O, Canada!

From Montréal, I made my way to Canadian province #6: Ontario! First, I spent a couple of days in the rural town of McDonald's Corners, about an hour west of Ottawa. A year ago at my parents' annual 4th of July party, I was talking to S, a friend of my mom's, about my travel plans. Turns out S herself is Canadian! So we have been exchanging e-mails all year about my Canada plans, and she also connected me with her sister, J, who has lived in every far corner of Canada you can imagine and was full of advice and info about the north, especially. J also invited me to visit her at her home in McDonald's Corners if she was around when I came through town. As luck would have it, I was able to get there just before she went on vacation for a month--and S and her husband happened to be visiting at that time as well. We had a terrific time together, visiting the Saturday morning market (homemade sticky buns,  fresh coffee, even a wood-fired pizza stand, oh my!)....

...making a stop at the town dump, locally called "the re-use" because most things that went to the dump ended up in a swapping station, where most of us found something helpful to take home with us.

We also took a walk through a beautiful reserve protecting wild orchids and pitcher plants, among other things.

And J continued to impart all sorts of amazing stories (and a slide show) about her far north adventures, convincing me that even though I have not the time and funds to do a Northwest Territories river trip or a proper Baffin Island visit this summer, I really need to return for that soon. I mean, what's not to love about a place where this is a commonly stolen street sign?:

From McDonald's Corners, I backtracked a bit to Ottawa, where I stayed with another fantastic CouchSurfing host, C. She and her friend M and I took a very scenic hike in Gatineau Park, just outside the city.

And then the next day was July 1: Canada Day! (The Canadian version of the 4th of July, for those of you as clueless about Canada as I was until very recently.) The entire city and then some converged (in red!) in downtown Ottawa (it being the national capitol and all) for the festivities.

Since I don't particularly love museums and other typical touristy cultural things that you find in places that are national capitals, this was perfect. So fun to wander the city on such a vibrant, exciting day, seeing what we could see and saying "oh well!" about the rest. In the background of this picture, some Parliament buildings.

We also met up with a couple of C's friends from Spain, and managed, even among the Canada Day chaos, to find a quiet street on which to stop for a coffee and afternoon snack, swapping travel stories and plans, and doing our part to make the world an ever-smaller place.