ten things to do in peterborough, ontario

I have been lazy lately and lulled by the site of green tomatoes slowly growing in my garden. A little sun might be nice, however, to actually ripen them up.

All this percipitation brings to mind the summer of 1992, when it rained 16 weekends in a row, and I walked around Peterborough with an umbrella practically implanted under my arm.

But there were sunny times then too, when my bare feet took to the sidewalk and I sat on the patio at the Only Cafe, sipping honey-coloured pints of ale (not at the same time, mind you. You know the rule: no shirts, no shoes, no service, and even in those post-Gwen Jacobs days, I was still pretty attached to wearing my top). If the patio was even built by then… I might be getting my memories confused but in the interests of creative non-fiction, I reserve the right.

Suffice it to say that I equate the town of Peterborough with easy-going summer-time days and am looking forward to an upcoming journey to those eastern Ontario parts. If you’re in the province and you’re looking for a local-ish getaway, get thee to Peterborough. And if you’ve never been to this artsy-fartsy riverside town, here are ten fun things to do (well, fun from my own experience), in no particular order.

1. Hit the Peterborough Folk Festival – the free, all-day Saturday event in late August features loads of bands on various stages, an artisan village, workshops, psychic readings, a beer tent and more, all in a bucolic setting beside the Otonobee River. The whole thing starts downtown on Thursday night, and don’t miss the pub crawl on Friday – the best way to see both the city’s thriving musical culture and its great pubs and restaurants, including the Montreal House and the Gordon Best Theatre (pictured above), on top of the Only Cafe.
2. Did you know that this city was once a canoe capital? For over a hundred years (1850 – 1960), factories like the Peterborough Canoe Company and the Rice Lake Canoe Company pumped out the iconic Canadian vessel. Practice your patriotism and go to the Canadian Canoe Museum to learn more.
3. Speaking of boats – get in one. Climb aboard a faux riverboat on Little Lake and learn a bit about the long holidaying history of the Trent Severn Waterway as you rise from one level to another in the over-a-century-old Peterborough Lift Lock.
4. See some art. For awhile I worked at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, researching artists, writing press releases and generally being amazed by this lovely lake-side gallery that I’d only visited once before then for a Cultural Studies class excursion.
5. Speaking of class, anyone interested in architecture and/or higher learning should take a walk around the campus of Trent University. I decided to go there because it reminded me so much of the rock slabs and open spaces of Northern Ontario. Oh, and its reputation spoke to my hippiesque sensibilities.
6. One of the other things I loved to do in the Peterpatch was take my moody self and head to the cemetery. On the edge of Little Lake, this pocket of parkland and gravestones is a great place to do some thinking. If being surrounded by dead people and silence isn’t your thing, take a tour with the Trent Valley Archives. Offered every Sunday, from 4 to 5 pm, these tours educate on a certain themes (Their Spirit Lives On in July, August features Tragic Tales). Tickets are $10 per person. For more information call (705) 745-4404. The archives is also doing other cool stuff, like historical pubcrawls. Only in Peterborough!
7. Years back, some friends of mine and I packed up our lawn-chairs and headed down to Del Crary Park to see Buffy Sainte-Marie FOR FREE. She was playing the Festival of Lights. This year, if you’ve been wondering just what happened to Glass Tiger, you can ask them yourself when they hit the stage on Saturday, July 26th. Other upcoming performers include Ron Sexsmith, Michael Burgess and Justin Rutledge. Get there early!
8. The first time I ever visited a farmers’ market was in Peterborough. Once, a little boy with a dirty face was carrying around a mess of squalling kittens in a cardboard box filled with straw. Of course I took one, but that’s another story… Active since 1825, the Peterborough Farmers’ Market is just as great as Orillia’s, with loads of vendors, lots of music and that same happy spirit.
9. Writer Margaret Laurence described the Otonabee as a “river that flows both ways” in her novel The Diviners. It’s true. The currents flow back and forth like a weaving. Paying homage to this local natural environment, the Ecology Park is a must-see for anyone who loves the earth. Follow a nature trail, learn about native species and pick up some skills about effective composting and organic gardening. A great place to bring the kids!
10. After all is said and done, head to Hunter Street and grab a pint or a giant cookie or just a slightly- cinnamon-scented coffee at the Only Cafe, home-away-from-home for underground artists, actors, writers, addicts and those wanting to bump elbows with the town’s artsy elite. When I lived in the Patch, I spent more time here than anywhere else, and have the journal entries to prove it.

If you’re from Peterborough or, like me, a long-time ex-pat who still misses the magical city, what do you do for fun within its boundaries?

