An Irishman abroad

Canadian Road Trip - Part 4

CANADIAN ROAD TRIP, NOVEMBER 2002
PART FOUR

08:10
I wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare involving Kenny Rogers whooping and a-hollering and spitting on me whilst a French speaking Canadian banshee-woman screeches "We are the World" in the background.
Thank God - It was all just a terrible dream!

I suddenly realised that the bed was a lot more comfortable than the hotel's. The room was also a lot more homely than the hotel's and rather strangely, even though the curtains were closed there was still a strange brightness in the room.

I soon realised that of course I was indeed in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada! I got up and opened the curtains to a veritable winter wonderland. A few inches of snow had fallen overnight and were still continuing to fall. Even if I had have been crazy enough to drive a 12 hour round trip to see the Niagara Falls, I wouldn't have been able to - so what to do now?

My aunt was getting ready for work and I decided that I should use this as an opportunity to start my Canadian travelogue. As she headed off for work, I sat down at the PC and began to work. She was working until 2 that afternoon so that gave me a few hours to put something down. After a healthy breakfast of Special K cereal (I put this bit in for mum) I settled down to start typing.

But to be honest, and please do not take this an offence, Dear Reader, I just couldn’t be arsed. I had a hard time remembering when I had seen such a heavy snowfall, so I just wanted to get out and in to it. Half an hour later, after a quick shower, I found myself wrapped up in all my winter woollies stood out on Pitt Street, Cornwall, Ontario, Canada throwing snow balls at passing traffic, building snowmen and rolling 8 year old kids in the snow.

OK, perhaps not.

What I did do was go to the bookstore next to my aunt's and enquired if they had any books by the great Irish humour writer, Jonny Black. To which the lady (Claudette) replied no I don’t believe we do.

OK, perhaps not.

I DID go into the shop. Claudette, a lovely woman and a friend of Daphne's, was working there. I introduced myself and we got talking a bit. Because my book reserves were getting low (I was onto the last book that I had with me) I told her that I wanted to get a book to read to pass away my lonely hotel evenings. (Poor attempt at going for the sympathy vote here)
When asked what type of books I liked I told her I was reading a lot of books by my favourite comedy writers and proudly showed her the book I was reading, the aforementioned "Murphy's Law". She took the book and opened it. A look of disgust came over her face. I wondered what was wrong. I mean, sure, Colin Bateman can be a wee bit rude from time to time, but what chance was there that she would have happened to open exactly at something that would shock her so much?
"You dog ear!!!" she exclaimed, referring to the fact that to keep my place, I fold the corner of the page over on itself. I quickly changed the subject and spying some Stephen King books, I looked through these. What I didn't realise at the time was that she had gone back to the counter and got a bookmarker and placed it in the book. I didn't notice this until much later, when I opened my book to read it after another drunken night in Rosie Magoo's but more about that later.
[Daphne - I forgot to thank Claudette for this. I hope you remember to do it for me?]

Anyway, I spied the new Dean Koontz book, so I purchased this and as I bid my farewell, Claudette said a sentence which, had I not been prepared, would have sent fear down my spine.
"So I'll see you across the road for breakfast tomorrow morning!"

Thankfully Daphne had warned me of this in advance. I'm sure most of you realise by now (some more than others) that I am definitely NOT a morning person - EVER! But, Dear Reader, on Saturday Mornings, the most revered part of the week for me, this is taken to religious extremes. The culmination of a week's hard slog at the office, the time to unwind, relax, de-stress, take it easy, chill out - Saturday mornings are a time for reflection.
(The fact that, more often than not, I dragged my sorry arse into bed by about 4 on the Friday morning, then gone to work and done it all again but with more gusto on the Friday evening has absolutely nothing to do with it).

Yes, Dear Reader, every Saturday morning, Daphne and Claudette go for breakfast at 09:00 IN THE MORNING!! Disgusting, isn't it?!

