Adventures in Toronto: back home in Wavre

Cava in the garden

Someone is very happy to have me back in Wavre.  It's good to be home, and to unpack my things and start to think about the next few months.  There are lots of things to be done around the house, including moving forward on the attic renovations.  I have some Canadian guests coming for a couple of days in the first week of July so I am hoping that I can get that space at least insulated and cleaned up enough that we can put a bed or two up there.  Even better would be drywall, but we'll have to wait and see.

hot weather

Certainly insulation would be a good thing, even now, as the temperatures have been reaching very high levels for this time of year.  This weekend past it hit the low 30s, which is quite unusual for Belgium for May.  We took advantage of the good weather and had a BBQ party at the Hammers on the weekend, with some group activities like kickball, and of course lots of great food and drink.

bbq boogie

We also managed a run, but as it was very hot on Saturday it ended up including an awful lot of walking.  Running in weather above 20 degrees celsius is really an entirely different sport.

On that note, I really appreciated the more moderate temperatures in Ontario, and since my last blog post managed a couple of very satisfying runs.  One was the Mountain Equipment Co-op sponsored 15km run in Barrie on May 12th... Bruce accompanied me for the trip, and was there to cheer me on at the end of the race.

at the finish line in Barrie

It seems clear that trail running is not as common in Canada as it is in Europe, and the run was attended by maybe 100 people, doing the 5km, 10km, and 15km distances.  But it was a very well marked trail, with lots of water stops, and many wardens making sure that one didn't get lost.  There were really no bugs to speak of, which was lucky; I would imagine that after snow and ice, blackflies and mosquitos are big dis-incentives to trail running in Canada.

After the run in the morning we visited my uncle Jeff and aunt Linda at their home in Barrie, and had a nice BBQ with them.  My cousin Patrick and his girlfriend Nicole also came by and it was a really lovely afternoon.  I haven't been to Linda and Jeff's house in almost thirteen years, so it was high time that I paid them a visit.

The following weekend I sang a couple of arias (Bach and Handel) at Kingston Road United Church, and was happy to meet in person the bassist Tim Dawson, who suggested that I perform there, as well as music director Eric MacKeracher who accompanied me on piano, and the Reverend Barry King.  It was a very welcoming congregation and their church seems to be doing very well.  It's certainly a lovely place to sing.

Later on that week Bruce and I hopped in the car and headed East, to Gananoque to start rehearsing our "No Tenors Allowed" concert with pianist Dina Namer.  But first we stopped in to say hello to my parents in Belleville...

Mister Canoehead rides again

Unfortunately my Dad was away on business during our visit, but I gave Mom a hand moving the canoe onto the deck so that she could cut the grass, and after a tour of her burgeoning garden she invited us out to lunch at the Dugout, a very pleasant restaurant that recently opened at the foot of Farley Avenue, on the converted premises of the old Woodland Cleaners drycleaning location.  This was owned and operated by the parents of my childhood best friend, Tim Clarke, until it was sold a few years ago.

The Dugout is really a nice place; of course with a name drawn from baseball, it has lots of screens if you wish to watch sports, but the service and the food was extremely good, and the place is well designed; even with a full lunch time crowd the acoustic was good so that you could carry on a quiet conversation without having to strain to listen to the other person.

Once in Gananoque we settled in as guests of Frayne and Kevin, and started to rehearse for the show.  Bruce had to travel back and forth to Kingston each late afternoon to give some makeup singing lessons over three days, so our rehearsals were largely in the early part of the day.  One of those times we went to have dinner with Heather, Henry, and Emily, and check out their new house in Kingston.

on the terrace at Heather's new place

It was really lucky that it was nice weather, and we had a great visit together.

One morning I decided to head ten minutes up the road and get in a good trail run with some elevation.  Boy did I luck out!

Marble Rock

The Marble Rock Conservation Area is just north of Gananoque, and it boasts a really beautiful set of views of Canadian Shield country.  Unlike running in Belgium forests at this time of year, in the region of Gananoque, instead of bluebells, you run through carpets of beautiful trilliums, the provincial flower of Ontario...

In many places the terrain is quite rough, and it can't really be run; instead you have to scramble up narrow defiles between boulders.  The blue triangle in the photo below is a hint at the direction of the trail on the southern loop.

There were many river crossings and little lakes and ponds, including this lake that was only created over the last 25 years or so by a large beaver dam.

There was a big difference between the southern loop (around 8km) and the northern loop (which added 3km more).  Unfortunately I misread the signs and had to back-track two km at one point so my run was more like 15km, but I'm glad I did.  It was clear to me that no one has been on the northern loop this year.  The trail is overgrown; at best it is only about 10cm wide, and half of the blue trail markers have fallen, so there was a lot of back-tracking to find the trail as you went.  But the views and the ambiance were totally worth it.  No mosquitos or blackflies, and apart from squirrels and the usual forest birds, a turkey vulture and a great great heron, I saw not another living creature during the whole run.

