urban bicycle journeys

Canada is a parallel universe to America. It is just like America, until it is not. Could I document some differences? I flew north with bicycle to investigate. Toronto and Montreal are not that far away, each only about 850 miles from my home in Chapel Hill NC, about the same distance as New Orleans. Toronto and Montreal themselves are about four hundred miles apart, my plan was to take about two weeks to bicycle that distance.

My friend and cycling buddy Lyman was already on the road, having flown to Buffalo NY and bicycled the hundred miles from there to Toronto, passing by Niagara Falls on the way. We had agreed to meet at a certain Staples store in downtown Toronto.

I don’t really like flying, especially in turbulent weather. The flight up to Toronto from Raleigh/Durham on a Sunday morning had been painless, two one hour hops in gentle clear skies. The only worrisome feature was that one of the pilots on the connecting flight from Philadelphia to Toronto on American “Eagle” appeared barely through puberty, looking like Aaron Ross Sorkin in middle school.

I had brought my Bike Friday folded into its suitcase. Soon after landing at the Toronto airport I saw a key difference from America. The Union Pearson Express is simply too efficient. The train looks and feels like those mini-trains that one takes between airport terminals, except this one keeps going and with only two stops, in less than half an hour deposits you at Union Station in downtown Toronto. Zip!

The intermediate plan for Lyman and me was to cycle together for a little over a week along the north shore of Lake Ontario. The map below shows our journey. (After leaving him I would cycle solo towards Montreal.) He had a booked a flight home to Austin TX from Syracuse NY eight days hence.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/x1pPASJNzdnAuT5Z8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/x1pPASJNzdnAuT5Z8

Because I was lugging the heavy bicycle suitcase I took a cab the short distance from the train station to our meeting point at a Staples store. The streets were full of activity.

It was good to see Lyman and at 11:00 AM the day was still young. We had to wait for table but enjoyed a nice breakfasty lunch. We then walked a block away to Staples which is also a Fedex Ground drop station. I sat on the sidewalk and put my bicycle together. When I take the airplane with my Bike Friday I have to find somewhere store or ship the bicycle suitcase. I had prearranged sending it to a hotel in Montreal where I could meet it for my flight home two weeks hence.

Canada has differences. The Staples stores in Ontario were all in downtowns, the building brought to the street, not sitting back facing a parking lot like they would have in America.

Well fed and with bicycles rolling, it was time to cycle Canada! At our home bases of New Orleans LA, Chapel Hill NC, and Austin TX, summer is something to be endured. Here is Toronto, Ontario it is a celebration. On a lovely clear not-too-hot summer Sunday, bicycles were out in droves as we cycled eastward along the lakefront. Here is Lyman just as we were starting out.

The Ontario government pitches that they have a marked bicycle route hundreds of miles long called Great Lakes Waterfront Trail, either bicycle paths or signs directing the cyclist to minor roads. The first thirty miles heading east from downtown Toronto is not particularly well marked. The lakefront is physically complicated by canals and waterfront industry. We mostly had to look at Google Maps and figured it out ourselves.

There were lakefront beaches full of people.

The further we cycled east away from downtown there was less and less”trail.” At certain points we were reduced to cycling along a busy highway, usually in some type of bicycle lane. While not slums the neighborhoods were less than upscale. For what seemed like fifteen miles most of the commercial establishments were South Asian (Indian/Pakistani); sometimes Hispanic or Chinese.

Canada still has a British thing. Until 1918 it did not even conduct its own foreign policy and in 2024 it still recognizes the king or queen of England as the head of state. What in America would have been an American Legion hall here was Royal Canadian Legion.

By five or six in the afternoon we had to find a place to spend the night, and the only hotels were either flophouses or way out by the freeway. Furthermore, we had trouble finding somewhere to just get a coffee and regroup. We stopped at a Tim Hortons.

Name after a hockey player, Tim Hortons is a fast food chain that originally had just coffee and doughnuts. It is ubiquitous in every part of Canada that I have visited. I have heard that it has not been particularly successful in expanding into America. We got sweet frozen coffee drinks and plotted strategy. All the workers and most of the customers in this Tim’s in far eastern Toronto looked South Asian.

We searched the phone. We made a plan for dinner and booked a hotel, then cycled onward. Out here in the Toronto suburbs they are building towers-in-the-park high rises on previously empty land, rather than grids of single family houses like one would see in America.

Our dinner selection was an English pub in a strip mall out by itself on the highway. There were only a few customers. We sat at the bar and ordered Canadian beers. The friendly bartenders were surprised that both of us wanted curried rice rather than fries. The hamburgers were delicious.

In late June this far north the days are long. We lingered over the burgers for a while before bicycling three miles to the one decent hotel we had found out here, the Pickering Casino Resort, a high-rise by itself in farmland.

