Friday 9 March – Boston to Toronto

The firm and the managers on the jobs I’m currently on were good enough to give me the day off, which in hindsight was really much appreciated as I wouldn’t have been able to fit Toronto and Niagara into the same weekend. Allison Egbert in particular was very accommodating, which I’m sure I’ll appreciate for many years to come given either of these two places would have remained on my life’s sightseeing to-do list, and normally they are so far away from Australia.

Despite it being March, we’ve had some freezing days during the week. Spring doesn’t officially start until March 21 – actually, all seasons begin 21 days after the start of the Australian seasons, and, obviously, are in a different timeline. And when you cop freezing days like these, you can understand why. Fair to say the brass monkey is a gelding by now.

US-based airlines use smaller planes for domestic flights than the Australian airlines. However, they do fly more regularly, and to a much greater number of destinations. Given the low number of flight accidents, I think this means that their safety record is pretty much as good as it can get. The flight I was on to Toronto with Air Canada was only approximately 33% full. They didn’t miss me with the price though – as I wasn’t sure when I could fly to Toronto, I booked early in the past week, thus the cheapest flight I could get for the (only) 1 hour 45 min flight was $420 AUD.

The flight made for some great sightseeing – almost worth the exorbitant price alone. The states of Massachusetts and New York, and two of the Great Lakes in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario are still either frozen or under a blanket of snow, so the white world was just enthralling all the way.

Libe arrived later than me, although she was able to get on an earlier flight than she’d booked, which is actually very easy to do over here it seems. All we’ve had to do is to march up to the counter, either at the check-in or at the gate, and ask if they can change our planes. For her to get into Toronto early in the evening was a great result.

We stayed with Kevie Albrecht, who did a secondment to Australia in August to October 2006 and I got to know really well. You’d go a long way to find a better bloke than Kevie (to be exact, we went 16,318.44 km – as the crow flies – from Geelong to Toronto to catch up with him, but it was certainly worth it). One of the few regrets I’ve got on this trip – apart from not having been betting 5 credits per line when the big free spins came up down in Atlantic City – was not taking a photo with Kevie with us at some point during the weekend. I’ve still got some photos of him when he came to our bad taste house party a few months ago back at 72 Canterbury, however Kevie was that tanned then (after travelling the east coast of Oz) he almost looks like a different person.

Once I’d got to Canada, I headed straight for the Smith Nixon office (PP and Vitale’s Baker Tilly network affiliate in Toronto) to catch up with Kevie. Also caught up with Blair Zaritsky, an ex-PP secondee, who myself and Sammy J (Whatmore) happened to see Jet with at Festival Hall a couple of years ago. Good to catch up with good people like him... even better than he remembered me immediately. Blair’s a manager at SN and seems to be going good for himself. Even if he has to share a manager’s office with another manager, which might seem a little odd, although the offices are an OK size.

After a quick tour of the inner Toronto CBD, I headed off for a little wandering. Took a tour of the Rogers Centre, formerly known as the Skydome, home to a Geelong Footy Club exhibition match many years ago – I haven’t clarified this with Pa, but I think it was against Melbourne in 1989. Having been to the Skydome now, I’d love to know / see if there’s any footage of the game... would certainly be interesting to see. The Skydome is home to the Toronto Blue Jays (Major League Baseball), the Toronto Argonauts (Canadian Football), and numerous other events such as concerts, public gatherings etc. It has an amazing retractable roof, which separates into 4 pieces and are mechanically stacked on top of each other at one end of the stadium when those at the top want the sun shining on the field. It has a full Astroturf (synthetic) turf, which I’m pretty sure existed when the Cats played there. It has a hotel in the arena – a large number of the rooms of this hotel have windows which look directly onto the playing surface. It also has a Hard Rock Cafe and three other restaurants / bars looking directly onto it. Fair to say, it is quite a remarkable stadium.

Kevie might have the most comfortable couches in I’ve seen. Although the effort of me & Libe of pushing the beds together might have seemed a little odd, we both had a cracking nights sleep. Must keep in mind for any future visitors Kevie...

Madison Pub is on the same street as Kevie, and might be the best pub I’ve been to, and that does include the Sir Charles Hotham Hotel too. Although we got there late, with only 30 minutes to go, they had one of the most original ideas I’ve seen. ‘The Maddy’ appears to be two rather large houses joined together , with most of their rooms maintained in terms of structure. One of the bars – it has a number of different ones – has a solo piano player playing covers. Tonight’s bloke played a version of With or Without You that brought the house down. Would love to see a place like this in Melbourne, but I certainly haven’t found one yet.