El banco

Ok, the banks in England have certainly had their setbacks. The crash was bad, bankers were allowed to do stupid things so they could become rich (or richer). All that is true and there is no defense. Canadian banks were praised for their rules and general noncrashability. In general, the Canadian system is set up in a very similar way to the British system - a few large national banks rule the industry. When the Canadian system held up in 2008 and on, I was proud.

But today, and really everyday, I have a beef to pick with Canadian banks. Several beefs in fact. Maybe a cows worth.  Lots of Canadians probably don't know that British banks operate like this but

• there are no monthly fees no matter how much money is in your chequing account
• you can easily transfer money from one bank account to another online and for free
• if you use an atm that belongs to another bank it's free

My top three beefs with Canadian banks are:

• monthly fees of circa $8 - for just having an account
• the easiest way to transfer money is by setting up an email transfer ($1 fee)
• atm's that aren't your banks cost you around $2.50 from that bank, and probably another $2 from yours, every time.

I'm not a person with lots of various investments going on. For me, my bank account is simply the keeper of my money. Where I can retrieve money, and send money as need be. So the fact that my Canadian bank account charges me for every single of the three things I do with it - have an account, draw money, send money - drives me mad. Mostly because I know it doesn't have to be like this. Let's face it, RBS didn't need to be bailed out because they were letting the average Joe people get cash from a Barclays machine for free, they had to get bailed out because of bad policies and greedy insanely rich people.

I think that banks in England might have such good customer product policies for the layman bank user because of Nationwide Building Society - an institution run by the people who bank with them. The only downside to Nationwide is you can't become a member unless you've lived in the UK for over three years. Joyously however, Barclays doesn't charge me to use Nationwide atms.

The Local - Toronto styles

(photo torontopubs.wordpress.com)

Because my last post was about London locals, and I happened to skip into a lovely little pub in Roncesvalles last night called The Local, I had to share with you that proper locals - chilled out, lots of character, friendly bartenders, not fancy just people sitting around drinking a pint - are available in Toronto. It's just that the crucial element of the local is actually being a hop skip away from where you live.
For my Roncey matey, this is true (and The Local really is lovely, read this review http://torontopubs.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/the-local/ to get some more info). But for me, my nearest watering hole is 1km away (there are a few options at that distance), and that's just too far for a local in my opinion. In comparison, the 3 flats I lived in in London had great locals at 88 metres, 65 metres, and 102 metres.  It's not because I live in the sticks or in some bizarro industrial area. For confirmation, within a hundred metres of my flat in Toronto there's a corner store, 2 coffee places, a bank, 4 restaurants, 2 yoga centres and a smattering of shops. There are 3 groceries stores within 2 blocks of me. And yet no local pub. It's just a different kind of life here. If you happen to live close to a local pub and you're in TO, consider yourself lucky. If you aren't, check out The Local in Roncesvalles and their amazing Freddie Mercury portrait. 

The local

The Faltering Fullback in Finsbury Park - my local for 3 years and probably the best pub in the world. Hands down. 

(photo from fancyapint.com)

The local must not be underestimated in London. Friendships are kept in a local. Friendships are made in a local. Pints are drunk. Whole rainy afternoons are spent idly sipping cider to nurse a hangover from the previous evening out on the town. The local and everyone's locals are what I miss most about London. It's the social glue of the entire British culture. It's not for drunks and vagabonds (though of course they'll be there too), but for the everyday folk to spend time with friends or a good newspaper (ideally the Sunday's Guardian) unwinding.

When I first moved to London I had the impression that most Brits were drunks. This was the result of three incidences that happened within the first month of arriving in London. The first two were at pubs in Finsbury Park.

The first:

(photo from fancyapint.com)

The T-Bird. A middle aged gentleman breaks his face open by falling forward on the wooden table in front of him from a standing position (ie passed out). Blood everywhere. The guy staggers up (smashing your face will wake you up) and starts dancing. Good reggae will get anyone dancing I suppose.

The second:

(photo from fluidnetwork.co.uk)

The Worlds End. A 40ish year old man in a nice suit and shiny black shoes is passed out in a drunken stupor outside the door of the pub. It's 700pm. It's a Wednesday. I'm getting home from work. His friends come outside and laughingly try to help him get up. Because that's what friends are for.

The third:

The Devil's Juice - Snakebite

(photo thomaspatterson.co.uk)

The central line, westbound. After experiencing my first taste of Snakebite - typically reserved for university students, courtesy of my amazing hockey team's first team night out, I arrived at Sheppard's Bush attempting to go to Finsbury Park from Loughton. Of course non Londoners have no idea what I mean, so in Toronto that's like leaving from Ajax to go to Bloor and Spadina and finding yourself in Oakville.  It was my first week and I had no idea where I was or really where I was going. Thanks Snakey B! Luckily my taxi driver could speak Spanish. 

These three incidences would I think, clearly lead anyone to think that Brits are drunks, but these still stand out as rare occurrences that just happened to all be some of my first pub experiences.  After that, I found out that visiting a good local was great for friends mingling and hanging out. I think if you work at a place with lots of young people in London you will easily make new friends because of this common and celebrated part of life. And that's what I miss the most today about London. By the way, I never found myself asleep on the tube again (with the obvious exception of every single weekday morning on the commute to work. those local pubs will tire you out!). 

9 to 5 in the 416

The last few months I've been blogging while jobless, which has been both liberating (especially in terms of having time to blog) and constricting (in not being able to take advantage of the free time because of a lack in funds). It has been wonderful being able to wander around the streets of Toronto, seeing what the city has to offer, but now it's time to get back to reality.

And in this way, I think my comparison between London and Toronto will be much more accurate now because my lifestyle will return to a working in the day routine. This also probably means my blogs will be less frequent but heyho, whatchagonnado?

