Notes on a Monday Road Trip
Mar. 3rd, 2004 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldYesterday, I went on a road trip with my friend C., who's currently scouting out Kingston-area attractions suitable for student field trips. Monday was the day for a trip on the lower half of the Rideau Canal, from Kingston to Smiths Falls in the north. I'd be eager to go since he first mentioned the trip since, glances caught from the train aside, I haven't had a chance to see much of rural Ontario, and I've always suspected that the sights along Lake Ontario was rather different from those in the Canadian Shield. As an inveterate tourist, the choice to go into the Shield was made for me.
We left West Campus at a bit before 9 o'clock, crossing the Cataraqui and going past the Royal Military College before taking route 15 north. Pulling off this road twice (first Jones Falls, then Chaffey's Locks), by 11:30 we got to Smiths Falls. Smiths Falls is a pleasant little town, with a very impressed set of combined locks (eight metres high). (Alas, the Hershey's chocolate factory is closed owing to strike. A pity, since the aroma is reportedly impressive.) Then, following some brief misadventures, route 43 west to Perth (a rather less impressive town, mainly since it physically and psychologically looks run-down), and from there route 10 past Westport and south back to Kingston where it turns into Division Street.
Perhaps despite myself, I found that I was more skilled at recognizing elements of the countryside than my travelling companion, who was, after all, from the GTA. (I was surprised, for instance, to realize that I can distinguish ponies from horses on sight.) More significant differences were visible, of course, subtle ones but nonetheless important ones.
There was, as I commented on first arriving in Kingston, certain differences. The soil was an unnatural grey-black, of course, but that wasn't noticeable under winter snow and dead grass. The foilage was also somewhat different, since I noticed more larch by the side of the road than I was used to, and saw somewhat more straggly second-generation growth on once-cleared fields. The fields were also somewhat less extensive, tending to cling to the side of the road and be buttressed by the woods of the Canadian Shield; the dense cultivation prevalent in central Prince Edward Island must never have been economic. Rural settlement generally, outside of the small towns and villages lining the roads, seemed to be fairly sparse. The differences were cumulative, and very striking.
Yet despite these differences, the landscape is somehow more classically and stereotypically Canadian than the particular Maritime landscapes I was used to seeing growing up. Kingston's hinterland in eastern Ontario, away from the Lake Ontario shoreline, Smiths Falls seemed the stereotypical Canadian small town, full of brick buildings carefully organized in a rigid gridwork on a scenic waterside location. (Perhaps the next time I take the train to Ottawa, I'll stop off in Smiths Falls for a few hours.) For all its differences, the landscape felt so familiar.
I'm not sure why this is. I've been exposed to at least as much American influence as (central) Canadian, after all, but I've still always felt myself a foreigner on my brief visits to the United States. Perhaps it's the result of almost a decade of CBC broadcasts, their radio waves infiltrating my unconscious and subconscious minds, preprogramming me? Or perhaps it's just a haunting familiarity, a sort of déja vu, my reaction to a collection of memories twisted just enough to create the illusion of difference yet still familiar enough to retain some sort of resonance with me.
We left West Campus at a bit before 9 o'clock, crossing the Cataraqui and going past the Royal Military College before taking route 15 north. Pulling off this road twice (first Jones Falls, then Chaffey's Locks), by 11:30 we got to Smiths Falls. Smiths Falls is a pleasant little town, with a very impressed set of combined locks (eight metres high). (Alas, the Hershey's chocolate factory is closed owing to strike. A pity, since the aroma is reportedly impressive.) Then, following some brief misadventures, route 43 west to Perth (a rather less impressive town, mainly since it physically and psychologically looks run-down), and from there route 10 past Westport and south back to Kingston where it turns into Division Street.
Perhaps despite myself, I found that I was more skilled at recognizing elements of the countryside than my travelling companion, who was, after all, from the GTA. (I was surprised, for instance, to realize that I can distinguish ponies from horses on sight.) More significant differences were visible, of course, subtle ones but nonetheless important ones.
There was, as I commented on first arriving in Kingston, certain differences. The soil was an unnatural grey-black, of course, but that wasn't noticeable under winter snow and dead grass. The foilage was also somewhat different, since I noticed more larch by the side of the road than I was used to, and saw somewhat more straggly second-generation growth on once-cleared fields. The fields were also somewhat less extensive, tending to cling to the side of the road and be buttressed by the woods of the Canadian Shield; the dense cultivation prevalent in central Prince Edward Island must never have been economic. Rural settlement generally, outside of the small towns and villages lining the roads, seemed to be fairly sparse. The differences were cumulative, and very striking.
Yet despite these differences, the landscape is somehow more classically and stereotypically Canadian than the particular Maritime landscapes I was used to seeing growing up. Kingston's hinterland in eastern Ontario, away from the Lake Ontario shoreline, Smiths Falls seemed the stereotypical Canadian small town, full of brick buildings carefully organized in a rigid gridwork on a scenic waterside location. (Perhaps the next time I take the train to Ottawa, I'll stop off in Smiths Falls for a few hours.) For all its differences, the landscape felt so familiar.
I'm not sure why this is. I've been exposed to at least as much American influence as (central) Canadian, after all, but I've still always felt myself a foreigner on my brief visits to the United States. Perhaps it's the result of almost a decade of CBC broadcasts, their radio waves infiltrating my unconscious and subconscious minds, preprogramming me? Or perhaps it's just a haunting familiarity, a sort of déja vu, my reaction to a collection of memories twisted just enough to create the illusion of difference yet still familiar enough to retain some sort of resonance with me.
