professional Disc Golf Association sanctioned tournament, and there was to be a record attendance of disc golfers. Most of my family would be there, so it was a great opportunity for (almost) all of us to be together. More on that in another post, but for now, it meant that we were going to have to start fast tracking our way through the remaining provinces.
We spent a night in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and spent some time walking around some familiar sites.
From Ottawa we headed into Southern Ontario to spend a few days in the area where I grew up. We spent a night at the Pinery campground near Grand Bend, a beach town where I and my girlfriends spent many a summer day, laying on the beach, looking at boys, and laughing…I remember laughing a lot…
And, I got to introduce Derek to some of those very girlfriends, as we spent an evening filled with great food, nice wine, laughter and a few tears at Tracy’s cottage in Grand Bend. She is an amazing host and it was good to see “the girls” again after so many years. Even though I do not see them often, they are some of my favourite people in the world.
It was fun showing Derek some of the places that were important to me in my youth. We then made our way to Blyth, my hometown, a village of about nine hundred residents. We drove past the houses that my dad had built for us, we walked to “the arch”, a stone archway over the railroad and the river, where kids would hang out and swim, and we visited the Cowbell Brewing Company, a fairly new establishment in Blyth.
We camped for the night in Blyth and got tickets to a play at the Blyth Festival Theatre. I ushered in this theatre the summer that I was 12 years old….ah, the memories. I have loved live theatre ever since and the play we saw did not disappoint, although I felt a bit foolish in our front row centre seats as we stood for the standing ovation and I had tears rolling down my face (it was quite an emotional play for me).
When we were at Cowbell Brewery, I had said to Derek that I was scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Was one of the young servers the child (or grandchild…yikes!) of someone I had known when I lived here? The next day, as we were getting ready to leave Blyth, I struck up a conversation with a young woman who was spending the morning playing with her three young kids nearby. I told her about how I had wondered if I knew the parents of any of the servers the night before, and then said, “Well, for that matter, what is your name, perhaps I know your parents.” She told us her name. Kind of half jokingly, Derek said, “Well, hey, you don’t happen to know ______?” Her eyes got large, and she asked us a few questions to clarify that we were indeed talking about the same woman. Turns out….. the mother in the family who has been renting our home in Okotoks while we were on this trip had been married to this woman’s cousin….small, small, huge world we live in!
We drove north along the Bruce Peninsula.
We took the ferry from Tobermory across to Manitoulin Island.
We headed west along the north shore of Lake Huron, and then the north shore of Lake Superior.