I said my goodbyes and headed out into the winter wonderland that was Cornwall. I started off on the epic journey that Daphne takes to work every day. The two-minute commute. Actually it is trickier than it sounds, because the walk to the library takes you through the tattoo district of Cornwall. (Two tattoo parlours).
Yes Dear Reader, since moving into this apartment my aunt has had to endure a 'walk of temptation' at least twice a day. How she is not covered head to toe in tattoos, I will never know and I do admit to checking her knuckles for scars from the laser treatment to remove LOVE and HATE from her knuckles. But seemingly auntie Daphne is strong when it comes to this sort of temptation and is still tattoo-less.

I got to the library and logged onto a PC and started working on my travelogue. I found the library to be a more 'creative' environment (i.e. the bullshit flowed a little bit better) and soon got into this diatribe.

After Daphne finished work we had some lunch and we went to do some shopping. For the first time ever I was in a Wal-Mart. Pretty impressive stuff. CD's work out at about half the price that they are back home, so I invested in three.

Whilst in Rosie Magoo's in the afternoon the day before they were playing Country and Western Music Television (I kid you not) and in the middle of it, a big traditional band playing a mixture of Irish music and rock came on. It turns out that they are Canadian and are called Great Big Sea. Seriously good music! (As no doubt you will all have the pleasure of hearing in the near future).

Shopping completed and the weekend was fast approaching. So what to do on a Friday night in Cornwall?. Well - it seemed that for that night and that night only there was an annual trivia quiz organised by the local Rotary to raise money for charity. It was 80 dollars per team to enter and each team could have up to eight people.

Just one problem - there was only Daphne and myself who wanted to go, so we thought we would head down to the quiz on the off chance that there might be a team in need of two extra people.
Before doing this we went for some real brain food. That fine bastion of fast food - Kentucky Fried Chicken!!. It had been some time since I had enjoyed one of these and I’m getting hungry as I write this.

After the Kentucky delight we went to the venue of the quiz – The Best Western – a nice hotel in the outskirts of Cornwall. After a few minutes of standing about looking sorry for ourselves we managed to get onto a team. They were called the “Young Guns” and for very good reason. All five of these guys can’t have been older than 22. I think it was with some trepidation that Daphne and I joined the team.
To coin a Billy Connolly expression we felt as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.
As it turned out the guys were really dead on. Good fun and enjoyed a laugh. Shame they were soooooo crap at pub quizzes!

The format of the quiz was as follows:
10 rounds of 10 questions and a marathon round that had to be completed by the end of round 5.

Subjects included:
Canadian Politics (!!!)
International sports
December holidays
Nicknames
Artists
Pot Pourri

The marathon round was quite simple (to ask - a lot harder to answer):
Name ALL the American football teams in the NFL, including city and nickname (for example The Miami Dolphins)
Name ALL the basketball teams in the NBA, including city and nickname (for example The LA Lakers)
Name ALL the Canadian football teams in the CFL, including city and nickname (for example, err - I don't know any)
Name ALL the ice hockey teams in the NHL, including city and nickname (for example The Boston Bruins)
Name ALL the "soccer" teams in the Major League, including city and nickname (for example The New England Revolution)
Name ALL the Baseball teams in the Major League, including city and nickname (for example The Boston Red Sox)

I think you can imagine how useful my aunt and myself were at this. About as much use as an ashtray on a bicycle, I believe is the expression that best suits.....

During the quiz, the questions had a very strong North American theme. I wasn't much use at all at these and spent most of the evening going back and forth to the bar.

Then it came to the International Sports round. This is were I (and my team mates) where expecting me to excel as I dreamed of questions about REAL football, rugby, horse racing, even cricket for crying out loud! So as an expectant hush descended around the table, the quizmaster read out question 1:

"Which female Canadian ice skater was the last to be crowned world champion?"
I think my groan was audible in all four corners of the room.

Question 2"
"What is the only soccer team to win the world cup 5 times?"
OK - here we go!
"Brazil - the answer's Brazil"! I whispered excitedly.
The quizmaster then followed the question with "Same as the Marathon round - we're looking for the city and the nickname"
Err, what?! What the hell was he looking for? The 'Rio de Janeiro Rockets'?? We stuck with Brazil and were of course correct, but I think you get the picture...

