Jack and Mel's Adventures: November 2012

Various Descriptions

'Wendy's launches poutine nationwide.

OAKVILLE, ON, April 25, 2012/CNW/ - Canada has a national sport, a national animal and two official languages but we do not have a national dish, until now. Wendy is bringing a Quebec classic across our nation by adding Poutine to its menu. To highlight Canadians' love affair with this favourite delicacy, it is launching an online 'Poutition' to make it the national dish of Canada.

Building on its iconic fries, cut from whole potatoes, cooked skin-on,

served hot and crispy with a sprinkle of sea salt, Wendy's Poutine adds fresh Canadian cheese curds (a Poutine must!) and is covered in the brand's rich Poutine sauce. The delicious marriage of flavours melts together to create a truly Canadian favourite.

"Poutine is a dish that has symbolic importance for many Canadians," said Ron Baugh, Senior Vice President, Wendy's Restaurants of Canada. "So we're asking people to join the conversation. Poutine is perfect when you want to indulge in a hearty, truly Canadian dish.' The mouth-watering new Poutine is available now at Wendy's locations across Canada for $3.99 and is also available for $2.20 as a side upgrade in a combo. Wendy's continues to sell its classic fries, chili and oven-baked potatoes as other side options, and is also pleased to offer its new chili cheese fries.'

Welland Canal

The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Canada that extends 42 km (26 mi) from Port Weller, Ontario, on Lake Ontario, to Port Colborne, Ontario, on Lake Erie. As a part of the St. Lawrence Seaway, this canal enables ships to ascend and descend theNiagara Escarpment and to bypass Niagara Falls. The southern terminus of the Welland Canal on Lake Erie, located at Port Colborne, is 99.5 meters (326.5 feet) higher than the northern terminus of the Canal at Port Weller on Lake Ontario. This canal includes eight ship locks, each of which is 24.4 meters (80 feet) wide by 233.5 meters (766 feet) long. The Garden City Skyway passes over the canal, restricting the maximum height of the masts of the ships allowed on this canal to 35.5 meters (116.5 feet). All other highway or railroad crossings of the Welland Canal are either movable bridges (of the vertical lift or bascule bridge types) or subterranean tunnels. The maximum

permissible length of a ship in this canal is 225.5 meters (740 feet). It takes ships an average of about eleven hours to traverse the entire length of the Welland Canal.

History

First Welland Canal

Main article: First Welland Canal

The Welland Canal Company was incorporated in 1824 by William Hamilton Merritt, in part to provide a regular flow of water for his watermills.

Second Welland Canal - In 1839 the government of Upper Canada approved the purchase of shares in the canal company in response to the company's continuing financial problems in the face of the continental financialpanic of 1837

Third Welland Canal - In 1887, a new shorter alignment was completed

between St. Catharines and Port Dalhousie. One of the most interesting

features of this third Welland Canal was the Merritton Tunnel on the Grand

Trunk Railway line that ran under the canal at Lock 18. Another tunnel, nearby, carried the canal over a sunken section of the St David's Road. The new route had a minimum depth of 4.3 m (14 ft) with 26 stone locks, each 82.3 m (270 ft) long by 13.7 m (45 ft) wide. Even so, the canal was still too small for many boats

Fourth (current) Welland Canal - Construction on the current cana egan in 1913 and was completed in 1932. The route was again changed north of St. Catharines, now running directly north to Port Weller. In this configuration, there are eight locks, seven at the Niagara Escarpment and the eighth, a guard lock, at Port Colborne to adjust with the varying water depth in Lake Erie. The depth was now 7.6 m (25 ft), with locks 233.5 m (766 ft) long by 24.4 m (80 ft) wide.

This canal is officially known now as the Welland Ship Canal

Fifth - (proposed but uncompleted) Welland Canal

In the 1950s, with the building of the present St. Lawrence Seaway, standard depth of 8.2 m (27 ft) was adopted. The 13.4-kilometre (8.3 mi) long Welland By-pass, built between 1967 and 1972, opened for the 1973 shipping season, providing a new and shorter alignment between Port Robinson and Port Colborne and by-passing downtown Welland. All three crossings of the new alignment—one an aqueduct for the Welland River—were built as tunnels. Around the same time, the Thorold Tunnel was built at Thorold and several bridges were removed.

These projects were to be tied into a proposed new canal, titled the

Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in one large superlock. While land for the project was expropriated and the design finalized, the project never got past the initial construction stages and has since been shelved. The present (4th) canal is scheduled to be replaced by 2030, almost exactly 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season, in 1830, of the original canal.

