I’m in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness.
I’m in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness. Well, wilderness with lattes if I’m being totally honest. I’m on Lake Joe, one of the three Muskoka lakes that are a little bit to Toronto as are the Hamptons to Manhattan. I’m ‘cottaging’, which always sounds a tad George Michael until you hastily explain that everything on a lake in Ontario is termed a ‘cottage’, from humble log cabins to huge Kennedy-like complexes. It’s worse in Quebec where they call them ‘chateaux’ whatever the size — very nouveau, very French. For my sins I’m married to a Canadian so, every year, I come over here for a month and behave like the Great Gatsby, lavishly hosting my legions of in-laws. This year I might be here a bit longer as, when I managed to locate a rare internet connection, I got an email informing me that our home in the Cotswolds was under three feet of flood sewage. We had a family meeting and decided to bury our respective heads in the sand, enjoy our holiday, and deal with things when we get back — very impractical, very British.
Watching the news and seeing breathless Canadian anchors reporting ‘live from Tewksbury where looting has broken out’ seems totally surreal as I sit on my deck in 32°C watching my kids hurl themselves off huge slabs of granite into the magical lake below me. Mind you, a lot of Brits find it mildly surreal that I take my summer holidays in Canada. ‘Isn’t it bloody freezing?’ they all ask. I have to point out that Toronto is on the same latitude as Cannes and that it gets seriously hot up here.
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