… that I hate these days is airports.
Or, to be more precise, what is laughingly called “airport security”.
Here at the Lester B Pearson airport in Toronto we had the usual tale of harassment and intimidation. Customer service here at these airports is absolutely appalling and of course the reason for this is simple.
Security in the past in Canada has been a pretty minor affair in a country that rarely attracts any attention from the more wilder parts of the world.
But following the events of September 2001 in the USA when it was discovered that some of the perpetrators had crossed over into the USA from Canada, the Septics have leaned heavily on the Canadians in what can only be described as an export of their national paranoia (for make no mistake – that’s what most Americans are suffering from).
With a security organisation that in the past has been negligible, it’s expanded out of all proportion, far too rapidly for its own good and it’s attracted to its ranks some of the worst elements of humanity.
So here in the Canadian Security Service we have people of the type who would have previously been of a more marginal type, the type that would be overlooked in a crowd and passed by in the street.
But now these people have all been given uniforms and badges and a small amount of power and by Jupiter are they going to show the world just how important they have become and exact a cruel revenge for all of the mistreatment that they believe that they have suffered.
And so with a car hire company that tried to stick an excess mileage charge on me despite my contract being clearly “unlimited mileage” and this new self-service check-in thing that doesn’t seem to save any time at all and the only purpose that it serves is to stress out an even more-stressed out group of passengers, I was one very unhappy and very stressed-out bunny.
It didn’t help matters much with the one-in-twenty people being singled out for the full attention, and the person in front of me was number 19.
Ahh well. You can tell that I’ve been having a bad day, can’t you?
it all started to go wrong almost as soon as I had left the Motel.
You’ll probably enjoy seeing this mock-up of a steam locomotive here, but I didn’t.
I was hoping to see a real steam locomotive, but as you have probably guessed by now without me having to tell you, the museum is closed for the season, isn’t it?
And it’s not practical for me to go clambering over fences as I have done elsewhere, seeing as we are in an urban area close to the US border.
But I can poke my camera through a gap in the fence like you do … "like SOME of you do" – ed … and photograph locomotive 6218, the pride of the museum.
She’s a 4-8-4 “Northern” type, formerly used by the Canadian National and was built in 1942 – not 1948 by the way, as so many people insist.
With having been disappointed at the Railway Museum, I had to go and find something else to do.
And that included this beautiful ephemeral view of Buffalo away across the water slowly emerging from the morning mist.
There’s nothing wrong with an early-morning start when there are views like this to be had.
The area around the River Niagara was fought over, over and over again during the War of 1812 and so it’s no surprise that there are dozens of defensive works all over the place.
When we were on the other side of the river last month we saw some of the American defences.
Today, we are going to look at some of the British defences
We can start by looking at the fort from which the town takes its name.
When Nouvelle France fell to the British at the end of the Seven years War, a series of forts was constructed along the new boundary as supply depots and in a bid to keep the native tribes under control.
Fort Erie was the first one of these to be built.
The one here today isn’t the first fort at Fort Erie. Construction of this one started in 1803
The original fort was much closer to the river but floods and winter storms damaged the fort on a regular basis.
For this reason, the fort was abandoned and the new fort was built on the present site higher up the bank.
Just a quick glance out of the fort will show you the commanding view that there is over the city of Buffalo across the river in the USA
it goes without saying that during the War of Independence and the War of 1812 this fort was going to be one of the hot spots.
During the latter conflict it changed hands on several occasions.
That obelisk there is of much more recent date however.
When the renovations started on the fort as a part of a “make-work” project during the Depression, they uncovered a mass grave of about 100 British soldiers and a few American troops.
They were all re-interred here and the obelisk was erected over the bodies
You may recall from my trip up the other side of the river last month that I ended up wandering through some kind of industrial estate.
No signposts – no nothing. I wasn’t even sure if I was heading in the right direction.
But that’s the place over there. It’s hardly surprising that I was confused as I was driving through it.
I stopped to take a few photographs of the place but it was absolutely astonishing.
