On Friday the third of September, I left England in order to go the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Certain people have pestered me into writing about it, so here's what happened on my journey.

Leaving England

My flight left Manchester Airport at quarter-to-seven on the morning of Friday 7th September, but I had to check in two hours before hand. I was going to get a late train over the previous night, but my dad offered to drive me so, having watched the dénoument of the BBC programme 'Bedtime', I got about two and a half hours of sleep before getting up at 1:45 am. With the roads being rather quiet at that time in the morning (except for HGVs doing overnight deliveries) and my dad's driving (I think he was only got by one speed camera) we arrived with quite a while to spare, so I read some of a Robert Goddard novel I'd been given.

When I came to check in, it turned out that both my bags were too oddly shaped (one was a rucksack, the other a trunk with a set of wheels strapped to it), so the bloke at the desk stuck a few stickers on them and sent me to another bit. The remaining time to take-off passed reasonably quickly, whether because of the Guardian I'd bought myself, because I was too excited to be bored, or because airports operate in a separate space-time continuum I don't know. If I'd had one penny more I could have got myself a bottle of Oasis to drink as well, but my fellow passengers obviously considered asking people for a 1p piece to be a sign of madness, so I gave up and settled for a coke can.

First stage of the flight was to Copenhagen. I know that's a strange route to Canada but, for some reason, one flight costs more than two; perhaps if I'd made 42 stops along the way they might have only charged 56p. Mind you, I can see why the Manchester-Copenhagen leg might have been offered cheaply as it was hardly oversubscribed; I think we had an entire row of four seats each for the most part, which does beg the question of why the legroom was so poor. The flight included one cold meal. As a Vic and Bob fan, I was amused to discover that Scandinavian airlines consider Rivita to be an important part of breakfast. With that there was some cheese and salady stuff and I got some tea as well. I think there was also something that appeared less than appetising and which I left, but I can't be sure as the meals have sort of merged into one in my memory.

Denmark

Denmark was sort of weird. Not the place itself, but being in a country for less than an hour, just long enough to find the departure gate (I was actually checked in for both flights at Manchester, clever eh?), read some more of a novel previously owned by an Assistant Community Editor¹ and pester a few people about whether my bags would be transferred to the onward flight or not (they would be). For some reason I avoided using those moving walkway things that you only see in airports and fifties versions of the year 2001, which was just as well as they would have taken me past the gate. I remember that part of the airport afforded a good view of a large suspension bridge, which I think was the one that links Danish islands together before (if I recall correctly) going on to Sweden; I wasn't there long enough to find out, though².

Crossing the Atlantic

The plane I was now on was owned by Air Canada (they have some sort of arrangement with Scandinavian airlines) and was a lot swisher than the previous one. Of course the very swish seats we saw on boarding belonged to first class and so we all had to head down the plane. Quite a long way down the plane. I heard one bloke express disbelief that the plane was as long as it was. This was probably something of an optical illusion, due to it's being just seven seats and two aisles wide.

After sitting down and putting my seatbelt on (we were told to do so in two languages, so it must have been important), I had a look at the in-flight magazine, which turned out to be boring (okay, so Red Dwarf did warn me). The TV section wasn't terribly inspiring either, giving 'blockbuster' hits that I can only assume were not released in the UK because the producers were embarrassed at the amount of money they made from merely the American market. There were a few promising looking ones, though, but Spy Kids was availiable only on flights to Hawaii, Shrek only to those travelling from Canada to Europe and American Graffiti only on flights to Vancouver, or so the mag said, but then American Graffiti was announced as being on, so that was something.

Headphones were duly distributed around the plane (they had a weird double connection at the end which wouldn't plug-in anywhere else to disuade anyone from half-inching them) in time to watch the previous day's Canadian news, followed by the previous day's Canadian news in French (It was called 'nouvelles', though I learnt at school that 'les actualités' was French for 'the news'. Turns out that it's different in Canadian French). I tuned into one of the music channels instead. The music channels themselves were odd in that the magazine gave a list of which songs would be played in each of two hour-long programmes on each channel, which were repeated in an endless loop (except when they were interrupted by an announcement from the captain).

