Getting Settled In In Canada

Canada travelog #3
Mississauga, ON · Sat, 23 Aug 2025. 11am.

We're finally in our hotel room near Toronto airport. I say finally because while we landed at 6:45am on a red-eye while having got some sleep last night we were kind of tired and wondered if a short nap would help. Plus, at a minimum, we wanted to shower and change clothes.

Normally hotels where I have elite status are generous about letting us check in to our room early. The Hilton Garden Inn was sold out last night, though, so at 7:30 this morning they had nothing available. "Ask again after 10," they suggested.



We waited in the lobby for Hawk's brother, Marty, to come down and join us for breakfast. We took a peek at the hotel's breakfast offering and decided it was too much ($20 each) for too little (scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and dry bread). Instead we hopped in the car and went looking for better eats nearby.

"You know, there's a Tim Horton's if you'd kept going straight," Marty said as I turned right at the traffic light near the hotel.

"There's a Tim Horton's 2 blocks in this direction, too," I noted. "Plus one half a mile behind us if I'd gone the other direction." Welcome to Canada!

The Timmy's we landed at was not just a Tim Horton's but a combination Wendy's/Timmy's. That worked out really well because I found way more non-sugary stuff I wanted at Wendy's. Plus enough sugary stuff (french toast sticks) that I didn't even need a donut from Tim's.

Marty went off to meet his parents, who are staying at a different hotel about a mile up the road, while Hawk and I checked back at the hotel on room availability. Not yet! But this time they promised to call us when it's ready. We relaxed on sofas in the big lobby until the call came.



Upon entering our room on the 4th floor Hawk and I said, nearly in unison, "Wow, what a nice view of that building's roof!" 😅 Yeah, it's not a great view from here. Fortunately we didn't pick this place for the view. Oh, by the way, that skyline in the distance is not Toronto, it's Mississauga. Who knew that Mississauga was so big? Who, outside of Canada, even knew it existed? 🤣

Strolling, and Trolling, Through the Art Gallery of Ontario

Canada travelog #4
Toronto, ON · Sat, 23 Aug 2025. 4pm.

This afternoon we met the first of Hawk's long-lost relatives in Canada to visit an art gallery. It turns out they were never "long lost" in the sense of having been stranded on a deserted island. It's more like her great-grandfather, when he emigrated from Latvia to the United States in the late 1800s or early 1900s, lost contact with his entire family. He told his descendants, when they asked about their relatives in the Old World, "They're all dead." 😳💀🤦 It's not clear why he told his children and grandchildren this. They believed him, though, as between the Russians and the Nazis it was totally plausible all their relatives in Latvia had been murdered by 1945.

Anyway, the art gallery. I thought touring a local art gallery together was a weird way to say, "Hey, our family has been split for 4 generations, let's get back together," but I decided I would try not to challenge things too much. Modern art has a way of inviting challenge, though. And by the time I was even near the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) I found it impossible to bite my acerbic tongue.

"We're next to the sculpture of an elephant," my inlaws texted me.



"This looks like a modern-art elephant," I texted back, including a picture of the above.

That sculpture, BTW, is titled "Large Two Forms". It's in Toronto's Grange Park next to the AGO.

My inlaws sent their address by naming the streets there were standing at the corner of instead of just saying "The elephant." When we met up I saw this elephant:



"So, somebody saw a pile of discarded leather chairs and cushions at a junkyard and thought, 'These look like an elephant!''" I asked.

Yes, they look like an elephant, my inlaws assured me.

"My elephant looks better," I challenged them. "Plus, I reject your orthodoxy that all elephants have four legs that reach from the ground all the way up to their bodies."

Modern art. 🧐🤪🤣

While Hawk's parents couldn't bring themselves to see things my way, her brother appreciated my view.

"Artists are, by-and-large, people with untreated mental illness or deep personality flaws who find wealthy patrons to fund their ideas... but not psychiatric help," I quipped.

"Shh!" Marty scolded. "You're saying the quiet part out loud!"

Marty then invited me to join him in analyzing a fire hose in one of the gallery rooms as if it were art.

"The loops of hose hung together show order in the face of chaos," I mused. "Though the negative space above the hoses is unbalanced by a tight border with the frame on the other three sides. The technique here is weak."

Do you think I'm being too hard on modern art? Well, consider this centerpiece in the room as we rounded the corner from the fire hose:



"It's as if the artist went camping and was equally inspired by both a picnic table and an elk, and decided to sculpt a combination of the two!" I said breathlessly.

"Either that, or this is a prop from a rejected scene in the 1982 movie The Thing."

Do you think those snarky ideas are too outlandish? Try this real explanation (paraphrased) from a placard in the room:

The piece is entitled Can't We All Just Get Along and evokes the pervasive racism in the United States exposed in the 1982 Rodney King riot in Los Angeles.

Now, tell me. If those three explanations, my two plus the one about Rodney King, were offered up in TV game show where a contestant is told 3 stories about an item, two of which are lies and only one of which is the truth, how likely would you pick Option C as the truth?

Also, maybe Canadian artists concerned about racism could confront their own country's racist history instead of banging their pots about the US. Our current toddler-president and his supporters notwithstanding, there are plenty in the US who understand and criticize the shameful parts of our history. It's a level of honest introspection I have seen in literally no other country I've visited.