I grew up totally disconnected from gambling and I still do not find it entertaining. Maybe it’s because I can’t concentrate long enough. Nevertheless the hotel rooms were quite nice and we enjoyed walking around the gaming floor. A lot of the players looked East Asian/Chinese.

That casino is about thirty miles/forty-six kilometers from downtown Toronto. The next morning, after cycling further east only a few kilometers (everything here is now in kms!) the cycling did become much more peaceful. The Great Lakes Waterfront Trail really now existed. It was not always exactly waterfront or even always a bike path, but for several large stretches we bicycled alongside Lake Ontario.

It was fun to look for tiny language differences. There were signs using words Americans would certainly understand, but just use differently. We call it trash, they call it a garbage bin.

Book your appointment?

Who talks like this?

I can only guess what kind of road this is.

In Ontario they use the term “washroom” universally. “Rest Room” is a singularly American Puritanical invention. I think the Brits just say “toilet.”

Full course meals?

I showed several of my Chapel Hill friends these photos, not one correctly guessed what a “chip truck” was. Some kind of wood grinder?

A chip truck is a food truck serving french fries. I do not think Americans ever stop just for fries without an accompanying sandwich.

We spent that night in the small town of Bowmanville, Ontario. We got two rooms in its one motel. Old motels in America are generally sleazy, here they are mostly not.

In America phone booths have been gone for a while. Our motel had a phone booth, not the only one we saw in Ontario. Their phone company is still called Bell.

Bowmanville had one brewery, stuck away in small industrial park, a two mile bike ride from the motel.

Sipping beer on their outdoor deck was quite chill. I could sit here all night! It was sweltering back in North Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana. Here it was not. What about dinner? The brewery did not serve food, and the mostly fast food in Bowmanville did not sound appealing. Uber Eats! The brewery had no objection to our being delivered an Indian vegetarian feast.

In the twilight we glided back to our motel rooms.

The next day we continued cycling as close as possible to the Lake Ontario waterfront, sometimes in view of the water, sometimes not. There were newer expensive looking condos. The lake seemed an ocean.

Annoyingly unpredictable rain was becoming a factor and we waited the rain out in a pleasant coffee house in the town of Port Hope, Ontario. The sandwiches, pre-made, were still quite good. I think having sandwiches at a coffee bar already made in advance is a British thing. Americans like to see their sandwiches made to order.

Port Hope is an attractive old town.

While in Port Hope we had booked an Airbnb of someone’s house at the next major town. The ride to there took us briefly on a tight space through the woods.

We would spend the night in Cobourg, Ontario. We first cycled through downtown. The nice Airbnb house was a little too far out on the other side.

We cycled back to downtown for dinner at Cucina Urbana, the only nice restaurant we had seen in Cobourg. It was crowded and we were lucky to get an indoor/outdoor table.

My being a food snob nearly backfired here. Italian-Canadian is clearly different from actual “Italian”, whatever that means. I was “shocked” that the menu offered something called Grilled Steak Fettuccine Alfredo, a dish one would never see in Italy.

I calmed down and we each ordered an appetizer and an entree. It was one of the best meals I have had in a long time. Grilled calamari with sweet corn, bacon, and peas was inspiring and perfectly cooked, really, as was my main course of seafood Linguine. Real Italians would not serve big quantities of seafood with pasta but so what! We are not in Italy! I love cold water clams, and this also featured really delicious scallops. Cobourg, Ontario is not a fru-fru town and prices at Cucina Urbana were low by American or Canadian standards. Unlike Italian-AMERICAN, portion sizes were suitable for a normal person, not double or triple, like one would get in, say, Schenectady NY.

Cycling the next day was mostly on normal roads. The busier ones did have wide shoulders, continuing along the lake in cloudy weather with a chance of rain.

We covered quite the distance, sometimes passing by the misty lake. We saw this pebble covered beach.

In late morning we discovered a food truck out by itself in swampy farmland. Lyman got a late breakfast, pancakes; I got an early lunch, cheeseburger.

That afternoon our route along the lake led us onto the gravel Millennium Trail.

We rumbled into the tiny town of Wellington, Ontario, noticing that this town, and all those for the next hundred miles, universally bore names of famous English places. They still love their mother country.

Like America is now, every sizeable Ontario town seemed to have a newer small independent brewpub.

Over beers we searched the internet and found a nearby two bedroom Airbnb apartment, sitting above a butcher shop at the main corner downtown. The town’s only supermarket sat on the opposite corner. Since it included a full kitchen and an outside gas grill, why not cook dinner?

The butcher shop had a small but obviously quality selection of steaks from local cows. They told me they were butchering another one the next day. Canadians apparently call new york strip a striploin. I purchased one big enough for two.

Most asparagus sold in both America and Canada is grown in Mexico and Peru. The climate of our east coast does allow asparagus to grow a few weeks in late spring. At the Meat Market the only vegetable offered was local asparagus at the checkout counter.