It was around this point that breakfast was served, although having been awake for something like seven hours and bearing in mind that this was my third meal of the day (I ate before leaving home) it didn't feel like breakfast. The food here was no better and Rivita was still included (so it turns out not to be a Scandinavian Airlines thing, oh well) or rather a cheap alternative to Rivita; its having been left in the packet was a giveaway. Drinks were brought round with most people going for lemonade etc., but on seeing a metal pot with a spout, I asked 'Is that tea?' and got told it wasn't, but I'd be fetched some. Unfortunately the tea came with coffee cream or something, which didn't work at all. Fortunately later on tea was officially served and that came with milk and in fact didn't taste too bad. I got through large amounts of it.

As I said before, the meals have sort of merged in my mind, so I'll say no more about the marginally palatable things with which I was presented. Instead I'll say what I did like: some of the music was good (there was a programme dedicated to modern music from the Pacific rim; I don't think I've ever heard any Taiwanese rock before) and American Graffiti was certainly worth watching. In addition to which I'm still the sort of person who gets excited about flying (I haven't done it much, okay?), so I did keep looking out of the window. I sort of wished I'd asked for a window seat and I expect the person next to me wished the same thing. Much of the time what I saw was cloud (the weather was obviously quite turbulent as we were frequently told to sit down and belt up, mostly in English, but with a French one put in whenever someone reminded the captain), but there were some nice views of the ocean. Later on, we flew over Canada (New Brunswick or somewhere, I'm guessing), which was very flat, so much so that I didn't immediately realise that we were over land, with thousands of little and not-so-little lakes abounding.

Then after another lot of cloud and announcements telling us to sit down (at one point even the stewards and stewardesses were told to sit down, which you'd think might worry some people). I looked out of the window again to see a shoreline. The fact that it wasn't until the captain told us we were approaching Toronto when I realised that this was the shore of Lake Ontario I put down to tiredness and certainly has nothing to do with my being too stupid to realise how big the lake actually is.

Before landing, we were handed round cards to fill in (I think Canadian citizens were exempt from this) and later hand to passport checking people at the airport. These were printed in English on one side and French on the other, which I would later discover to be the case with most, if not all, official forms in Canada. After this, charity envelopes were given out to put any spare foreign currency into, so I deposited my remaining 26p, which will go towards taking some underpriviliged child to Disneyland or something like that. Not very far towards, I admit, but it's something. There was another bit of card explaining customs restrictions and I was slightly put out to discover that I could have brought all my whisky with me; the information I'd found on the website of some official Canadian thingy had only said what returning Canadians were allowed to bring, the limits for foreigners were, as I now discovered, precisely the same. Oh well, next time.

In Toronto

After landing, the plane seemed to erupt into chaos as every single passenger tried to retrieve their hand-held baggage at the same time. Being near the back of the plane, I decided to sit in the seats the cabin crew had used until it calmed down a bit.

This would have left me at the back of the queue, except that I realised the far aisle had fewer people in it (I think those in the middle had mainly moved my way, since the door was on my side of the plane), so in the end I was merely near the back. I managed another sneak ahead through customs, because nearly everyone joined the first few queues we came to when the ones further across the room were a lot shorter. From here I headed for immigration, where a friendly Canadian stamped my passport whilst explaining that he'd been to England and half his relatives were currently there or something.

So to the baggage reclaim. Some helpful member of staff was unloading cases, so mine were waiting for me on the floor (together) and another man was taking deposits for those little trolleys you get at airports and stations (thus fighting the phenomenon which gives every major city a cart with 'Not to be removed from DARLINGTON station' written on it). He took a $10 bill (note) and gave me a $5 bill and two $2 pieces. So far, so painless. I was, of course, fascinated to see what the Canadian currency looked like, which was why I wasn't happy when the machine that took the trolley off me refused to give me a dollar in return. After fighting with it for a bit and attracting the attention of a young boy (who was no more successful than I) and a member of staff (who promptly vanished), someone else came to return their trolley and told me I hadn't put mine through properly. He then grabbed a loose one from down the line, which wasn't mine, and pushed it through, releasing a dollar coin, which is a strange eleven-sided thingy.

My main concern now was the transference of myself and my belongings 35 miles to Hamilton. I know there was a bus from Toronto to the university, but stupidly I hadn't made a note of the actual details. What looked like the tourist information office was closed and those leaflets that were availiable generally proclaimed the delights of zoos rather than giving bus times. There was a little booth open, where I asked about getting to Hamilton and was sold a ticket to Central Station. I believe selling tickets to Central Station was the main job of the lady in the booth. The coach, when it had arrived, loaded up and left the airport, began by heading in the same direction as signs to the Queen Elizabeth Way (major highway that goes all the way to Niagara) and Hamilton, but then unfortunately turned the other way, so I was actually heading away from my destination.

