Toronto contd.

The Greyline hop on - hop off arrived exactly at 9.30AM and we began our Toronto sight seeing. The weather, being chilly and cloudy with a mild drizzle now and then tried to force us to sit inside the bus but we covered ourselves with jackets and caps and persisted with the open upper deck. These buses keep going round and round on their predetermined routes and usually arrive at any given spot every hour. One may get in and out of them any number of times during the day, similar to the Detroit people mover. Convenient.



The cheerful young girl who was on her summer job as our guide pointed out the streets and important land marks as the bus wound it’s way around down town Toronto. She spoke English and I could catch words like park, city hall, hotel, and square by which I could make out what she was saying. I think that the bus moved with in a radius of about a mile because I could recognize quite a few places which I had seen during my morning walk. I liked whatever Toronto we saw, with a number of small but very pleasant parks as lung spaces between the buildings, and compact houses lining the streets with their elevated entrance, small front gardens with garden chairs, tables and decorative railings. After about an hour, the bus headed to Casa Loma a few miles away.



Casa Loma is the castle built by the wealthy Canadian businessman Sir Henry Pellat in 1913. He was born wealthy and he got wealthier by raking in money from wherever it was available. He got carried away by the amount of money he had and hence decided to build a castle which cost him about $ 3.5 millions hundred years back. I believe the architect, E J Lennox, asked for just the leftovers as his fee and built his own mansion opposite the castle using that material.

Whatever it is, I think Sir Henry’s spending did not match his earnings and he lost everything he had with in a span of ten years and the municipality evicted him and attached his castle as he failed to pay his taxes.

Reminds me of Sri Purandara Dasa’s “munna shatakoTi raayarugaLaaLida nelava tannadendenuta shaasanava baresi ……………….. chenniganu asuvaLiye horage haakuvaru.” (You declare the land which has seen millions of owners before you as yours and build big palaces and forts. You will not be retained in it even for a minute after you are dead - this was to say not to get attached to material things and go nuts about what you think you own. I remembered it when I went to register my plot also.)

Sir Henry was out of his proud pocession even before he was dead and the Castle was in its way to become a ruin when the Kiwani’s society of Toronto stepped in, took it on lease, declared it to be a heritage spot and brought it back as near as possible to its former splendor. There are lot of things to see in the castle along with a good view of the down town Toronto from its top floor.



One may spend hours in it if one is interested in these things. I liked the audio facility consisting of a head phone and the hand held recorder on which you can punch the numbers of the items displayed and hear all the details about them. Enough of Casa Loma. We are on a conducted tour and can’t afford to miss the bus.
Managed to get some sandwiches and muffins in the cafeteria and after hurrying a bit, did catch the bus in time and arrived at the Bata shoe museum by 3 PM. The museum traces the evolution of foot wear starting from the one made using bark and vines and goes around the world showing the varieties of shoes and sandals used during different periods and ends up with the ones worn by celebrities like Boris Becker , Elvis Priestley and others.( I hope I have spelt them right).



We hopped on to the bus again at the entrance of the museum and reached the CN towers, the world’s highest till the one in Dubai was built. The foggy weather did not allow us to see in full, either the tower from out side or the view from inside. I was not interested in going up knowing that it would be useless but Bhanu had determined to show us whatever there is to be seen. The express elevator taking people to the top was an experience and we did get some glimpses of the ground below when the clouds cleared a bit and I even got a hazy picture.



Since we had planned to reach the Niagara falls the same night, we hired a cab (which befitting the status of a cab zoomed along flouting all traffic rules) and were happy to arrive in front of the parking lot in one piece. Vishwa dived into the belly of the parking lot and managed to retrieve the van from the seventh level (PaataaLa) and immediately afterwards we were on our way to Niagara.
It is 11PM on 18th July and we are expected to leave by the 6.30 PM flight to Mumbai Via Frankfurt tomorrow. I had planned to finish at least the first trip before I left but I think Niagara will have to wait till I reach Ponda. Bye for now.