Dear All

You can view My Blog
http://www.jackandmeladventures.blogspot.ca/ and may be you can put .com at the end instead of ca.

Hope you all are well.Those of you who are reading this may probably say what a busy person I am. Well since coming to Canada we have really been busy in many spheres social, holidays, family and faith.

This year has been declared the Year of Faith by the Pope and this commenced in a big way all round the world on 11th October. The Pope has urged all Catholics to strengthen their Faith by studying it deeply. In the beautiful Hamilton Cathedral we attended a service by Bishop Cosby and a presentation "Challenges and Opportunities For Living the Gospel Today.

Now that we are approaching Senior Age we become ideal invitees for Retirement parties. A relative Tony retired after 40 years of dedicated service for the kidney unit in Hamilton. It was a wonderful occasion with family around.

As part of our commitment to deepen our faith we have been involved in running a Life in the Spirit Seminar with our regular prayer group. We were really overwhelmed by the interest shown with about 40 people attending the 7 weekly sessions. The 'Mother's Prayer Group' held at my place on Thursday morning consist of 4 mothers - one Chinese, one Hungarian, one Canadian and me - I mean ethnicity although they are Canadian. It is new but we get a lot from praying for all mothers, husbands, children teachers and of course other intentions.

I fondly remember my Mother's Prayer Group in Reading.

Over the weekend of 18th October we attended a fulfilling Retreat in Windsor (Ontario) preached by Fr Philip Scott from Peru. We have yet to meet someone who is so tuned with God that he can relate incident after incident where he has felt The Presence of God. Born to an American mother and a Scottish Father he was brought up in Peru and now ministers in the deep jungle particular particularly with youth. Look at his website.

In October we met up in Toronto with one of Maryann's friend who is a Journalist. It was great talking to her and getting all the news of their circle of friends. As part of the Canadian experience we treated her to Poutine and chips - you can not leave Canada without tasting Poutine!!

Why is poutine a symbol of Canada?

For the same reason naan bread is associated with India and Gyros with Greece- because it's a food that was invented in Canada. While it originated in Quebec, it has become popular throughout the provinces and territories and one can buy it in any province. It's also associated with Canada because it's not very common in other countries. More about it at the end of this letter.

Maryann arrived on the 23rd October and John on the 25th. I had cooked various dishes for them which they thoroughly enjoyed eating. It was a joy to see them doing so. Jack had arranged a car for Friday for Maryann from a local firm. When we got there all they had was 5.2 liter truck. Maryann being the adventurous type thought that was a challenge so after taking a trial run round the block with the bloke behind the counter agreed to take it. I was terrified and John laughed

when he had to hoist me up and down into the car throughout the day as it was too high for my bad knee but Maryann got in and drove us to Welland Canal - description right below.

It was a lovely trip as Maryann and John enjoyed every bit of the history plus got to see a ship passing through one of the locks. We drove to Niagara on the Lake which is a small touristy town. It is famous for Shaw plays through out the summer. Last year John, Jack and I went to see a play but this time there was absolutely no time. The shops are unique and a lot of tourists goes there and it reminds me of Windsor in UK. It has its charm and we love just strolling there. The food places are nice and we went to one. Whilst we were choosing our dishes a young girl who was working there approached John and said to him - Are you John from England? he said 'Yes' and she said 'I was on your guided tour of London'. How strange to be

recognized right across the ocean. Look for the picture...

On Saturday the 27th October Nicky came in the morning to do my hair and we were all on time to leave home for Faye's wedding. In spite of rain, we were full of spirits and everything went off very well. To me it was a lovely wedding. We enjoyed the food, company and music too. The next day we were invited to the Wedding Brunch too.

On Monday 29th Oct we took Jack's car, dropped him to work and drove to Kingston and took The 1000 island cruise. It's fascinating to weave in and around these islands in the St Lawrence river. The middle of the river is also the US border. Many of the islands (there are over 1000) have holiday cottages and one has a replica castle. We arrived in Ottawa at Trevor and Kathleen's at 6.30 pm. Good timing. Their child Ben is Maryann's God son. We were all welcomed with great warmth.

The next day we drove into downtown Ottawa, visited Byward market, had coffee, looked at some interesting shops, went to Memorial Hill, toured the Parliament, walked to the top of the Peace Tower of Parliament House - the view from the top is fantastic. I had already done the tour of the Parliament in my previous visit so I walked around and enjoyed the scenes from the Parliament across to the Quebec side. Being Autumn the colors were stunning. The weather stayed warm whilst Toronto was battered by hurricane Sandy. Notre Dame Basilica is beautiful with stained glass which is very impressive and the ceiling is in blue.

