Gnats, a fort and a great dinner: Toronto Day 10 (2 May 2014)

We’ve been waiting for an opportunity to visit Fort York, the historic site we can see from the window of our airbnb place on Fort York Boulevard. With time running out, and the day at least not raining, this seemed to be the day.

But first, you wouldn’t think that a day’s temperature in double figures – like say 14°C – would constitute warm but apparently the gnats think so because the first thing we noticed as we headed out to the fort were swarms of little black flying things. It was hard to stop them flying into our mouths! The fort staff told us that they appear as soon at it turns warm! Hmm, these Canadian gnats have a funny idea of warm we thought.

Fort York National Historic Site

Fort York was initially built by the British in 1793 at the entrance to the harbour/bay  when they thought a war with the United States was likely. As it turned out, war didn’t eventuate then, and so the fort  was left … But the town of York developed a couple of kilometres away grew. However, in 1812-13 the US did attack and defeated the British in the famous Battle of York. The Americans occupied the region for sometime, but they left and the British returned. Next time the US attacked, in 1814, the British won, and retained what was then called Upper Canada. This fort and the nearby town are now known as the birthplace of modern Toronto. It was fascinating to think that all this was happening while the Napoleonic Wars – the Battle of Trafalgar etc – were happening in Europe.

Historically, then, the Fort served as the city’s main harbour defence from the 1790s to the 1880s, and was the home of a military garrison until the 1930s. It is now known as the place containing Canada’s largest collection of original War of 1812 buildings.

We should explain that Toronto was part of Upper Canada, while the area to its northeast which includes Kingston was Lower Canada. Weird we thought, when looking at the map, until we discovered that the designation relates to the reaches of the river – Toronto is further upstream than Kingston.

Sue is always interested in the naming of things, and we were told at the Fort that when the French established their base here in the 1750s they called it Fort Rouillé or Toronto/Taronto, which was apparently a local indigenous name. When Simcoe and the English came they of course wanted to assert English names over French and indigenous and so it became York and Fort York. The politics of names, eh? (We in Australia are very familiar with this as we continue to revert, appropriately, many of our landscape names to their original, significant indigenous names.) Anyhow, the city’s name was reverted to Toronto when it was incorporated in 1834.

Something else that became clear in our exploration of the fort, through the maps showing its location and development, is how much the shoreline has changed since the 1790s due to infill by humans. Our apartment in fact is on infill. We can understand infill in tiny places like Hong Kong but were rather surprised that such a big spacious country as Canada needs to infill – though we suppose much of their land is pretty inhospitable!

Anyhow, it was good to learn in a coherent manner something about the history of Toronto and this part of Canada. 

Liberty Village and the rest of the afternoon

By the time we finished our tour the weather had set in a little. There was dampness and a definite chill in the air so we hightailed it to nearby Liberty Village, which we had visited last week, to lunch at a place we had spied then, 25 Liberty. It’s a lovely place in one of the villages old brick buildings. They do an interesting lunch menu, the service was excellent and the ambience just right. Stylish, but welcoming and comfortable. Sue couldn’t believe they had ice-cream made from buffalo milk. What a treat to be able to try something so unusual for CAD10!

We then did some shopping – including picking up an Australian wine (a Leconfield chardonnay) to take to dinner than night at the Liberty Village LCBO (or government controlled liquor outlet).

After a brief rest back home we set of to pick up our hire car. While it was technically only 15 mins away at the Billy Bishop Airport, it took us 90 minutes because getting to the airport involves a ferry and we just missed one. It being Friday afternoon, the ferry was busy with slower turnarounds so it all took much longer than we expected but we made it in time to get back for a quick refresh before heading out to pick up Hannah, as that evening we were …

Dining with Emmy and Adel in Mississauga

With our trusty GPS we made it to Mississauga, 30-mins drive away, with relative ease, and were welcomed once again by a very warm Emmy and Adel. A year ago, they down-sized to a 10th-floor condo with stunning views of the Mississauga area.

We had a delightful evening, which started for the girls with a tour of the apartment (including Emmy’s books, of course) and a very tasty pomegranate martini. Emmy then served an Egyptian feast, Egyptian style, meaning that all the food is laid out on the table for guests to eat what and how much they will. A dangerous thing, because guests confronted with delicious food will eat more perhaps than they ought. But, how often do you get traditional food cooked by experts in the cuisine? Even with our over-eating, there was food to spare, so Hannah was sent home with a doggy bag that will feed her for a couple more meals!

We arrived at 7pm and didn’t leave until well after 11.30pm, so relaxing it was. We talked about local sights, our children of course (even though one was present!), travel and the challenges of emigration, food and books. Emmy and Adel are wonderful hosts, and we were sorry to say goodnight but, you know the saying, all good things …

And today’s slideshow …

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