Whether the wind was in the right direction I really don’t know, but the noise was absolutely deafening today.
And that’s despite the fact that we are still, according to my reckoning, a good 8 or 10 miles away from the actual falls.
But I did like my view of the city of Niagara Falls over there today.
We were heading for a beautiful day now that the mist was clearing and at that moment the sky was as blue as the river.
And with a really good zoom lens, I could take a good photo from just here and it came out really well.
I’m not going to bore you with a relentless stream of photos of the Falls because you saw them before.
What I can say is that “the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over”.
Mind you, it wasn’t me who said that first. I pinched the quote from Sir Winston Churchill, and his Closing the Ring
.
With it being early November and a weekday, there was no trouble finding a place to park.
A handy place where there was an excellent view of the Falls from the end of the street was good enough for me.
It was even free parking today too. You can’t say fairer than that, can you?
Leaving Casey behind me, I went for a walk into town and onto the bridge that connects up the Canadian side to the USA side.
Halfway along the bridge is certainly the best place to appreciate the magnificence that nature can produce znd the clouds of spray just add to the effect.
Shame about the sun, but you can’t have everything of course.
I crossed into the Great Satan (through one of the most painless USA border crossings that I have ever encountered) and went for a walk in the park.
You can see the bridge just there, and you can make out the two border posts – one at either end. The USA one is to the right, the Canada one to the left.
And you can also admire the rainbow too. I thought that it was beautiful. Not for nothing is the bridge known as the Rainbow Bridge
I nipped back into Canada, picked up Casey, nipped over into the USA to fuel up (as I was running low on fuel and it’s cheaper here)and then nipped back into Canada.
Fully refuelled, we carried on northwards along the gorge.
And it made me wonder how many millions of years it had taken for the Falls to carve out all of this?
There are two hydro-electric power plants on the river – one Canadian and one American.
You can’t see the Canadian one – the Sir Adam Beck power plant – because I’m standing on it and there’s nowhere to go on this side of the river to photograph it.
Instead, you’ll have to make do with the American one – the Robert Moses power plant.
It looks fairly new, which indeed it is. The original one that was here, dating from 1886 (and subsequently enlarged) collapsed in 1956.
But from my vantage point up here there’s a brief glimpse of the Sir Adam Beck facilities but also a really good view of the Lewiston-Queenstown bridge.
Queues of lorries up there waiting to cross from Canada into the USA. Commercial traffic is forbidden on the Rainbow Bridge so it all must come over here.
I was tempted to go for a stroll but pedestrians aren’t allowed on there. There is however some kind of shuttle-taxi service, so I was told.
The bridge itself dates from 1962 and was deliberately built as a replica of the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls.
It’s the third bridge on (or near) the site. The first bridge was destroyed in a gale in 1854 or 1864, depending on which book you read, and the second – the original “Rainbow Bridge” which was moved here, was deemed insufficient for modern traffic.
The arch is 305 metres long and it’s 113 metres above the height of the river.
Tiptoeing through the vinyards, of which there seem to be an extraordinary number around here, we can catch a glimpse of Lake Ontario in the distance.
On the right of the River Niagara is Fort NIagara, which you may remember us visiting last month.
Today though, we’re staying on the Canadian side of the river and going to visit Niagara-On-The-Lake.
In actual fact, we aren’t going to Niagara-on-the-Lake but just to the outskirts of the town, because it’s here that we are going to find Fort George.
It goes without saying that the Fort was closed to visitors at this time of the year. No prizes there!
But there were a couple of workmen doing some maintenance in there and they had left the gate open.
So Yours Truly took full advantage of that fact – no prizes there either!
And only one glance out of the defences tells you why the fort was built here.
When the British were obliged to leave Fort Niagara and retreat back across the river in 1796, the Americans took control of the fort over there.
It was out of the question that the British would concede dominance of the mouth of the Niagara River and so they built the fort here to overlook the river and to overlook the American-occupied fort.
I’d be very tempted to show you what I mean, but unfortunately the vegetation has come between us.
