Canada Day, London-style

The weather here has been lovely for the last two weeks...oops, better not say that too loud or it may change on me. We've had mostly sunny days, mid-to-high twenties. Hard to believe we changed the calendar to July this week. I've been here in England over ten months now...a lot has happened in that time, though it's felt like it has gone quickly.

On Thursday evening, I came home from school, dropped my teaching junk in my room, and headed into Central London for the Canada Day festivities in Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately in my hurry, I neglected to take my cell phone or camera with me. Knowing how busy Trafalgar Square can be when there's an event on, I wondered if I would find David whom I had arranged to meet there.

Anyway, I got there and found a mass of Canadians (plus a few wannabe Canadians) decked out in red-and-white, some Blue Jays or Team Canada jerseys around. Tim Hortons was there, the first Timmy's I've seen in ten months--there was a line about three miles long, and a sign saying, "Sorry, no more iced capps", and there were booths selling curly fries (also foreign to Britain), Sleeman's beer, and bison burgers. Bombardier was there, showing off some new train carriages they're building for Transport for London, the governmental body that operates public transportation here. I walked around for a bit without finding David, and then ran into one of my Nipissing friends (Erin) who was there. I chatted with her and the friends she was with for a bit, and then took another walk around. I did find David then, and we walked around together. He was interested in trying some Canadian food. We settled on curly fries and waited in another long line for that, only to find when we got to the front that they were charging 5 pounds for a medium-sized basket of fries. We decided that was a major rip-off and walked away...the bison burgers, which were quite good-sized, were also selling for 5 pounds, though as a vegetarian David wasn't interested in that. We headed back to the Timmy's tent and stood in the line, which did move pretty quickly. David was quite favourably impressed with their coffee and the Boston cream donut he had. He also entered a draw for a free flight to Canada with a UK operator that leads tours across Canada.

We also ran into Wayne and Lois, some other Wood Green friends, just back from a two week anniversary-trip to Scandinavia. Lois had seen my Facebook post that morning and decided to check it out. They had a band shell set up with various individuals and groups performing and she wanted to hear "The Canadian Tenors," a group I wasn't familiar with. We stayed until a bit after 9 and heard most of Sarah Harmer's act, the only performer whom I was familiar with.

There was certainly lots of patriotism in Trafalgar Square on Thursday night. One of the performers asked people to identify which sports teams they supported, from which I surmised that most of the people in attendance were likely Ontarians, given the Senators and Leafs fans. Not too surprising...the vast majority of Cdn teachers I know are from Ontario as well. One of the teachers I talked to commented that her thought was, "Timmy's! I've gotta go there...and then after she had been, she thought, "Oh yeah...their donuts really aren't all that special..." Lots of homesick Canadians were looking for a little piece of home in London on July 1.

In any case, it was fun to be there and celebrate my country's birthday--in spite of my misgivings about the terrible things that happened in Toronto last weekend. Methinks Harper, McGuinty, and the Toronto Chief of Police have a lot of explaining and apologizing to do.