Colingwood cont.

We found the rental house pretty quickly and I became instant pals with the owner Sophie!! The house was fantastic with a view over the bay which was to die for. The weather was pretty cold and rainy but we didn't care. We spent the week shopping, exploring the area, eating out and curled up in front of the fire waching dvd's! Me and the girls greed that Collingwood so felt like home. So much so that we were gutted when the week finally ended and we had to head home.

Collingwood!

I'm extremely impressed with whoever came up with the design of Airport road.......it's the straightest road ever and stretches to the horizon which in Canada is for miles. But it is also a bit like a rollercoaster with sudden drops and turns........brilliant!!
It took us a good hour and a half to reach Stayner, a small town just before Collingwood but which hiad what we were now desperate for...Tim Hortens. By now it was around 5pm but of course our internal clocks were 5 hours ahead on UK time. It had been a long day since setting off in torrential rain to the airport near our home, then the 7 hour flight and the drive so we were hungry. I'd already decided on soup and hot chocolate to take to the house and have there so we were soon back on the road and entering Collingwood.
It is a great little town right on the edge of the Georgian Bay...well actually I think its on the Nottawasaga Bay which I've no doubt spelt wrong!!

Airport road to Collingwood

Once the littlest one was strapped in the back of the car plugged into the dvd player and the eldest one was sat in the passenger seat as navigator complete with GPS we were ready to go! It was pretty easy leaving the airport simply following the signs until the T junction came up: Airport road east or west?! My internal sat nav was looking for airport road north and although I knew east would take me into Toronto, west could me the QEW and that for me was a big no no!! So to be on the safe side I decided to pull into a garage/petrol station and asked the first man I could see. In the past I've found the 'dumb woman' routine often works best. When my car needs a service I always act in awe of the mechanics' skills and tell him how useless I am with engines but then let him know that if he were to suffer a cardiac arrest at this point he'd be grateful I was standing beside him as I could pretty much save his life thanks to my Coronary care experience.....
So off we set again on Airport road west. Traffic was pretty heavy so it was a slow crawl. I actually had no idea if Airport road was a highway, freeway or dirt track so I sat in the middle lane sandwiched between 2 trucks. The GPS system is my hubby's and comes complete with a voice that can melt a mans at twenty paces so I naturally refer to it as 'her' and with much contempt. Being a female GPS she retaliates by sending me off in any direction she likes, even up private driveways. On this particular trip she was in a huff at being separated from my hubby and was refusing to even find the nearest satellite!!! A few miles down the road and almost all the traffic disappeared leaving us on a 2 lane road in the middle of the countryside. You could see for miles and miles and yet there were houses at regular intervals. I had a little wobbly moment when I realised we were in the middle of rural Ontario miles from anywhere but it soon passed. You could see the road stretching ahead for miles and miles.






Airport Road in the Fall!!








As it was October time the colour of the trees were amazing as we drove along and we passed pumpkins on display everywhere....plenty of oohs and aaahs from the girls and me!!!

Airport Road!

After our holiday in the July the October break was looming and on an impulse I decided to take myself and my 2 girls back to Ontario. The girls were at that stage aged 7 and 14. Its not the first time I've taken the kids off without hubby. The last time we hit Spain at Easter and it was pouring with rain as we drove around to the sound of the 'Fun Boy 3' and 'Bananarama'! This time I contacted Great Escapes in Collingwood to see if the house we'd tried to book previously in July was free and it was! So with house booked, tickest booked and hire care booked we were off!
We flew on a practically empty Air transat flight from Newcastle to Toronto. This was because it was the last flight of the season. Coming in to land at Toronto I suddenly panicked......why had I brought the girls over 3,000 miles for a weeks holiday to Canada and in October when I could have popped over to Spain and been on the beach in the sunshine? Not only that but I'd never even been to Collingwood before! However this would be the least of my problems!
Tired after the flight we waited at passport control. I'd chosen the queue with the female officer as she appeared less intimidating......funny how appearances can be so deceptive!
Once we'd been called I gave her the passports and she asked if I had a letter from the children's father giving me permission to take them out of the UK...aargh! When I said I didn't she asked if I could prove they were my children. For a split second I thought of showing her my cesarean scar but found that my mouth had taken over and I was demanding that the girls tell her who I was!! I was so sure she was about to put us on the next flight home that I suggested she ring my husband in the UK. She told me to go through to the area behind the huge glass window (obviously this was so the audience of airline passengers could continue to watch my drama unfold!). The next officer was thankfully very sweet and explained how children disappear all the time. She said she would allow us in but that if we did not catch our return flight an alert would be put out for the children!! I was shaking like a leaf. We grabbed our bags and arrived at the car rental booth where the poor woman behind the counter asked how I was doing so I took that as my cue and poured out my heart to her!!!! She must have taken pity on us because there were squeals from the girls as we collected the car.... a real chick car, the type hubby and son would have hated!