It would be a really nice idea if the guys from Parks Canada or whoever they are took the opportunity to do a little brush-cutting.
Built in 1802, the Fort fell to the Americans in May 1813 but was recaptured in December of that year.
At the end of the War it was neglected, but this was another national monument, like Fort Erie, that was restored during the “make-work” campaigns of the late 1930s.
Every year since 1984 a re-enactment of the battle of May 1813 has taken place here.
Next stop (I AM being a busy little beaver!) is the entrance to the Welland Canal.
Shipping on the Great Lakes is very important but the Niagara Falls forms an impenetrable barrier.
Several “narrow canals” were built to by-pass the falls but they wouldn’t be much use for ocean-going shipping. Construction of the present canal began in 1913 and was finally completed in 1935
The canal is just over 43 kilometres long, just over 8 metres deep and about 24.5 metres wide.
The rise in the canal is almost 100 metres – handled by 8 huge locks that can take shipping of 225 metres in length.
Eight locks, I said, and about 3,000 ships use the canal every year. That’s about 8 or 9 every day.
It was fully my intention to wait here as long as it took to see a ship go through a lock, even if it was, as I had been expecting, a 50-tonne coal barge, as is my usual luck.
I didn’t have to wait very long either. And when it did come, I well and truly hit the jackpot, as you can see.
One might even say that my ship really had come in, in fact.
Right on cue, steaming … "dieseling" – ed … out of the mist – because there’s a low fog slowly rolling in – came the Perelik – all 13,887 tonnes of her.
The locks can handle a ship that it 24.5 metres wide so they say, but I’m not quite sure how.
The Perelik is a mere 22 metres wide and there’s not enough room down there to slide a feeler gauge, never mind anything substantial
As for her length though, she’s 142 metres and has a draught of 7 metres, and so there’s a reasonable marge de manoeuvre on that score.
As I watched the Perelik go dieseling off on her merry way, I counted myself very fortunate that I’d seen her navigate the locks.
You’d have to wait a long time to see anything much bigger than she try to push its way along the canal. And not only that, there’s uncertainty as to whether the canal might be here much longer.
There are plans afoot to replace the canal with one that can handle even bigger ships, but that’s a project that is continually being cancelled and it probably won’t see the light of day in our lifetimes.
2030 is the latest date for completion, but construction hasn’t even started yet, so I’m not holding my breath.
Back on the road again and round the edge of the lake towards Toronto, and we don’t go far before we come to yet another juddering halt.
What on earth is this in Jordan Harbour?
Chatting to a couple of the locals, they said that they had lived here for 20 years and this ship was there before then, and they didn’t rightly know.
But they were being somewhat economical with the truth because in reality she’s only been here since 1997.
Depending on what you read or who you talk to, she started life in 1914 as a ferry on the St Lawrence or in 1941 as an icebreaker.
She was transformed into a replica of La Grande Hermine – the ship on which Jacques Cartier came to the St Lawrence in 1535 – in 1991 and wa subsequently purchased by a local businessman to convert into a floating restaurant.
He either ran out of money, or died (or both) and the ship sat here while the legatees decided what to do with it, but a “suspicious fire” (and how many of these have we seen on our travels?) in January 2003 put an end to that.
And here she sits today.
So now I need to put my skates on and get moving towards Toronto. And not only now do I have to contend with the rolling fog that’s enveloping just about everything, I’m stuck in a confiture de circulation. It’s rush hour of course.
I fuelled up the car and drove it down to the airport and my series of confrontations with the locals.
But the tourists have the last laugh, as indeed they almost always do.
Here we are on our Boeing 767, seating capacity about 280, and I’ve counted less than 50 people on it. We can all have a row of seats each.
I like to think of myself as a pretty-seasoned traveller and I can withstand the pressure from these people and fight back.
By the look of the empty seats on this aeroplane, others don’t look as if they could be bothered and are talking with their feet
Serves the airlines, the Governments and the Tourist industry right too.
