Canada Bingo: Toronto Edition

We had some family come to visit us over the Christmas / New Year period. With just a couple of weeks to show them around our new home, we thought it would be a bit of fun to make a game of it – enter Canada Bingo, the Toronto edition.

We designed Canada Bingo to highlight some of the more Canadian things we have discovered while here, and tried to include a mix of tourist attractions, foodie activities, and fun local experiences. Postcard sized, it is easy to carry around while you’re out and about exploring. The goal is to complete as many of the activities as possible (not strictly following the rules of bingo we know, but Canada Bingo just has such a nice ring to it). Our recent visitors were almost successful in checking off the lot. Here’s how they went… 

Our baby turned one today!

Yet another birthday in the Up Late family. It is amazing how quickly time passes. It seems like only yesterday that I was arriving to meet the new addition to our family. And now, here BJ is today, turning one. Happy birthday, little guy!

Happy Birthday, Cindy!

Having celebrated Tristan’s birthday with a blog post, it seems only fitting that we do likewise for Cindy’s birthday, which was celebrated last week while visiting Whistler with a few friends from Australia.

Travel Whispers Blogger Challenge

As 2016 draws to a close a lot of bloggers are looking back at everything they have done this year and everywhere they have been. The Travel Whispers Blogger Challenge aims to round-up the year and look towards the next by answering ten questions. The questions are designed to be a lot more inspiring than starting a conversation with small talk and intended to involve more than just one person. Each Travel Whispers post can be found by clicking the link through to the next blogger at the bottom of the post, and so on, so take the time to read through a few – you might find some exciting new bloggers to follow and some great travel ideas for the future! You can also find them across Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #TravelWhispers.

Here are our answers:

Planning Holidays When Your Life is One Long Holiday

I should probably start by clarifying that our life is not actually one long holiday. Although we are away from our home country, Tristan and I are both working full-time jobs and endeavouring to live in Canada as locals. Of course, despite still needing to do all the mundane things you would when you are not on holiday – grocery shopping, renting an apartment, paying the bills, etc. – simply being away from “home” means it is nonetheless hard to kick that holiday feeling!

Tristan’s Year in Review – Year #1

Almost without me realising it, my first Canadian anniversary came and went recently and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to look back on the past year and reflect on how it fits into the story of Tristan Yeats. My life in Canada so far has not been dramatically different on a day-to-day basis from my life back in Canberra. Nonetheless, my first year has certainly been a significant one for me and hopefully this post will provide you a little insight into this.

High / Low – November 10, 2016

The last couple of weeks have found us focused on two main things – delicious food and too much politics (sometimes, at the same time). Going forward, we don’t plan to spend much more time talking about the US election, but hopefully we can get around to writing about some of the spectacular meals we’ve had – mainly because, in our experience, when you are new to Toronto, it’s hard to know where to go to find quality, but not fine dining, food. For now, here’s our High / Low (and for once, it’s Tristan whose high relates to food).

Trumpland: Good Viewing, Even for the Non-Political

Last week, an email hit my inbox to tell me that Michael Moore’s Trumpland would be shown at the HotDocs cinema this weekend. Despite living in the political capital of Australia for 10 years, I do not consider myself a political junky. I would describe myself as, at best, someone who is somewhat informed about Australian politics – this is probably less of a reflection of my actual knowledge of current affairs and more to do with the fact that, when you live in Canberra, there are some pretty passionate politi-philes who are seriously well-informed about all things politics, meaning your average (or perhaps even slightly better than average) understanding pales in comparison. Anyway, I digress.

Unlike me, Tristan is reasonably well-informed about politics. He has a good grasp of his personal political ideals and the reasoning behind those. That may have originated from his Canberra born and bred status, but I feel there is also a genuine interest which drives him to read as much as he can about a raft of issues that I probably should care more about. His interest isn’t limited to Australian politics either, with the upcoming Trump v Clinton election definitely occupying a lot of his time of late. Just last weekend I woke up in the morning to the sound of Tristan watching representatives from the Republican and Democrat camps engaging in a debate about the Third Trump / Clinton Debate! So, when I saw the email about Trumpland,

You’re an adult now Canada, it’s time to make a choice!

So, we touched on this briefly in one of our very early posts but I thought I would expand a bit on what must be one of the quirkier quirks we’ve had to get used to in Canada. I am, of course, referring to the exciting topic of weights and measures and Canadians’ seeming inability to make up their minds on whether to join the modern metric world or stick with the imperial system preferred by their ironically anti-imperial neighbour to the south (and west, I haven’t forgotten about you Alaska!).

For the record, Canada officially adopted the metric system in the 1970s for most everyday uses but, for whatever reason, the locals just don’t want to let the old ways go. Is it because they want the Americans to still think they’re cool or is this just Canada’s world renowned politeness coming into play, not wanting to impose on peoples’ ways of life.

Generally this doesn’t bother me too much as I’m pretty conversant in most things imperial and, thankfully, the one measurement that I can never really get a grip on (Fahrenheit) doesn’t seem to be commonly used, except in the kitchen. The lack of a uniform pattern of usage is, for the most part, a fairly harmless oddity and a mild annoyance but in some situations it just seems downright inefficient. Here are just a few examples that I’ve come across over the last 11 and a bit months:

High / Low – October 27, 2016

It has been a relatively quiet couple of weeks as Cindy finally knuckled down to do a little bit of study in preparation for her Canadian Administrative Law exam. That said, we still managed to squeeze in a few fun things. Last weekend, after months of on and off research, we expanded our Nikon family with the addition of a D7100, christening it with a trip out to Hamilton for a photo tour of the Webster’s Falls / Dundas Peak area (although, we didn’t actually find the route to either landmark). And this week saw another couple of visitors from Canberra, stopping by Toronto while on their own North American adventure. It was great to catch up, laugh over our ‘lost in translation‘ moments, and just hear the familiar Aussie accent. As always, we also enjoyed tonnes of great food (including a delicious care package from home) and watched plenty of sport. Read on to find out what made our High / Low.