Now all we had to do was find Airport Road..........

Trip 2 continued....

It was the meeting up of family that suddenly opened our eyes up to a way of life that we could only dream about in UK. We were to meet them at a beach on Lake Eerie. It sounded like an impossible feat as we had never been there before and the beach stretched for miles. I have no idea how but we literally arrived on the beach right beside them all!!! It was a Sunday in mid July and the beach was pretty full. My brother in law (BIL) turned up with chairs, sunshades, 2 huge ice boxes and of course a barbeque!! Whilst he cooked chicken legs I ignored the warm tuna sandwiches feebly packed in my bag!! The kids swam, played ball and dug in the sand until the sun started to go down. My BIL told us that when they had lived in Canada before moving over to USA this was a typical Sunday for them before work the next day. As the sun set everyone packed up to head home and not one piece of litter was left on that enormous stretch of beach much to the dismay of a few flocks of hungry seagulls!! Now isn't that the perfect way to start the working week?

We enjoyed the remainder of our holiday and all too soon it was time to return to the UK. I was surprised to find that my eldest daughter was determined to return one day to live in Canada and that she had decided she wanted to attend University in Toronto!! On that flight home I could never have imagined that this was just the start of a permanent move to Canada!

Trip 2

Arriving at Pearson Airport and then driving down the QEW was quite surreal. It was like we had never been away! Our rental house wasn't going to be available for a couple of nights so we were staying in the owners rental apartment in Niagara. I have to say that the area where the apartment was based did border on 'tacky' but we were too tired to really care. Our first task was to try and actually enter the apartment through what was obviously a busted front door....all our bashing of said door eventually brought a resident to our rescue!
The apartment was really nice but the following morning we woke to a real nightmare situation....the bedroom with me, hubby and the then 6 year old was swarming with flying ants!!! They were everywhere; in the beds, the luggage but worst of all my poor kids hair!! Slamming shut the bedroom door we headed to Niagara centre and an available mobile phone network (my mobile only worked in USA so we needed to be near the border!). After a quick call the owner moved us to another apartment and we fell into Perkins for pancakes and coffee!
The kids got to see the Falls, drag me onto the way too high Ferris wheel and managed to cost us a small fortune thanks to Niagara's ridiculous hike up of prices (they must see us tourists coming!!). Eventually we moved into the house and it really was clean and spacious. We spent the rest of the trip exploring the usual tourist traps...Canada Wonderland, Toronto zoo, Kitchener as well as meeting up with family who we hadn't seen for years.........

13 years!

Between 1993 and 2006 we often considered moving to Canada but it was never anything more than a thought. In order to work there we would both need to retake exams which was something neither ofnus felt prepared to do. We did consider other countries; Spain, USA, New Zealand but nothing came of them. New Zealand was simply too far away and the USA would always take second place to Canada.Spain, although a short flight away, had a language barrier and the culture didn't suit us. In fact Canada was the benchmark and no other country ever came close. Had we known that we would eventually be moving there we wouldn't have tortured ourselves so much!

In 2006 we booked a holiday to Ontario, our first since 1993! By now my sister in law had moved to the US so we needed a holiday rental property. I trawled the internet for days and finally found a fab 5 bed roomed house in a place called Collingwood. I emailed the owner and we immediately clicked...like we'd known each other for years. She was English , having emigrated a couple of years earlier. We booked the house and the flights for that July. Unfortunatley a few weeks later we got an email from the owner saying she would have to cancel the booking as the builders of her new home had let her down and they would need the renatl to live in for a few more months. By now we were emailing quite a bit and I completely understood that these things happen. The upshot was that we eventually found another rental near Niagara on the Lake....