In the Royal Theatre we had a good set of rehearsals over a few days.  Dina had a lot of work getting used to the piano, but for us as vocalists the theatre had a great acoustic for text clarity.  Frayne explained its history: built as a vaudeville house in 1935, it replaced an earlier theatre that had burned down.  So this building was entirely constructed from poured concrete, making it the first large poured concrete building in North America.  After the decline in vaudeville, it became a cinema, and finally was converted into a bowling alley.  Frayne and Kevin bought it in 2014, and have since been converting it back into a working theatre.

We ended our rehearsals on Friday afternoon, and Bruce left to go teach his last makeup lesson of the year in Kingston.  My Aunt Judy and Cousin Christine had driven out to Gananoque to meet me, and we had a nice conversation at a local pub, and caught up a bit.

Astonishingly, who should come into the very same pub, but Judy's second child, my cousin David, with his wife Melissa and their three sons!  It turns out that they were in town to see another production, a staging of Shakespeare's The Tempest, and had come to the English Pub by sheer coincidence.  And a happy coincidence, too!

After the visit with family, I met Bruce and Dina, and Kevin and Frayne at the house of someone who is a friend and a supporter of their theatre: the Canadian swimming legend Vicki Kieth!  She holds many world records, including the first crossing of all five Great Lakes, the longest continuous swim of 129 hours, 45 minutes, the first crossing of the English Channel using the butterfly stroke, and the longest continuous butterfly swim of any human being (80.2 km).  Unbelievable.  She now coaches other long-distance swimmers.  Of course, I got her to give me a few tips on my freestyle arm shape...

The concert was really a big success.  I really feel that I was able to do some new interpretation, and to sing some very challenging material very well.  Bruce sang beautifully and powerfully, and I am amazed as always how fresh and youthful his voice is.  It is truly inspirational... Dina was great as always, and did things that made that piano sound like an orchestra, and supported everything that we as singers tried to express.  I do look forward to another collaboration with these two great artists someday...

After the concert we headed straight back to Toronto, as I had a number of things to try to get settled prior to my departure on Tuesday... Bruce made sure to get his UK flag out for the Queen's birthday...

 

... and then to celebrate the successful concert and wish me luck on my voyage we walked up the street to a French bistro, called Gare de l'Est, and had steak tartare... excellent!

Then it was time to finish packing up and take the flight back to Belgium... I snapped a very mist- and wist-ful Canadian photo from the Gardiner Expressway, one that included the Skydome, the CN Tower, Steam Whistle Brewery and the CBC building.  I'm not sure if you can get more Toronto in one photo...

 

Once I got home I realised how far the growing season had advanced here.  The garden was lush, with the lilacs, pear tree and other hedge plants going nuts with all of the rain and warm sunny weather.

Happily my irises were out, and as it was a hot day I decided to cut some and bring them inside.

Duncan was very pleased to discover that I had brought him all of my childhood LEGO, which my parents had been good enough to offer to him, and to sort and deliver to me in Toronto. So he immediately set to building with it in a retro style...

Strawberry Storm sound check

after the gig

This past weekend Maggie and I went to see Malcolm's band, Strawberry Storm, play in Namur, about a half hour's drive away, at a cool little hole-in-the-wall club call La Pharmacie.  It was really a great experience to see them rock out, and the audience loved them.  It was their first paid gig, and was such a success that Malcolm had an invitation to another band project, and Strawberry Storm has been invited back to play there again.

Last Sunday I had some Bach to sing in the evening, in the new location of the Minimes concerts.  The new church is visually beautiful and also almost twice as large as the old one, but the acoustic is a bit muddy; they are going to experiment with platforms for the orchestra, to see if raising them up a bit helps.  Still it was nice to see so many familiar faces; singing for the Minimes has a family feel to me now, after over twenty cantatas together.  I'm gratified that they believe in me, and the director has already said that he will send me next season so we can find some good fits for my voice.

In other musical news I also added a Messiah for Christmastime, and another St. Matthew Passion for Eastertime, both in Brugge with a group I have not worked with before.  But it's the time to start filling in the slots for next season...

in rehearsal for the Bach concert

the view of the audience in the new location

Yesterday Bryan and I made the last trailer trip to Frasnes-les-Anvaing, to pick up the very last bit of firewood that we arranged to purchase and transport, almost eight months ago.  He has worked it out that we have made fifteen trips, and together we have collected around 32 cubic metres of firewood, of which I have taken around ten.  It's good to have that taken care of, and I am pretty sure that we are set up for quite a while with what we have in the house.  The vendor was happy to give us a Jupiler in congratulation.

Other than that, it's time for lots of planning and prioritising.  There are many things to get done around here, but for the moment, that has included my laundry...