Eric's Hangout: Return to the Humber

Monday, August 21, 2017

Return to the Humber

What a difference a year makes. Last year the Humber River was incredibly low, and this summer has been fairly wet. In fact, it rained last Thursday (while we were out of town). My daughter decided to bail on the canoe trip this year, so in the end we went without her. The river was quite high, and we didn't have any problem with scraping along the river bed. In fact, there were a few times where someone went by on a motorboat and rocked the canoe a bit. (Even motoring by slowly was a bit of an issue, given the water level.) Nonetheless, it was a fun, if somewhat exhausting, trip. This time around we went far enough to see the second bridge (technically this is where the place that rents the canoes insists that people turn around) and we had enough time to go into one of the inlets. We turned in the canoe 20-25 minutes early. I was soaking with sweat though, and it was a somewhat uncomfortable ride back downtown.

After the canoeing, we grabbed lunch and stopped in at the AGO briefly, then walked over to Nathan Phillips Square to check out India Day celebrations, then went home. In the evening we saw Shakespeare in the Ruff do A Midsummer's Night's Dream (definitely worth checking out if you live near Withrow Park). I'll write more about the rest of the day later, but I thought that if Vancouver wants to advertise about being a city where you can go from the beach to the mountains in one day, then Toronto is a city where you can canoe the Humber, go to an art gallery and an ethnic festival and still have time to do Shakespeare in the Park in the evening. I know which of the two cities I would prefer to live in...

I did all of the steering and much of the paddling. I only took a few photos here and there (and sadly I stopped taking a video about 30 seconds before a formation of geese passed overhead). My son took the majority of the photos.