Timbits!

Canada travelog #9
Mississauga · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 10:15am.

Well, it didn't take long after "shifting gears" on our Canada trip to shift back into Park. As we left the hotel just after 10 this morning I was hungry and wanted to stop for a snack. Fortunately just 2 blocks away was a Tim Horton's. ...No, this wasn't the Tim Horton's we ate breakfast at Saturday morning. That was a Timmy's/Wendy's combo that was about 4 blocks away. This was a Timmy's in an Exxon station.



If you've never been to Canada, you've got to understand something about Tim Horton's. You know how, in the US, there's that advertising slogan for Dunkin' Donuts "America runs on Dunnkin'"? Well, imagine if that were actually true and not a marketing exaggeration. They'd be seemingly on every street corner, right? Well, that's basically what Tim Horton's is in Canada. Canada literally runs on Tim Horton's. I found at least 3 within 1/2 mile of my hotel.

I decided today to give Timbits a try. They're donut holes that you can buy 1 at a time... or in boxes of 10 or 20. I bought a box of 10. Mmm, these are good! And with this box of 10 I should have enough to make it last until tomorrow.

Webster Falls

Canada travelog #10
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 1pm.

Our first hiking stop today, after various snacking stops such as getting a box of Timbits, is Webster Falls. It's in the bucolic small town of Dundas outside of Hamilton.

We'd picked out a route that travels up from below to the bottom of the falls, but it turns out it's closed. Not only is it closed, the entry is full of all kids of "GTFO". Like, there's locked gate across the trail, there's no-parking signs all around the gate, "Maximum enforcement area" signs below the no-parking signs, and poison ivy all over the gate. Yes, seriously, it's like the town hired an evil druid NPC to cast a spell on the gate. So we went around to the top of the falls, where there's an official entrance.



Ah, here's the other half of why the entrance below is closed off and cursed. Here there's room for a gatehouse to collect money. Build a gravel parking lot, put a couple of electronic gate arms on it, then plop down a tool shed and put a teenager with a credit card reader in it (no cash accepted). $22.50 for the two of us to enter. For a trail that's not even 1/2 mile long. Oh, but it's good at all the parks around Hamilton for today, the teenager assured us.



We decided to get our $22.50 worth we'd hike to all the viewpoints for Webster Falls. They're not very far. The trail still works out to soemething like $25/km per person. And for that we only get partial views of the falls (see photo above) at some of these vista points.

For a partial falls view, it's pretty nice. I'll bet the full falls is amazing. Will we get to see that next? We walked around the other side, and...



...Nope!

Oh, this vista definitely reveals more of the falls. It just doesn't reveal all of the falls.

One more to go and... also nope. The third viewpoint shows less of the falls than the first two. It's a straight-on view of the falls.... but there's, like, 20 feet of forest between the edge of canyon and the fenced off trail. It's such a disappointment I didn't even bother to take a picture.

Ah, but I mentioned a fence. It's fenced off. You know what you can do with fences? You can go around them. Or over them. Or even under them.

Today I decided that going around this fence was easiest. Not that they made it easy. I had to do some balancing and hold onto the fencepost to get around the end of it. But I got around the fence. And once around the fence I could backtrack, on the opposite side of the fence, to where an old and steep but clearly visible path led down to a perch at the rim of the canyon. Would that perch offer a better view of the falls?



BOOM! Much better view. Hawk even kept watch for me in case a park ranger came along to bust me for going around the fence. Though I think the only "ranger" in the park was the bored teenager at the gate playing on his phone in between bilking visitors for $22.50 apiece.

There was only one problem. It was starting to rain.

Goddammit. In the time it took me to get down to this perfect picture-taking spot the sun had gone away, the clouds had come in, and it was starting to sprinkle.

I waited 10 minutes or so to see if the sky would clear, or at least if the dark clouds would shift away. Neither seemed to be happening. Thus since we had plans to visit multiple other falls today I packed it in on Webster Falls. I picked my way back up the steep path, followed the fence to its end near the edge of the canyon and swung around the last fence post, and walked the short distance back to the car.

Up next: Getting our $22.50 worth of parking with a two-fer at Tew Falls!

Hiking Tew Falls

Canada travelog #11
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 1:30pm.

My frustration about paying $22.50 for only partial views of Webster Falls (until I cheated and went around the fence) was mollified somewhat by being able to use the same parking pass to park at the trailhead for Tew Falls a mile or two away. Webster Falls and Tew Falls both tumble over the same geological feature, the Niagara Escarpment, in Dundas. The escarpment is the edge of a plateau that run for tens of miles, maybe hundreds of miles. Yes, it's what a much larger falls with the same name tumbles over.

Anyway, we got to the parking lot for Tew Falls and... it started raining. We sat in the car for a few minutes figuring out what we'd want to do: wait it out, get lunch and come back, or just bail completely. "Wait it out" was the default choice and turned out to be the right one anyway as the rain cleared after about 10 minutes.



It was an easy 1/2 mile walk around the rim over to a viewing spot for Tew falls. The trail continued farther, to Tew Peak, but we weren't interested in that. A "peak" here is less than a few hundred feet high. But, hey, Tew Falls is an amazing falls, and it's free— after paying $22.50 for Webster Falls. 🤣



Seeing the sun come out at Tew Falls pissed me off even more about that $22.50 to see Webster Falls in the drizzling rain. But you know what? We could go back to Webster Falls! It's only a few miles away, our parking's paid for (all day! all the Hamilton Conservation Area parks!), and it's a short trail anyway. Soooo... back to the car, back to Webster, back around the fence like a scofflaw risking his own life!

Back to Webster Falls!

Canada travelog #12
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 2pm.

It disappoints me when I start a hike, the weather's nice, then it turns sour by the time I get to the payoff vista. That's what happened when I hiked Webster Falls this morning— it got gloomy and rainy. It burns me even more when I deal with poor weather while I'm on the hike, decide to leave, then the weather gets better after I've gone. That's what happened while I was over at Tew Falls— the sun came out. Most of the time stuff like this happens there's nothing to do but accept it. Today, because the hikes were short and close together, I said I'm going back. And that's what I've done. I went back to Webster Falls.



I parked in the lot a second time, paying nothing extra thanks to the good-at-all-local-parks-for-the-day $22.50 toll I already paid. And I walked to the falls on the short trail. And I climbed around the fence and scrambled down to the perch where I could actually see the falls, because fuck this town and its put-a-fence-around-everything-even-slightly-dangerous risk aversion.

Watch on YouTube

I sat there on my perch for a while, making motion-blue pictures with my fancy camera (first frame above) and even a quick video with my iPhone (second frame). This time I even had the place to myself (plus Hawk). It's like the rain earlier in the hour chased off the riffraff. 😅