Then came the question that was to put our name in lights.....
"What is the national sport of Ireland?" Which of course was followed by the stereotypical comment "And we don't mean drinking!".
I mean - who does he think he is? - the beaver shagging Canuck.....

But Dear Reader, I really should take this opportunity to explain something. Ireland, as I am sure you are all aware, is a complicated island. The sport played by the most people in Ireland is REAL football. Northern Ireland being divided as it is, suffers from calling anything national, because of it's political connotations - and to be honest finding anything that unites both sides, let alone a sport, is nigh impossible. Unless you count bad mouthing each other, refusing to agree on absolutely anything and throwing petrol bombs. (This is really only a joke)
The sport played by the most people in Northern Ireland is REAL football. But as for the Republic of Ireland? - well - that's another kettle of fish.
So there we were - my aunt and myself - being the only Irish, albeit northern Irish, representatives at the table and we started debating for about 10 minutes on the subject, whilst the rest of the 'Young Guns' looked on in absolute amazement.

The thing is - in the occupied 26 counties of Ireland the main sport is Gaelic football. In fact all Gaelic sports are very well represented amongst the Catholics of Ireland. The Association is nationalist in outlook and members were banned from playing non-Gaelic games. (In case they hurt themselves, no doubt). The Association also banned members of British Crown Forces from membership, and this is still a source of great controversy in modern-day Ireland. Foreign games are also banned from GAA stadiums. The GAA is the largest sporting organisation in Ireland, comprising of over 150,000 footballers and almost 100,000 hurlers.

The history of these sports is pretty simple. Not wanting to take part in any Anglified sports, the Irish created their own form of sports which were so much tougher to play and a lot more violent than anything the poofy English would take part in.

So on we debated and finally plumped for hurling, best described as an incredibly physical version of lacrosse. The logic being that it was the most removed from any of the English sports. It also dates as far back as pre-Christian times. As luck would have it we were correct but I fear that if we had got that question wrong we would have been kicked out of the team altogether....

A few rounds later and we were averaging a steady 2-3 correct answers per round. Although consistent, we certainly were not about to put the fear of God into the other competitors.

But we were still clinging to the hope of taking home a nice little plaque each. These were being given away at the end of each round for the team that scored the most points. All we needed was one (completely uncharacteristic) round of mostly correct answers.
Then came our chance - the 'December holidays' round.

I can't remember all the questions but I do remember that we thought we had scored 8 points. Then the quizmaster announced that there was a tie for the highest scoring round with seven points!!!

To explain - one of the questions was:
In the 17th century, who banned Christmas?
The answer that we gave was that b**tard Cromwell (without the 'that b**tard' bit).
The answer that they were looking for was the British Parliament.
I would contend that our answer was more correct than theirs but when he announced that they were going to give the team that spelled the answer correctly to the question "what is the Scottish word for New Year" the prizes, I let out a big cheer, taking heart in the fact that we had that one correct.
After all the frustration we would be able to leave with a plaque each and our heads held high after all!!
Except we hadn't spelled it correctly.
Due to an oversight we had put down Hogmany instead of Hogmanay.
Oh how cruel life could be. A bitter taste was left in our mouths for the rest of the evening and we never really recovered. Yes even to this day - over three centuries later that b**tard Cromwell was still giving the people of Ireland grief! Not to mention our spelling.....

We walked out of the quiz chanting 'Cromwell Out' but it did little to console the disappointment of an evening that started out with so much hope.
Indeed, as Shane McGowan has been known to sing....

"A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell
You who raped our Motherland
I hope you're rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent
To our misfortunate forefathers
Whom you robbed of their birthright
"To hell or Connaught" may you burn in hell tonight"

Wise words Shane, wise words indeed.

Still - at least charity was the winner. And it was with that consolation that I bid Daphne farewell as I headed off into the cold night, the one block walk to my adopted local for the weekend - Rosie Magoo’s.

By the time I had left the bar, about 4 hours later at around 02:30, I was left in no doubt that I was never, and never would be a local.

to be continued...
(Keep an eye out for the next and final part - imaginatively titled "Canadian Road Trip - part 5" coming soon to an Inbox near you!)