Last weekend was Family Day weekend in Ontario (and in some other provinces), so we headed down to the Toronto Islands. Anyone in Toronto will know that it was very cold last weekend with temperatures reaching as low as -40 with windchill on Sunday!! We went on Saturday, as despite not being forecast to be as sunny as Sunday or Monday, it was due to be a bit … Continue reading Braving the cold at the frozen Toronto Islands
Pancake Day is definitely one of my favourite days, second only to Easter Sunday (no prizes for guessing who wrote this post). Pancakes are very popular over here and eating them with maple syrup was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing whilst in Canada. When I was younger, we went to Jasper on a family holiday and I remember eating … Continue reading Happy Pancake Day
Sung to the tune of Barcelona by D Kay & Epsilon which you can listen to whilst reading this post here. Casa Loma can be found a short 10 minute walk from our new home in Toronto, making it our closest major tourist attraction. Since being here we have visited twice, once for the Christmas tree display back in December and again this week for a special … Continue reading Sometimes I feel like I’m in Casa Loma
A trip to High Park was recommended to me by one of my former colleagues, who just so happens to be from Toronto. Ideally we wanted to visit on a nice sunny day so we could take some good pictures. The weather of course had other ideas but we decided to go anyway, after all, it’s not like we can’t go again. High Park is a … Continue reading Walking on a frozen lake in High Park
This post is only for you if you are a) new to Toronto or a visitor and need to know how to get around b) a transport geek c) a procrastinator who will read anything to avoid doing their work So read on if you want to know more about public transport fares, transfers and getting to and from Toronto Pearson airport! Public transport, or transit … Continue reading Our guide to getting around Toronto on the TTC
There is A LOT of sport in Toronto. It is home to Canada’s only basketball team in the NBA, the Toronto Raptors; Canada’s only team in Major League Baseball, the Toronto Blue Jays; the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team of the NHL; and one of Canada’s three teams in Major League Soccer, Toronto FC. There is also the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football … Continue reading Let’s go Raptors! Checking out basketball in Toronto
One of the next things we did after getting our new home was to get ourselves a Canadian driver’s licence. The amount of time you can drive on a UK licence in Canada depends on the province. In Ontario you only have 60 days, but in BC for example it’s 90 days. Fortunately for us the UK has an exchange agreement with Ontario, which as … Continue reading Getting an Ontario Driver’s Licence
Now that the fun of our travelling was over, we were back in Toronto and it was time to find somewhere to live before the ‘fun’ of working started! Rather than having a useful website like Rightmove, that allows you to easily search for properties and view photos, here you have to use Kijiji and Craigslist, which are more popular variants of the Gumtree style … Continue reading Finding accommodation in Toronto
After staying in a not so nice motel on the way to Ottawa we decided we would rather stay somewhere a bit better on the way back. We also wanted somewhere that was closer to Toronto since we had to drop the car off by lunchtime the next day. This led us to Belleville – the birthplace of Avril Lavigne! We stayed in the Place … Continue reading Our first real snow!
Stewart challenged me to write about Montreal without mentioning the cold. I can’t. It was bloody freezing! Its not like it was the coldest weather we’d had so far, it hit zero at the top of Mount Revelstoke where we saw our first snow, and we had woken up to frost on our car in Banff, but this was different. We couldn’t escape it by going … Continue reading A day in Montreal
Brown Bear Travels 