(Barrie/Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

As much as we enjoyed Goderich, real life beckoned and we still had to find our way back to Kingston. Fortunately, the route was very open to negotiation: the only condition was that we had to stop in Barrie for a couple of nights. I was playing in a hockey tournament there; somehow, my travels had never taken me to this rapidly growing city on Lake Simcoe.

There is no obvious route for travel between Goderich and Barrie. We ultimately decided to focus on Highway 9: this would take us through a lot of unfamiliar towns, would avoid suburban sprawl, would enable a reasonable pace of travel on well-paved roads, and appeared to involve virtually no backtracking.

After quickly passing through the village of Lucknow in the pouring rain, the first town we looked at in any detail was Walkerton. It seemed like a nice-enough place; unfortunately, the first thing we thought about was the tainted water scandal that took place there more than 15 years ago.  It was a real tragedy:  7 people died and thousands were sickened in this town of just under 5,000 people.

The weather was starting to lighten up but we decided to press on to the somewhat larger town (7,500 residents) of Hanover.  Something about the place invited us to get out of the car and walk around.  Given the German origins of the town name, I wasn’t too surprised to see a bakery named Schultz.  I was more surprised to also see an extremely well-stocked Dutch deli and grocery store!

This store had it all:  Dutch clothing, books, magazines, deli products, and those very specific Dutch groceries that are commonplace in the Netherlands but haven’t quite made it into the Canadian mainstream.  I stocked up on proper atjar tjampoer,  sambal manis and licorice dropjes, which are all becoming harder to find in the Kingston area.  I also picked up a very orange Dutch soccer hat and a self-explanatory book called “Stuff Dutch People Like”.   The customers in front of us even spoke Dutch with the cashier.

While walking down the main street, a man in one of the shop windows waved at us.  He was wearing headphones…it turns out he was broadcasting at Hanover’s radio station!  For all we know, he was about to tell his listeners about some new strangers in town.  We still have a soft spot in our hearts for local radio; we just didn’t expect to see it in Hanover.

Perhaps Hanover wasn’t all that different from the other similarly-sized towns we saw on this trip…but chance happenings like the Dutch store and the DJ made it a little more special for us.   While we were in no danger of starving, we also stocked up at the Schultz bakery – you never know when you might need a chocolate cream horn.

We continued eastward, passing through places like Durham, Flesherton and Stayner until we finally hit Barrie in the mid-afternoon.  After some quick vinyl-record shopping, we switched gears and went into hockey tournament mode for the couple of days. I enjoyed the intense hockey experience (playing 5 games in 44 hours!) but can’t say that I really got a feel for life in Barrie.

After my last game, we reluctantly piled into the car for the home stretch.  More small towns I’ve never visited before:  Bradford, Sharon, Mount Albert…and, finally, lunch in Uxbridge.  We ate at Colonel McGrady’s Pub; I don’t know how “authentic” the sandwich was, but it was the best Philly Steak sandwich that I have ever had.  Lots of grilled peppers but also a barbecue-influenced sauce…it was almost like a upgraded pulled pork sandwich…with steak.

Eating out for a week can start to become tiresome but it’s always great to end a trip on such a high note.  It also compensated for the searing mid-afternoon heat that we felt in villages such as Bethany (see photo at the top of this post).  If we ever find ourselves in those parts of Ontario again, we’ll be sure to stop in Uxbridge  and Hanover to revisit the highlights of the long road home.