Volume 6: Pete in Canada Part 7. Beaver Las Canada. 1 Continent, 2 Blokes, Infinite Weird Sh*t
Day 13 – Montreal to Ottawa
Today we headed off to the nations capital, a place that shared many similarities with the Australian capital. Much like the founding fathers of Australia couldn’t decide between Melbourne and Sydney, Canada shared the same problem when deciding between Toronto and Montreal. Much like Australia, they just gave up and declared a mound of dirt (quite literary in Canada’s case as the parliament sits on “Parliament Hill”) halfway between each city as the nations capital and then went about building a federal parliament on it that would forever keep that half assed decision making legacy alive. Also similar to Canberra, Ottawa’s main function seemed to be a place to stick a bunch of museums within close proximity in an attempt to give people some sort of reason to visit.
We got into Ottawa in the late afternoon and eventually caught a local bus to our Hostel. It was a refurbished old jail, in which the patrons were all housed in old prison cells holding 4 people. Hopefully this would be the only time on tour I would spend time in a jail cell, but when you embark on 50 plus straight days of drinking you’re never quite sure what could happen.
At check in we were greeted with a delightful young lass who insisted on referring to everything as “ace”. What was ace was when she said the Hostel was having a pub-crawl that night, so Brad and I signed up without evening consulting each other as we both thought it was ace. We then headed to our ace cell for the night where we discovered one of our roommates was an Aussie, whose name I proceeded to add to the growing list of names I was now forgetting.
After dumping our stuff, we got the required novelty photos of us in the jail cell before taking a short stroll to Parliament Hill to kill some time before the pub-crawl. It was there we took even more novelty photos at the “Women are persons” statues. At the monument there are five statues of the five old biddies (sorry persons) rejoicing with tea after victory in the Persons Case of 1929. The chicks (sorry persons) won a legal challenge to have women considered “persons” (and not just top sorts) under the British North America Act. In short, it now meant sheilas (sorry persons) were now eligible for appointment to the Senate and, thus, the chance to have the word “honourable” inserted before their name no matter how dishonourable a life they lived receiving bribes, kickbacks, abusing conflicts of interest, cheating on their spouse multiple times, while serving the electorate. It was probably wrong for me to get a picture of one of the women slapping me on the ass, with the wrongness only compounded by the fact I then got a picture with me with a hand on another woman’s breast, but what can I say, us person’s ain’t perfect. On the hill I picked up a copy of “Discover the Hill – Outdoor self guiding booklet” so I would have a better understanding of the surrounding buildings and monuments. Inside the booklet it discussed the John G Diefenbaker (13th Prime Minister) monument and how it showcased his “dynamism”, of the William Lyon Mackenzie King (10th Prime Minister) statue how it displayed his “dynamism”, and described George Brown (One of the fathers of Confederation) as “dynamic”. It would appear the writers of the “Discover the Hill” pamphlet would do well to discover a thesaurus.
Having taken in our daily education moment, we headed back to the hostel to tidy ourselves up for the pub-crawl. This ace night would take in 3 pubs, and while at the 2nd pub I met an Australian couple called Jo and Brad from butt fuck Queensland. They were nice, without being an overly remarkable couple, but I’ve included them in the tour diary as it is a remarkable thing that I finally remembered someone other then my own name. The pub-crawl concluded at an odd venue. It was an establishment with 3 levels, with the first 2 levels being pubs, with the top level being a nightclub. To get into the nightclub you had to wait in line, which made the decision by the less than dynamic architect to place all the toilets on the ground floor rather frustrating. When you release you’ve got a 10 minute wait to get back into a club after taking a whiz, you really take the holding capacity of your bladder to new limits. For the locals, the hike down to the ground floor and the waiting to get back in is too much. Brad was talking to some locals who found it a far more acceptable practice to piss in their now empty beer bottles under concealment of one of the many tables. Brad, being no stranger to stealth urination (on his flight over the plane hit an extended period of turbulence, meaning he had to leave his seatbelt on for a longer period than his bladder had agreed to, in a last minute accord between he and his bladder they decided his empty water bottle could meet both their needs) took to the local culture and shared this less than pleasant practice. As for me, I spent much of the night dancing with locals and taking as many pictures as possible to help me remember the night the next morning. As for the Aussie accent, it still seemed to charm all with one Brazilian chick from the hostel (yes, forget her name) letting out a near orgasmic “ooh” when I told her I was Australian. What would have been great is if I’d stayed sober enough late in the night to string together a few words aussie words to her, but much like her name, I don’t remember much of the night.
