Tuesday 21 October 2014

The pleasure of Ontario

Four excellent places to stop and enjoy autumnal Ontario...

Deep River, Orillia, Burlington & Lakefield.

In Deep River, we started with a lunchtime performance to lots of schoolchildren, before the evening show... they were clearly very excited... I suspect they may have decided before we showed up that we might be boring... we showed them! 
Lots of hilarity...

There was a 15-minute Q&A after this; one question was how old we are (clearly... very!); Richard asked them to guess our combined age... 736 was the loudest and first guess!  How very Old Testament.

We saw this wonderful sign in a shop-window... presumably it's all about Thanksgiving (which has just happened over here) excess... funny ol' habits here in Canada!


Splendid day here, and Jim, the light and sound man made everything sound wonderful!

Then on to Orillia & the excellent Orillia Opera House - gloriously shortened to (you guessed it!):

OOH

Another excellent place in which to sing and with the Jazz Festival over three days when we are here, awash with music in every bar, café and spare space in the town... great.  We heard a super trio over lunch (with real espresso). Great bookshops too...
The fantastic autumnal colours are all over the place too - our hotel was here on a lake by a park - from deep reds through orange and brown to yellow... excellent.

Then two gigs on one day, a lunchtime at Burlington Arts Centre, followed by an interview onstage by Barbara Budd - esteemed Canadian actress and CBC presenter... she was very professional of course and teased out all our secrets!  The audience tittered...

...and quickly on to Lakefield - return visit after almost exactly 4 years...last time we got a puncture here and then had our internal flight cancelled because of fog & had to drive for miles & miles the next day.... no such problems this time!  Lovely to be back (and they said this almost never happens)... We were looked after as before, in grand style and enjoyed Lakeside's cuisine and wine.  The Hall was wonderful to sing in too...  Some members of the audience cheated and already knew all the words to The Lambeth Walk... I still made them have a practice, of course.

Mike stopped off for a bit of electioneering (I don't know where he finds the time)...


We then found out on the way to Québec what Bob was going to do in January....
Following Mike's lead, here he is canvassing for office:- to be Mayor of Kingston [ON] - outside the beautifully apportioned Wendy's car park-cum-rubbish tip.... All the Best, mate!


So here we are in Montréal, one of our favourite cities... three concerts to come here at St Jean sur Richelieu, Montréal itself & Repentigny...[October 23rd - 25th]... bring it on!
Details of gigs HERE

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