The US Embassy looks like a submarine. By the way all these are repeats from my previous visit which is being repeated again because of Maryann and John's visit. I must say that I did not see this face on the tower before at The Parliament on my visit. I found it amusing. We treated ourselves to Beaver Tails - a deep fried dough shaped flat like a beaver tail and deep fried and come in a variety of flavors. It is yummy! Trevor and Kathleen treated Maryann and us to a lovely Steak meal to celebrate her Birthday which was on the first of November. We left Ottawa on the 31st and drove back via Lock Complex at Jone's Fall, The Champlain Statue and various sculptures which were interesting. We picked Jack from work at 6 pm then drove straight to Mississauga for Halloween Trick and Treating with all the cousins. It is done in a big way in Canada. You will see from the pictures. Maryann was present

for it last year but John is more for Halloween as he faithfully carried on from Reading into London till this year when he was in Canada. He enjoyed it thoroughly.

1st November we went to church as it was ALL SAINTS DAY AND it was MARYANN's Birthday. She was very touched when Fr Oehring gave her a Blessing. Nicky took us to the Go Train as we were meeting John Grant and Rosemary for lunch in Downtown Toronto at their Granite club. John insisted in doing so. Maryann and John warmed to them. Then we took the subway to Queens to visit The Elgin Garden. Whilst we were walking down the road John recognized another young girl from his tour. They exchanged numbers and emails as she was eager
to catch up with John and news. Coming back to Elgin, it was indeed a lovely tour of how the theatre was .. read below. We then went to watch a play called The End Game which Maryann wanted to see and then to a yummy Korean Meal.

2nd November being another important day in the church calendar - ALL SOULS DAY - After Mass Laura my English friend took me to a restaurant called MO's Family Restaurant where you can have ALL DAY BREAKFASTS - it is really worth going and for as little as $5 you can enjoy yourself. Maryann had pancakes which came in a form of a TOWER (I could not believe when some one in the church told me about the portions) well I believed when I saw it. John had 3 eggs and you name it - it was with bacon etc. I treated Laura as she is always doing me favours too. Then Laura dropped Maryann and John to the Go Train so they had time with each other in DownTown Toronto. In the evening John went to meet the girl they met and Maryann met Jack and came home. We packed and cleaned the house as Saturday the 3rd was our last day in Oakville.

3rd November we woke up as I had a surprise for the two of them with a back massage which they thoroughly enjoyed then we visited Jack's cousin and family, then Shushi, and last minute Tablet (pc) shopping for John, Mass and at the end of the Mass John and I came home. My niece Adelle and family and most of the guests (most relation) were already gathered inside the house as I had left the key in the letter box. The house was in darkness and when Maryann came, she said why is the house in darkness and there goes John with the other little children to scare her and wish her Happy Birthday. It was a surprise and although I was mentally stessed it was great to know that she loved it. I am

ever so grateful to all the guests loved ones of course for supporting me and bringing a dish each. The party went off very well, John made a lovely speech as usual and Nicky being her Birthday she was requested to stay and cut the cake and have a nice time with us. The party of course ended at 10pm as we were flying early the next morning in two different direction - Maryann and John back to England, Jack and I to China. More of that in another email and blog.

Hope you enjoyed reading this. Please do keep in touch.

The weather here keeps changing from 0 deg to -1 and so on.

With love

Jack and Mel

The pictures are right below

The Elgin Theatre

The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre (EWG) is one of the most beautiful theatre complexes in the world, and the world’s last operating double-decker theatre – with two separate and distinctive stacked theatres.

The EWG – a National Historic Site owned and operated by the Ontario Heritage Trust – is located in the heart of downtown Toronto, close to shopping, accommodations and public transit, with ample parking facilities within walking distance.

The EWG is dedicated to providing theatre-goers with the best in Canadian and international entertainment – from musicals, comedies and concerts to dramas, operas and films. It also offers an excellent opportunity to combine special events and corporate entertaining with attendance at one of our great performances – an evening to remember for you and your guests.

Explore the EWG on one of our guided public and group tours. Numerous exhibits and displays are located throughout the building, providing an insight into the history and restoration of the EWG.

One of the EWG’s greatest treasures, discovered during the restoration, is the world's largest collection of vaudeville scenery – hand-painted flats and drops dating from 1913. Three restored pieces, including the magnificent Butterfly and Scarab Scenery Flats, are on display.