Canada and Niagara Falls

As usual we try to travel East to West as longer days/nights seem to make jet lag easier to accommodate rather than flipping through short days and nights. Of course that is just an excuse for staying over with cousin Pamela at her beautiful house on Otty Lake, Perth Ontario. In summer and early autumn the colours and temperature (25°C) are as good as it gets. It is so peaceful….

Robin’s absence was felt throughout our visit as this glorious shot supports. I cannot imagine tea being in the offing at sunset if he was around!

Suprisingly Helen could not recall previously visiting Perth’s Stewart park. (I may have done so on my own.) This occassion was memorable as it was the day the Queen died (8^th Sept) and a small group were quick off the mark playing “God save the Queen King" in the nearby bandstand. Result; an unforgettable walk. 

We have previously seen many of the sights in Canada and hence the focus this time was on catching up with friends and relatives. Pam had arranged a busy social schedule including catching up with her sons (Ray and Neil) and long term friends Julia, George and Nicol. In short a brilliant schedule.

We also had arranged for a very special visit. Many of you would know I have a risk management consultancy. What you may not know is that I have a developer (with a team) who comes from Ukraine. I have known Roman for 10 years but the closest we have got is Skype. We did have a visit to Kyiv planned in 2000 but Covid got in the way. 

He and his family (Anna, Gene and the youngest Dan) were holidaying in USA when the war broke out. They sensibly decided not to return and now have refugee status. As they could not get to Canada we met half way at Niagara Falls. We had not seen the falls from the USA side and it was great to have such a spectacular spot to catch up.

The anticipation increased once capes were donned for our Maid of the Mist adventure.

There are two sections of falls. The first is accessible from the top on the USA side. Indeed, you can stand on an island in the middle of these “American falls”.

Both are seen in this shot. The furthest is aptly named Horseshoe falls.

The boat goes to the centre of this and sits. It is a very wet affair, so I have one shot taken before we got into the midst as in our previous visit water ingress sounded the death knell of my previous camera. (See the September 2014 blog.)

As we got closer all you could see was the rim all around and spray down to the deck. It was disarmingly calm in the middle but as soon as we moved the water generated wind picked up and made sure we all got a good soaking.

Again, we were lucky to have a warm day to dry out and after a quick visit to the observation tower, we walked to the island and stood in the centre of the American falls. You can just about make out a constant rainbow. If you look closely at the middle “tooth” you will see a gull nonchalantly standing a metre from the edge looking to catch a small fish or two. For some reason he was all alone….

And that largely completed our 2022 trip albeit some trauma thanks to Air Canada cancelling the first leg of our return flight. It was just great to get to travel again after Covid. It was a wonderful trip and as I sit here writing this in the LA Polaris lounge (which is the best lounge we have ever experienced) I keep flipping to searching for ideas for next years RWC adventure. I am already looking forward to that story.