American Phive-Oh #10

Toronto is Sydney big and the hotel we stayed in was the biggest in Toronto so it was like staying in a railway station. But it did have one redeeming feature. In keeping with the dominant theme of this blog, it had a functioning bar – not a very big one considering the size of the hotel but we found a table and two comfortable chairs and they had what we wanted off the drinks menu so considering progress to date, that was a massive win. And ad nauseum, the following happened at the restaurant on the waterfront we lunched in earlier that day. I asked for a Peroni draft. Didn’t have any. Okay, a bottle of Stella. Didn’t have any. Okay a Peroni in a bottle – success. This is a BYO continent.

I haven’t been able to determine whether the following quote was originally said by Custer’s nemesis, Crazy Horse or by conservative commentator Lt Col Allen West. Incidentally, with every bit of global knowledge back to the beginning of time at our fingertips, you’d think it easy to find this out. Life’s too short. Back to the quote which has been used in the context of historical philistines destroying statues – not the Taliban or Islamic State but the rent-a-scum anarcho-terrorists funded by people like George Soros and their useful idiot middle class marxist apprentices who have to borrow mummy’s car to get to the protest. It goes as follows:
“History is not there for you to like or dislike. It is there for you to learn from it. And if it offends you, even better. Because then you are less likely to repeat it. It’s not yours for you to erase or destroy.”

So it was refreshing to see statues of both Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria outside the Ontario parliament building in Toronto. And they weren’t graffitied either. Being in the fenced grounds of the parliament would help, especially as said grounds are patrolled by both protective services officers and peace officers. What’s the difference, I hear you ask? Well I asked a young lady peace officer and she referred to her powers of arrest and rather ironically, pointed to the gun on her hip to illustrate the difference. Fair enough, thought I. Those statues are in good hands. I can’t help but think that our state and federal governments would allow similar statues to be sacrificed on the alter of political correctness or historical atonement or imperialist apology or something. The rabid mobs would have had their way with them. But not in Toronto.

As if the Niagara Falls region needed anything else, it’s also a big wine growing region – who knew? This is still Canada and most of the time it’s freezing. Next thing, we’ll be seeing palm trees. Considering the almost continuous rant in this blog about the difficulty in securing alcoholic refreshment in this part of the world, this is rather ironic. For a part of the world that supposedly doesn’t get irony, there’s a lot of it. Unconscious irony anyone?

There are officially three Niagara Falls. The biggest and most spectacular is the horse-shoe on the Canadian side of the border. On the US side there are two but one, the bridal veil as it’s called hardly counts as it’s a thin ribbon of water compared with the bigger curtain right next to it. I guess because Canada has the spectacular one, as a sop to big brother they get to say they have two.