It was quite late when we went off to jail; thankfully the cell had my stuff in it so it meant I’d made it back to the hostel.
Day 14 – Ottawa
Today I spent much of the morning being awoken by numerous announcements for people to checkout before 11am. What do you expect when you hold a pub-crawl the night before? It was the first hostel I’d been in that had a PA system, no doubt a benefit you get from converting an old jail, although I doubt the PA system had been used to quell a riot in sometime. That said, the jail was still no stranger to unruly behaviour. Our aussie roommate told of how a couple of Irish blokes a few nights earlier had drunk the equivalent of the daily flow of the Ottawa River. Sometime during the night after they’d staggered back to the hostel, one of the lads had what you would call an escapee from his bowel on the floor of his cell. With the close proximity of the cells, and the way the wind flowed through each floor, let’s just say it wasn’t long before the escapee was discovered by all.
We eventually dragged ourselves out of bed at noon and headed for the Canadian Museum of Civilization as an English bird we’d met named Caz (who also happened to work at the HI hostel in Toronto) had hyped it as the best museum in Canada. And, after all, tour life is all about education and self-betterment. Inside the museum their special feature was a newly setup Pompeii exhibit. Judging by the amount of bling the residence of Pompeii used to wear I would hazard a guess and say that Mr T is a descendant of the region. It’s quite amazing to think that the big bit of Volcanic action that happened in AD89 (they know the exact year as they found a buried sun dial which had stopped at exactly a quarter past AD89) left the inhabitants of Pompeii buried for about 1700 years until someone discovered them. We also watched a dramatised video of the event, in which according to the scholars who did the research for the video must have discovered all slaves at that time had Italian accents, while their owners all had upper class English accents. Somewhat amused by that account of history, the thing that really stood in my mind was a fresco that had been dug up that depicted a woman with a jug of beer serving 2 men. Not much has changed in 2,000 years, as Brad and I would live out that fresco countless times on tour.
Still feeling the effects of last night, we chilled by watching an IMAX documentary on the habitat of the red-necked North American male; a special on NASCARs. Other exciting exhibits in the museum included the history of the Canadian Postal system (no story’s of men cutting lose with firearms, so not too exciting) and tales of Jacque Cartier and his other mates who “discovered” things that where already inhabited.
We bumped into Caz at least 2 times during the day and quickly noted she must have found us both very attractive and was stalking us (simplest answer is usually the correct one).
As this was the 2nd week of the tour, and we’d spent those 2 weeks doing our best impersonation of that Pompeii fresco, Brad and I decided tonight was going to be a non-alcohol night. Sure, I was a little disappointed given I was in sight of my 25 consecutive day drinking record, but my body was spent and longed for a 24 hour grace period from alcohol. So with that in mind, we headed off to the national parliament for the 9pm free light and sound show. The show is displayed on the actual parliament building, so it was nice to find a national parliament that actually produced something useful. It was at the conclusion of the show that we bumped into 2 chicks from the hostel. They recognised us, I didn’t recognise them, but when they asked us out for drinks I then felt obligated to learn and remember their names. One was named Marcia, a rare combination in that she was attractive and worked in IT (she from Sao Paolo), with the other chick named Esther, an English/History teacher from Stuttgart (she was a rare combination in that she that she was German and didn’t drink beer). I wasn’t going to turn down a Brazilian chick, so I kept the drinking streak alive. We talked for a few hours, using my rapier sharp wit throughout to the point where Esther referred to me as “He’s funny, he tell the jokes”. I would’ve preferred that she laughed at those jokes, instead of simply pointing out that they were jokes, but I put it down to a cultural thing as the only other conclusion would have been that I wasn’t incredibly funny.
After 2 or 3 jugs we headed back to the hostel. In what I’d call a sliding doors moment, Brad said he was hungry so I went with him while I watched the chicks head back to the hostel never to be seen again. What could have been had I have gone with the chicks to the hostel? Once again, a man’s stomach had proven to be the way to his heart.
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