Format
Through this blog I’ll do my best to share my thoughts as often and as ‘unsweetened’ as I can. Armed with a fully loaded ipod for inspiration I (ambitiously) aim to start each entry with the title of a song which best describes the day, an event, an experience or my general mood.
Through each entry I will try to provide an overview of the day (eg. logistics, fitness, general mood) followed by a brief description of the landscape and terrain and, where possible, a bit of the ‘history’ of the country (yes, I plan on doing some studying..!). Finally I’m keen to also include a bit about the people that we meet along the way – what they do, where they live, how they speak, how they form part of the Canadian mosaic. By the end of the journey I hope to be able to differentiate, for example, between a farmer in the Prairies and a farmer in South Western Ontario. Is the John Deere cap iconic of all Canadian farmers or simply an Ontario farmer fashion phenomena…? Do all Canadians end their sentences with ‘eh’..? and is the passion for Tim Hortons deep fried dough glazed with sugar the common thread which, like th
e Trans-Canada, binds the country together..?
Through this blog I’ll do my best to share my thoughts as often and as ‘unsweetened’ as I can. Armed with a fully loaded ipod for inspiration I (ambitiously) aim to start each entry with the title of a song which best describes the day, an event, an experience or my general mood.
Through each entry I will try to provide an overview of the day (eg. logistics, fitness, general mood) followed by a brief description of the landscape and terrain and, where possible, a bit of the ‘history’ of the country (yes, I plan on doing some studying..!). Finally I’m keen to also include a bit about the people that we meet along the way – what they do, where they live, how they speak, how they form part of the Canadian mosaic. By the end of the journey I hope to be able to differentiate, for example, between a farmer in the Prairies and a farmer in South Western Ontario. Is the John Deere cap iconic of all Canadian farmers or simply an Ontario farmer fashion phenomena…? Do all Canadians end their sentences with ‘eh’..? and is the passion for Tim Hortons deep fried dough glazed with sugar the common thread which, like th
e Trans-Canada, binds the country together..? (For the non-Canadians reading this, the Tim Hortons is an object of veneration that will put any small town on a map. If Canada adopted the British tradition of knighthood then this 1980s toothless hockey player who started the chain and after which it was named would be among the top five contenders up for the title [closely followed by Wayne Gretzky, Bryan Adams, Neil Young and the Tragically Hip…] Sadly, Tim Horton was never able to experience the legacy which bears his name as he died in a car crash. ‘Tim Bits’, meanwhile refers not to some sort of macabre religious communion with the ‘Body of the Departed Tim’ and a healthy chalice of dark-roast coffee. No. Tim Bits are simply the holes from donuts sold
separately in Canada. It’s about as creative (and logical) as the naming of the Canadian one-dollar coin a ‘loonie’ because it depicts typical Canadian waterfowl - a loon on one side and the Queen on the other. Aptly, the Toonie is the two dollar coin.)So, that is my initial introduction. I suspect that it’s a rather ambitious introduction but hope that it will be one that shares some of my thinking as I embark on what I feel will be the start of both an incredible opportunity in life, at the start of an incredible summer and one hell of a journey...
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