Central Station is a large impressive mock-grecian building, which is quite distinctive. The only trouble is that it doesn't appear to have 'Central Station' written on it at any point and so I still had to have it pointed out for me. After joining the wrong queue, the one for normal trains and not GO-trains (stands for Government of Ontario and I think is similar to the Newcastle Metro or London Underground, in that it's underground in the city centres, but tends to run at ground level elsewhere. It's not quite as 'turn up and go' as those, however, and I had to wait for nearly an hour. The train itself is a a huge double-decker green thing and is not really designed to have huge cases carted onto it, but I managed, taking up two seats. By this point I was pretty tired and in the state where I just talk to random people about nothing much, which probably means most of the commuters in the Toronto area now think I'm mad.

Hamilton!

The GO-train station is in Downtown Hamilton, within walking distance of the university, but as far as I'm concerned, not within suitcase-lugging distance, so I decided to take a taxi. Someone directed me out of one of the doors of the station, where I was faced with an empty-looking bus park (I have since discovered that GO run an inter-city coach service, including the one direct to the university, so perhaps if I'd asked when I bought my train ticket they would have given me a coach one instead) and a set of steps that I headed up. There didn't seem to be any sort of taxi rank here, indeed I wasn't even on the main road. Again, I shall use tiredness as an excuse, but it took me a while to realise that I had been directed to a taxi firm. Just then , however, a taxi pulled up onto the petrol station forecourt quite near me, so I headed over to get a lift.

The taxi driver was very helpful and friendly and spent the journey talking to me about England and explaining some stuff about Canada (I think he was partly English, but then I'm becoming convinced that all Canadians have relatives in the UK) before dropping me as close as it was possible to get to the residence. He also apologised for the heavy traffic, but they were doing some roadworks and I was there at the wrong time of day. I didn't tell him that if he thought that was busy , he should see Leeds in the rush hour. I was impressed that the trip cost only eight dollars, but then I suppose it wasn't eversuch a long way. Despite being happy with my journey, I suspect (given what I have learnt since) that I offended the driver by not tipping him. In Yorkshire we don't tip³ and I just didn't think of it, okay?

You may be thinking, 'Well, here is is at the residence and we've heard so much about how tired he is, so it's find the room and straight to sleep, right?' If you are, you're wrong. Admittedly that was the plan (although if it hadn't taken so long for me to get from Toronto to Hamilton I would have informed the maths and the graduate studies departments that I was there, as it was, they'd probably all gone home), but it ganged aglee. At the check-in desk, I was told that I should have been there earlier in the week and that all the records had been chucked out (this was all nicely detailed in the moving-in pack that they had sent, but I hadn't received⁴. Of course, it wasn't the fault of the poor student volunteer behind the desk, who found me a discounted hotel room, let me use the computer she had to email the housing office, directed me to the bus stop and let me leave my big case in the office until my room was sorted.

So it was that I found myself back Downtown at Econo-Lodge, which may have a terrible name, but does have nice rooms, one of which I found myself in after the confused bloke in reception confirmed that the third floor was only two above me and also pointed out that I only needed to press the relevant button in the lift. After a shower, I decided I was actually more hungry than tired, having not eaten since the aeroplane and headed back to the university, on foot this time.

Upon arrival back on campus, I saw some people under a big sign reading 'SOCS' and spoke to them. They explained that this was the Society for Off-Campus Students and tried to direct me to the Food Court, before two of their number volunteered to show me. The food court has various counters serving different sorts of food. Being in North America, I decided to go for some of the local cuisine and had a burger and fries (chips). Despite my hunger, I didn't manage to finish this, possibly because my stomach had been thrown out by all the weird meal-times while in transit. I was abandonned during this meal, but not before I had been invited to a party the following night. After walking back to my hotel, I went to sleep on top of the covers, it being so warm.

Okay, so that was one day. Long, wasn't it? Anyhow, the following day I did get my room and I did go to the party, where I didn't recognise anyone. Anything else can wait until another article.

Bagpuss

04.10.01. Front Page

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