You define the verb hang-glide - Eddie Izzard

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  Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Friday, September 14, 2007

Fields in Canada are very small, not to mention precisely square with a white farm house every 4 fields or so. It's quite striking after England's random large fields that curve and swoop to fit amongst the country lanes. That, and the fact that there are a LOT of trees were my first observations of this fair country. Cloud cover soon obscured the view and when the plane began to glide into Toronto Airport, we came through the cloud to the sort of greyness that you usually only get when descending into Manchester after a blissful two weeks somewhere bright and sunny.

Hmm.

Fortunately it was because it was dusk - I hadn't really flown thousands of miles to arrive at a point about 200 miles North of where I started. We marched through customs at a rate of knots, briefly having seemingly random questions barked at us: "Why are you here?" Why not - it seemed as good a place as any "Where have you come from?" You know where - we've all just got off the same flight

Canadiana Backpackers

. Weirdly this was after being greeted with "Hi, how are you today?" in the chirpiest voice imaginable.

My form was marked with a bright pink cross which signified I was to join the queue in a room that looked very much like a tourist information with huge posters of various tourist attractions in Canada everywhere. This was actually immigration and I joined the queue along with what seemed like most of Ireland and several universities full of students. A few yards in front of me a small child starting wailing and I winced (hopefully not audibly - don't like to offend anyone...) and settled in for a painful hour. Amazingly - an official looking person immediately reached in and guided the wailing child (and it's family...) to the front of the queue. That is genius. The whole queue breathed a sigh of relief (and furtively looked around for a child to borrow - it's excellent that families don't have to wait with unhappy children, but I'd had no dinner...).

The man at the desk, who I reached a lot speedier than I thought, was a kindly gentleman who was very excited about me going on the trans-Canadian railway. Apparently this is about the equivalent of going on the Titanic (before it sank before anyone says it) in glam holiday stakes. He printed out a very official looking piece of paper with government seals on and stapled it into my passport and sent me on my way - I was now allowed to work in Canada.

I immediately got lost, but eventually found my way to the coach for downtown Toronto and jumped on - exceedingly grateful for the chicken sandwich I'd saved from the flight earlier. We wend (wended? Hmmm you define the verb 'wend') our weary way into Toronto, which looked exactly like Canary Wharf in the dark with blocks of lights soaring up

Hard Rock Toronto

.

As I was staying at pleb central and not a REAL hotel - I had to walk from Holiday Inn along with an Australian who'd been in Vancouver and was also going to the Hostel from the coach - we looked at each other in a "Where the smeg are we?" kind of way but fortunately, due to my ace map reading skills I got us to the hostel straight away - ahh - being chief map reader on caching outings did have it's uses...

After lugging my bag up 3 flights of stairs, muttering under my breath all the way - I made a good decision to post more clothes to myself in Halifax as soon as I found a Post Office. Through the wonder of Facebook and geocaching I'd already made friends with Megan in Halifax and posted work clothes to her. The thought of carrying my bag another step was not pleasant and I had several hundred more miles to go before I could stop living out of a suitcase.

I was surprised to find a guy reading a book on one of the beds in my female only dorm (I say dorm - but only had one set of bunks and a double) - but I smiled hello and fixed him with a Paddington Bear stare which meant 'I have been awake for 4 days. If you snore - I will kill you with the power of my mind" which he seemed to take in without noticing.  I clearly scared him as the room was a snore free zone - yippee! I know this as I lay awake the whole night waiting for it to get light so I could go and explore.

The next morning I bounced out of bed - and the memories of standing on bunk bed ladders to make beds in housekeeping at Alton Towers rushed back to me. Why are the ladders so uncomfortable? They're unbearable to even climb down in 2 seconds.

I had to attend the orientation at the SWAP offices on my first morning so I dutifully turned up and sat around abusing the free internet until everyone had arrived. SWAP by the way is the Canadian equivalent of BUNAC and they will be looking after us while we are in Canada - helping us write our CVs (or rather - resumes), get bank accounts and phones, fast-tracking our Social Security Numbers, receiving and forwarding mail, pointing us in the right directions for jobs/houses and generally holding our hands.

There were about 25 of us and everyone else, with the exception of one South African were Irish. We followed Libby, the SWAP person, to a conference room above a bank (the more cynical among us murmured that clearly TD Bank were going to be the one recommended to us...), where she proceed to give us all the information we'd need. At one point, when we'd filled out the forms for our SSN, we had to hand over our passports to a guy who was fast-tracking them for us and you could feel the alarm in the room as we all had to give up our security blankets.

At the end we shown the exit which was right next to the enquiries desk with a few people handily placed to help should we wish to open an account... I obliged just to keep them happy. As I sat with the clerk, it occurred to me just how hard it is to do the most mundane things in another country. We spent several minutes trying to establish what I meant by 'what's the equivalent of Switch?'. I also discovered that you get charged here for the things we take for granted as free back at home. I have to pay a fee every month for having a bank account and am only allowed 25 transactions a month before I have to pay a fee each time. 25 is being generous - normally it's about 10! Imagine how many times you use switch or take cash out in a week - let alone a month. Unfortunately I didn't realise using the debit card was also a transaction until 3 days later. Oh dear...

I also get charged for incoming calls on my Canadian mobile - what's that about? On the bright side though - the service provider is called Fido and the boxes and carrier bags have  dogs on. Mine, coincidently had a white Westie on. So there you go Mum - Harry's over here too...

Eventually - after signing my life and most of my money away to random companies I wandered off for lunch. On the way I ran into a girl from the orientation that morning. It was pleasantly warming to meet someone I actually knew in the street - makes you feel like you belong. I walked past Sears and got mildly giddy. It's off the telly!! I poked my head in but there was no sign of Ty Pennington and the gang. Rats. No celeb spotting for me today then. I managed to find Hard Rock Cafe so sidled in and was served by a guy with the bluest eyes and the whitest teeth. It's a hard life. I was so charmed I even bought the obligatory souvenir (winging it's way over to you Gill).

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