Photo of Gordon Best Theatre (above the Only Cafe) by daniel_photographer

Photo of Ptbo Lift Lock by Derek Purdy

Posted in Ontario, Recommended | 8 Comments »

manitoulin island memorial

Wow, what a weekend.

This was the one where my brother and sister-in-law drove me out to the kennel to drop off Ollie, Jason came home from class and we drove north for five hours, picked up bug dope and cream for morning coffee at a Giant Tiger in a town smelling of sulpher and crossed over the old wooden single-lane swing bridge (as Jason said, “I’ve never seen pot holes in wood”) to rumble onto the Island, that place of family legend and poetry.

The first night we ate fried fish on the edge of Ice Lake, surrounded by the warm reception of half-second-cousins I’d met only occasionally and sipped Budweiser out of wet bottles and watched the kids become instant friends, playing tag across the large green lawn.

The next day, we gathered at the community hall for my Uncle Clive’s memorial. With his wife, kids, sister (my mom), nieces and nephew (my sister, my brother and I), friends from New Mexico and New York and my great aunt’s kids and once-removed second cousins from Wiarton and Islanders and other family and friends, we read bits and pieces of his writing and told stories about all the antics he’d so often get up to and recited poetry and ate Tim Bits, Scotch mints, smoked fish, butter tarts, potato chips and my Grandmother’s oatmeal cookies (made by me, from her recipe) in his memory. Near the end, I slipped outside and closed my eyes to feel the steady wind running across the wide fields of earth over limestone shale.

Out at Tobacco Lake, where my long-dead grandfather’s initials are carved into a beam into the old camp called Leaning Spruce (so named for the tree pictured above), we piled into three motorboats and two kayaks and traveled across the lake to a place Clive loved.

On shore, my mom picked up his ashes, held in a Japanese paper box, and said “he’s so heavy.” All hail the Chisholm wit: my cousin Caitlin instantly quipped, “he ain’t heavy, he’s your brother.” Single-malt scotch poured on the box and the bottle passed around and our voices singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Back at the cabin, in a half-hour of abandonment and cathartic glee, we sparked up some cigars and waved the setting sun into the darkening pocket of the horizon, an Island tradition he started, fun-loving (and slightly crazy) man that he was. And we said goodbye again, the (first, second) third and final time, to leave him on/in the island he loved, held in the ripple of water, in the long breath of the wind.

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

the pastoral outpost of door county

Wisconsin isn’t really that far.

And, on a recent trip there, I was surprised to find that it is actually a lot closer than I thought. To my heart, that is.

Driving through lush forests and green farm fields, I’d occasionally spot ribs of white limestone sticking up through the earth’s surface. It seemed a lot like another place I know quite well – the Bruce Peninsula, where my mom was raised and my grandmother lived. In her backyard, there were cherry trees. And cherries are so hot in Wisconsin’s Door County we ate them every day, in various forms, at least once.

Turns out, this bucolic back-to-the-lander’s paradise, edged as it is in historic fishing villages and spotted with a mix of lighthouses and inland art studios, is the western edge of the Niagara Escarpment, a stony arch that stretches from New York State, into Niagara (Niagara Falls is actually water dropping over it), through Ontario, along the Bruce Peninsula, Manitoulin Island, and the southern edge of Michigan’s U.P., before it drops down to create Door County. For all you visual learners (like me), here’s a picture.

Being there was a bit like going home and especially since I got to hang out with some great people, like my new friend Margo, who describes this perfect vacation retreat in a bit more depth.

Posted in Recommended, United States | 8 Comments »

would you like flies with that?

Every now and then, at dinner parties, over hors d’oeuvres and desserts, I like to raise the question: what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? The answers are memorable. One friend snacked on groundhog in Ecuador while another sampled rotten shark, a delicacy in Iceland.

And then there are the bugs.

It seems a lot of people have eaten bugs while traveling. While in South America, I snarfed down a giant maggot sauteed with wild onions before being baked in a banana leaf.

A long-time later, I don’t exactly crave it, but the taste-test wasn’t so bad. And lots of people have tried chocolate ants or crunchy locusts.

Since only some twenty percent of the world doesn’t eat bugs as part of their regular diet, eating creepy-crawlies while on vacation is a common “when in Rome” activity. But some enterprising cooks, biologists, locavores and environmental activitists are starting to point out that a snack of insects is actually a very smart source of plentiful and sustainable protein.

I go into depth in my latest piece for Celsias.com, a story that made me ask myself ‘could I do it?’… What do you think? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten and could you do that dish on a daily basis?

Posted in Food, Going Green | 10 Comments »