Collingwood, Canada

Collingwood turned out to be a pleasant small town with a lot going on around it. The lovely downtown buildings date back 150 years, as it was a major port and shipbuilders. It’s recent claim to fame is that a local man, Drew Wright, came 3rd in Canadian Idol. Still on a musical theme, Collingwood hosts the Elvis Festival each July, as well as the Collingwood festival in late September. The local ‘Gayety’ Theatre also had an impressive program of local dramatics.

We stayed in a lovely townhouse on the outskirts with a garden, gas BBQ and a real log-effect gas fireplace. This was the best – the thermostat lit and adjusted the flames just perfectly, so we sat cozily at night reading in the evening chill. The house was a great design over 3 floors, all around a central staircase.

The local supermarket, Loblaw, was great. They stocked lots of things we hadn’t seen since England such as Cadbury’s chocolate, custard, curry and naan bread. They even held cookery demonstrations in their demo kitchen. Fruit and vegetables were cheaper than the US, and the cheese was very tasty. The expensive items were wine at $12-$19 for a basic imported bottle, and chicken for some reason, at around $15 kg. Yes, we are back to kilos, kilometers, liters and Celsius. It reminds us more of England than America, especially the Scottish names which abound here.

The Canada geese wake us up honking every morning. We have been out walking the local trails and driving around the scenic routes. It is primarily a winter ski resort and the backdrop is the Blue Mountain ridge, with its many ski lifts going up the escarpment, and ski runs coming down. Blue Mountain Village is great for wandering around – a typical ski resort town with shops and restaurants, plenty of outdoor seating and flowers all set against the mountain scenery. Further inland the area is mostly farmland with fields of sweet corn, cows, sheep and pigs. There are many huge decaying wooden barns and new corn silos nearby so I suppose this tells the story of agricultural progress here.

The winding roads run between firs and maples, which are just changing color, and rowans laden with bright berries. I would love to cut a vase of flowers from the undergrowth – September flowers, michaelmas daisies, bulrushes, teasels and solidago are so striking.

We are staying in Grey county – grey by name and grey by nature! When it is cold (53F) and dull, the sky and vast lake are chilly grey, as are the roads and all the houses, which are painted a murky light grey or grey/blue. There must be a law restricting color, but it makes the towns look quite depressing. But when the sun shines, (70F) it is very pretty here. There are many bleached wood fences, which seem to be a traditional craft, and everyone has well-tended gardens full of color. It is also apple country, so the smell of apples pervades as we pass the cider factory. They are all picked by hand. At nearby Meaford it was the Scarecrow Fest. Every lamppost was decorated with scarecrows, climbing, sitting and tumbling! Around every lamp base were stacks of sweet corn stems and it looked really autumnal. There were also some amazing murals depicting old street scenes in many of the towns here.

We decided to have a “waterfall warm-up tour” before Niagara Falls and set off visiting the nearby Eugenia Falls, which fell down a massive gorge. Nearby we found Hogg’s Falls, with a board showing that the falls were 1 of 7 on the “waterfall tour”. We called in several visitor centers but no one had any info or maps of this route, and many staff doubted there even were 7 falls in the area. We had to zoom in on the photograph we had taken of the route, and ascertain the locations and then set off in search of the rest. The biggest problem, apart from the lack of literature, was the absence of road names and numbers. Most roads that had signs were uninspiring named “8th Concession Road” or “Grey Road #2” so no poetic license there, and there were several roads with the same number going in totally different directions.. We tootled along over the next days and visited McGowan Falls, which was a huge dam and weir. A canoe had gone over at some stage and was now caught in the fast-moving falls. Next was Walters Falls, named after the miller, not the river. This was a double falls from the millpond and made a terrific noise. The Inglis Falls were even longer; the wide falls tumbling down and bouncing off steps to the river below. The most difficult to find were the Jones Falls. We finally called in an information office to ask the way and the clerk pointed to a tiny sign in the corner of the car park. It was impossible to see from the tourism office, never mind from the road, but it was well worth the walk. Finally the Indian Falls were a triple Falls in one cascade reached by traipsing half a mile up a seasonally dry riverbed over rocks and tree roots! My next literary offering will have to be a route guide to these lovely waterfalls, if only they could put up some signposts!

One other delight was a walk along the river at Thornbury. Again a huge dam and weir had been created, but the annual migration of salmon and trout from the Lake to the freshwater breeding grounds were suffering, so a “ladder” had been created for them. It was a narrow offshoot of water, which ran down the side of the dam in steps and zigzagged back and forth. We stood on the bridge and saw several fish attempting this massive challenge. Each step they leapt exhausted them, and sometimes the two foot long fish slipped back several steps and had to leap again. It was quite amazing that they even find the tributary, never mind jump so many steps up the 20 feet necessary to reach the river again.