So far, taking away the actual type of work I'm doing and the type of organization I'm working for, the most noticable difference is the commute - though I'm using the subway, and the length of commute is almost the same (10 min less in Toronto), the sheer volume of people in London is so staggering that it feels very different. People think they're on top of each other in the subway here. They aren't.

In other news, I went to see a hilarious show last night called 'Pomme is French for Apple', which is essentially a children-of-Caribbean-parents-in-Toronto-style-Vagina-Monologuesque comedy. I was pretty much rolling on the floor laughing through the hour and a half show put on by two very funny women. (Also the intro skit was mad funny, and definitely worth finding out who those two women are).

It's on for the next few days, so if you are in Toronto and want to cry with laughter for a few hours for $20, I would definitely recommend it to everyone (including men) who has a sense of humour and doesn't mind their mind being pulled through the gutter for a little while. Caribbean people or people who've been around lots of Caribbean people will find it especially funny. The venue is also a really cool place, and served very tasty rum punch.

Check out a teaser here:

Cottaging

Experiencing Canada's wilderness is beautiful year round. Exhibit A:

frozen pond alongside Georgian Bay

Toronto style cottaging is quite different to the UK. ahem. In the UK, I had only heard of one friend with a holiday dwelling (a cottage, a chalet, a beach house, a cabin, a lodge, etc), and it had been in their family for generations - read uber rich. In Toronto, though people with cottages are wealthy, cottage lifestyle doesn't necessarily have the grand feeling of a summer house in Scotland. With the exception of many Muskoka area 'cottages'.

The sunsets and the stars, the trees and the water, it's all quite beautiful.

view from the back deck

shoveling required so tires don't spin in driveway

walking down to the shore

partly frozen body of water

starting to feel the -20 celcius

Ice fishing over a frozen inlet

But it is certainly beautiful and a lot of fun to be able to get out of the city, gaze at the stars, walk along the coast, get in a canoe, and be transported to a time before the internet. I had never been to cottage country in the winter and it certainly is a different experience. The wind on the sea was ferocious, and night campfires don't last as long when your toes are frozen. I missed the quincy building experience (small packed snow huts that you dig out and sleep in) this time around but once may have been enough for me on that front.  I did get to see ice fishing, walk on ice ponds and witness the varied ice sheets forming on the lake, some pics of that below (all these ice formations are within 1km). So in all, an excellent cottage experience as always.

my footprints along ice 

winter's lilypads?

the dog likes her chances

big sheets creak as the clouds roll in

Le centre du science

Today I beheld an exhibit at the Science Center on the inventions of the most clever man who ever lived - Leonardo Da Vinci. I have loved Da Vinci since I was a little kid, mostly because of his amazing ability to combine science and art. He is truly THE Renaissance Man - beautifully artistic and wonderously creative. The exhibit was about bringing his inventions to life through wooden models.

His notebook of ideas was used to create the mechanic designs - from human mechanics, to war machines, to flight to music. The exhibit itself had amazing interactive displays and showed the nature of the master's mind. 

Above is a pic of one of his flying machines - that he imagined would 'screw' into the air. Below on the left is an organ slash harpsichord instrument that would be belted onto the musician and locked onto their left foot to power it while walking. On the right is a giant lion replica that would walk and play a little drum set near the lion's vocal chords while flower petals would come out of the lion's opening mouth.

In all, the exhibit was really well done, definitely worth a visit before it closes in March. As my dad and I discussed, no matter how much you know about this guy, there is always much more to learn. For example, did you know that Da Vinci wrote backwards and from right to left (so his words are only really legible in a mirror) not because he was secretive but because he was left handed and didn't want the ink to smudge? Ha! Genius. 

All the pretty houses

What neighbourhoods look like really gives you an impression of the vibe of a city, so I thought I would show you some houses from around my neighbourhood. I chose houses that I think are beautiful and characteristic of this area of Toronto. For those in the know, these pics are in Little Italy and just West of the Annex.  My favourite houses are the very long, skinny, tall brick ones, a la this first pic on the left.

The falls

I had never been to Niagara Falls in the winter before today. It is quite a different experience than the summer. Mostly because the mist is very cold, not the pleasant refresher it can be in the summer, but also because there aren't a million people everywhere.

I would say that the English geological wonder equivalent to Niagara Falls is Stone Henge, but unfortunately I never made the trek to Stone Henge (though I did travel all through England from Cornwall to Manchester to Leeds, as well as Wales Scotland and both Northern Ireland and Ireland), so I can't say officially. 

Niagara Falls is two things. The falls themselves are awe inspiring - very beautiful and very very powerful. An enormous amount of water gushes between 2 of the Great Lakes. The town of Niagara Falls is a terrifyingly Americanized tourist trap. Chain restaurants abound and a high level of cheesiness is everywhere. But the falls are certainly worth the hour and a half drive from Toronto. I think they might have been considered one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, but I'm not really sure who made up that list to begin with. Alexander the Great maybe? He definitely wasn't at Niagara Falls. Hmm. A few tasty snaps from today:

  

The near rainbow on the near empty viewpoint

   

The Canadian falls in all their misty glory

 

We found the end of the rainbow. No gold. 

blazing heat

Ok, the title may be an exaggeration but it's February 1st and it's 8 degrees in Toronto.  The stream these ducks are wading in is generally frozen by now. The end of Jan, beginning of Feb is typically the most feared time for Canadians and it is truly not very cold outside. Today and yesterday it's been colder in London (it's 3 degrees today) than Toronto. Wild times. Sure it drops back down to 1 for the rest of the week, but -20 without windchill wouldn't be surprising in years past. Scary stuff is happening.

But there you have it.

For all you people who said 'don't move back to Canada, it's too cold' I say 'hmmmm, weird'.