John A Macdonald

Parc Ave

I picked up Darryl and we ended up going to Mamma's. A restaurant known for being open into the wee hours of the morning that sells poutine with smoked meat. While it wasn't really that early in the morning we still enjoyed having a large breakfast.




Poutine with smoked meat and a BLT!!!


This is probably one of the best poutines I've had all week.


A car parked in front of a shopper's drug mart.

While driving back home I pulled over in front of a cemetery. It was to free up my driving hands to program the car GPS (aka FRAN - Find Restaurants And Navigate) to find the nearest Tim Horton's. I was getting tired and wanted something to drink.

Looking out the side window I realized that it was autumn and the colors were amazing. Definitely some nice photographic opportunities. Since Darryl couldn't drive he was subjected to my discretion. I drove into the cemetery.

We weren't in there for more than five minutes when Darryl noticed a tiny sign that read burial site of John A. Macdonald. He was Canada's first prime minister.





We continued to drive around with not much success in finding the site. Had this been the burial grounds of George Washington we would have expected a large statue or something.



My hopes of finding the site increased when we saw a Canadian flag in the distance. I drove the car, parked, got out with my camera only to find it was just a war memorial. D'oh.


The tiny sign

It took us a total of forty minutes to find it. I had stopped the car at another Canadian flag couldn't see the site and was about to give up when Darryl saw another tiny sign. It was too good to be true.

I got out of the car to find the site hidden behind a bush. After walking around taking a bunch of photos I got back into the car and bookmarked the place so I could find it again. Way too much work finding this but for you just click here (N44.262143 W76.541578).

Montreal Practice

Today was pretty low key. I had woken up to drive Tush to work. Wondered around Montreal for a while then drove back to crash. The lack of sleep had caught up with me.

I woke up later to pick up Tush and drive her to practice. It was good seeing some of the Montreal skaters even if it was for just a short time. We returned to Tush's where I went back to bed.




Garbage day


















Mmmm... Montreal bagels.


...with salmon








Iron Wench playing Dodge Ball on skates.


Lyn-Dah Kicks in mid throw


Bandit gets beaned




Leaving the sport complex


Hot Dog! It's a hot dog!


...with mustard and ketchup


posing on the couch

An impromptu visit to Montreal

With a few days off of Resident Evil and Darryl needing to get stuff back from Montreal and Lynn wanting to talk about camera stuff, I decide it would be a good time to rent a car and head off to Montreal for a few days. The thought of getting some Montreal bagels made my mouth water. To be honest just the thought of eating smoked meat and poutine from La Belle Province was enough to get me into a car for a 6 hour drive.


Posing with some boat on a trailer in the background


toothbrush?


Stopping at the Timmy's.


Food at the Flying J

On Darryl's request I drove into the Flying J gas station where we refuelled both us and the car. Part of the decision to stop at the Flying J was the talk of a buffet, an all you can eat buffet. While the gas was a tad cheaper than anywhere else, I was not impressed with the food. Maybe it would have been different had we gotten there during the day when normal folk eat? The food might have been fresher. I don't know. Darryl spoke so highly of this buffet making my food expectations high. In the end the food was mediocre at best. I had corn that looked and tasted like corn that was sitting in butter for hours. It had lost that crispiness to it and had a soggy oily quality instead.

Aside from the sub par food the location of the gas station was great. Before pulling in my vision was starting to blur. It was that sleepy thing I get while driving long distances at night. When the road becomes hypnotic, the eyes start watering, eye lids getting heavy and wanting to close, squinting a lot because the teary eyes are causing everything to blur.

I was thinking I'd nap in the car a bit after eating but the combination of eating, getting something to drink and just sitting at a table, helped a lot. As a just in case measure I purchased three bottles of energy drink. I don't normally drink energy drinks, heck, I don't even drink coffee. The thing that sold me was the slogan "No crash later" and lasts for 5 hours. 5 hours? more than enough time to make it the rest of the way to Montreal.


Checking out the trunk.


The energy drink


The Skee Ball equivalent


A mini merry go round

As we continued along the highway and eventually the blurry vision started to wash over me. I was getting tired again. It was time to drink some of the energy drink. Initially there was no effect other than it bombarded my taste buds with one of the most horrific synthetic waves of gawd awful I've ever had. I was still tired, my vision blurry. I would have to look for a place to pull over. Then, about a minute later, my eye sight started to clear. More than just clear I had super vision. I could make out each LED in the truck's rear lights. The truck was three car lengths ahead.

The awful tasting bottle of awakener did it's job. I dropped off Darryl at the place where he was going to stay (and where all his stuff was), then drove over to Marc and Tush's place.


Marc, Lorianne, Cheese and Tush greet me from their couch

The stuff worked too well. I couldn't sleep for the next five hours.

Diane

The Central

Spent most of the day recovering from Fashion week. Translation: I slept through most of the day. The highlight ended up walking over to the Central, a bar near Bathurst and Bloor to see Diane and her friends.

Diane is that girl I met in Montreal. Tush picked her up at the bus station the day before I left. A few months later I would see Diane in Las Vegas at Tush's wedding. Today she was in town visiting friends from Thunder Bay and other friends that live in Toronto.

Three sightings, three cities. That sounds pretty exciting. How many other people do I know that fit into this category. Actually now that I think about it there are quite a number of people (mainly related to derby) that I bump into in the odd city. Okay, well there goes that out the window.




It's Diane



Jean Paul De Roover sings and plays multiple tracks of himself.






Parting photo, everyone else has left

Greta Constantine

This dress is made out of seat belt material

I photographed a catwalk located at the Audi Downtown Toronto dealership. It was in the basement. The main floor (where all the cars were) acting as the holding room for the attendees. Alcoholic beverages and finger food being passed around apparently. I didn't know. This is just what I heard.



I had arrived early, 5:30pm for an 8:00pm show that turned out to be an hour late. I wanted to get a good spot and didn't know where the Audi building was so I gave myself extra time to find it. I ended up arriving early. So early in fact that I managed to by pass all the people needed me to register to be there. They hadn't set up yet.

While this didn't impede me in getting a good spot (I was the first one there). It did cause a bit of panic in my fashion editor, Max. When he arrived the staff hadn't the knowledge that I showed up and was already in the basement. The basement provided poor cell phone reception so my cell phone didnt' even ring when Max tried to call me and I couldn't call out. I also didn't want to walk upstairs for fear of losing my great spot.



While everything went well on my end, I photographed the whole clothing line, Max was worried I didn't make the show at all and as a consequence no photos were being taken. It all worked out in the end. I met up with Max, to his relief, and showed him that I did indeed have photos.



The clothing collection was quite stunning and the catwalk being organized outside of the usual Toronto Fashion week impressed me. The lighting was ideal and consistent. The venue, surprisingly, made a great catwalk environment to show off the clothing. I almost felt like I was back photographing in London.


Kirk and Stephen the designers of Greta Constantine.