What started as me wanting to revisit where I went to university turned into a great week of touring through Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa. A real walk down memory lane, plus some new adventures!
Casa Loma is a castle-style historic house built between 1911 and 1914This organ was in Maple Leaf Gardens from 1956-961 (you know those classic organ sounds at hockey games?) Was moved to Casa Loma in the 1970sBeautiful conservatoryFantastic seats! Plus the Jays won 🙂On the train to KingstonOur Kingston hotel was built as a private residence in 1841 and is now owned and operated by Queen’s UniversityReady for our tour of Kingston Penitentiary, which closed in 2013The phone roomAlthough Kingston Pen was supposedly maximum security, gen pop inmates were only locked in their cells from 11pm to 7am. The rest of the time they were working or just hanging out in their cell block. They had a fridge, microwave, tables to sit at, etc. High-profile inmates like Bernardo were kept in segregation, where they were locked up 23 hrs a day.Not exactly Alcatraz!The staircase leading to the school, metal shop, etc.Birthday ice cream in downtown KingstonWe drove out to Gananoque for a 1000 Islands day cruiseHe appears to be watching intently, but he’s actually asleepHeart Island, NY, with Boldt CastleThe castle was built in 1900 by hotel magnate George C. Boldt as a tribute to his wife, but construction halted when she died suddenly. You can tour the castle, but since it’s in New York State, you have to go thru US Customs. We didn’t bother.The SS Keewatin is an Edwardian-era steamship built in 1907 in Scotland. She’s five years older than Titanic and is the last surviving Edwardian passenger steamship. Operated by the CPR, she ferried passengers and freight across the Great Lakes for almost 60 years. She’s now a museum ship in Kingston.We were the only ones on the tour, which was pretty cool!A stateroom decorated in 1907 styleThe life jackets were made of down, so they would keep you afloat for about 15 minutes, but once they got saturated with water they would actually drag you downThese are fake plants now, but originally they were real, which led the staff to call this area “the swamp” due to the water that would spill downLooks pretty similar to a modern cruise ship dining room, except this one had the chairs bolted to the floor for stabilityWe had dinner at Queen’s University pubAll we could see of Bellevue House, which was John A. Macdonald’s home in KingstonI went to university in Ottawa and had great memories, but hadn’t been back in 25 years, so we took a hop-on hop-off tourist bus. It was a great reintroduction to the city! That’s the East Block of Parliament Hill behind us, and a bit of the Peace Tower.A shot of 24 Sussex Drive, the official home of the prime minister that no one has lived in since 2015Construction on Parliament’s Centre Block began in 2019 and will apparently run until 2032…very unfortunateIt was great to catch up with a fellow journalism grad I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years!The Diefenbunker is a massive four-storey underground nuclear fallout shelter outside of Ottawa. Built at the height of the Cold War, it served as the Central Emergency Government Headquarters to ensure the continuity of the Canadian government in the event of a nuclear strike. It was decommissioned in 1994 and is now a museum.The blast tunnel at the entrance was designed with a sharp 90-degree turn near the end to allow the intense force and shockwave of an explosion to blow straight through the length of the tunnel and out the other sideWhere the government would meetThe prime minister’s suiteThe bank vault was designed to protect Canada’s gold reserves during a nuclear attack. They host weddings here now, but I don’t get the appeal.Ice cream in the Byward MarketA view of Gatineau, Quebec, across the Ottawa RiverThe Supreme Court of Canada
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