I bought rice and butter across the street. We were in Ontario wine country and at the state liquor store an employee knowledgeably helped me find a local pinot noir. It all made for quite the dinner.

We had a balcony overlooking the street on our perch above Meat Market. Across the road a bar opened up at 9:00 PM. We walked over and caught a local singer songwriter, no cover charge for his original songs. I felt bad in buying only a Sprite, but I can’t sleep properly if I drink late at night. We gave the singer a tip.

On leaving town the next morning I noticed this real estate sign. Am I correct that in rural conservative America one would not advertise oneself like this?

We cycled back along the gravel Millennium Trail.

We continued to find breweries! This one is near Picton, Ontario.

We had seen fewer and fewer South Asian looking people as we got farther from Toronto but alongside the brewery this guy ran a creative South Asian-Mexican solo food operation. Tandoori chicken tacos.

There is not a huge selection of places to stay out here. That night I haggled a price for two rooms at a somewhat fancy Bed & Breakfast in downtown Picton. The building had that creepy severe Ontario look.

Dinner was in downtown Picton. The chef at a tapas place tried a little too hard to be creative. The next morning at a nearby coffee house the food was better. Egg and cheese made to order on a very fresh bagel was delicious. In America it would have been prepared on a day-old bagel, delivered in a paper bag. Ontario and Quebec coffee houses almost universally deliver your breakfast sandwich and coffee on real china. Here in Picton, Ontario even the flowers were genuine.

It was lovely seventy kilometer cycle along the water to Kingston, Ontario. Kingston, population 135,000, would be the largest Canadian city we had visited except Toronto. Kingston sits at the western end of the Thousand Islands area, where Lake Ontario gradually becomes the St. Lawrence River. We took the first of three ferries we would be taking in the coming two days. On the other side a group of cyclists were going the other direction.

I have learned more about the history of Canada, which grew along the St. Lawrence River and its connections to the Great Lakes. The St. Lawrence rivals the Mississippi as a major river system. Two hundred years ago a ship could pass by the Canadian territory of Nova Scotia, then sail upriver to the fortress chokepoint of Quebec City then further upriver to Montreal, at the first major rapids. If one portaged around those rapids, boats could sail up the St Lawrence to Lake Ontario and the new city at the other end of that lake, Toronto. Further upstream, if you portaged around Niagara Falls, one could sail into Lake Erie. Present day Detroit MI and Windsor, Ontario guard the easy passage from Lake Erie to Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, all the way to Chicago. Lake Superior was beyond that. During the 19th century canals were built around these portage chokepoints. Since 1959 huge ocean going ships have been able to go up the St. Lawrence almost halfway across the continent to the far end of Lake Superior.

Canada in the 1780’s was where the British retreated from our Revolution. On this day leading up to Kingston we saw multiple signs about Loyalist this and Loyalist that. In America I remember being taught that the word Loyalist meant something like a traitor, a Benedict Arnold.

It was drizzling but the view of Lake Ontario-becoming-St. Lawrence River was enticing.

The rain stopped and we passed by a park. Lunchtime! We stopped for our homemade peanut butter and honey sandwiches on whole wheat.

We chatted with a thirty-something guy in work coveralls who was standing around a food truck eating poutine. I should have taken his photo but I just chickened out.

Poutine is a quebecois dish that I have only barely tried as it seems so unappetizing; french fries sprinkled with cheese curds and then covered in brown gravy. It is ubiquitous in this part of Ontario, especially on food trucks. It must hit the spot in their more “normal” weather of freezing rain or subzero temperatures.

Both Kingston and Toronto have Victorian era neighborhoods of dark brick houses. The Handmade’s Tale was not only a novel but a TV series. In its plot set in the near future Canada stands as a bastion of freedom from a dystopian USA taken over by radical fundamentalists. The TV series was actually filmed in and around Toronto. The creepily dark and severe houses where much of the fictional USA abuse occurred were actually in Canada. We cycled into a neighborhood of that style house near downtown Kingston, Ontario.

On the way into town we had passed a boarded up former mental hospital that gave off a similar vibe, an appropriate place for a fictional torture chamber.

We found a nice two bedroom apartment Airbnb near downtown and walked to a brewery in an old industrial building where we sat outdoors in the cool summer evening. The locals were out in force.

The beer was delicious and the vibe infectious but neither of us was in the mood for another meal of some greasy meat with french fries. We finished our beers and walked back to a much healthier seeming Indian place across the street from the Airbnb.

The next day Lyman and I turned south towards New York State. Some enormous percentage of all of Canada’s population lives within a day’s drive of the United States. Here in Kingston, Ontario, if you take two small ferries the American town of Cape Vincent NY is only twelve miles away. Lyman had a Southwest Airlines flight from Syracuse NY scheduled three day’s hence and he turned south here in Kingston. I had extra time so I cycled with him in New York for two days before resuming my journey in Canada.

In the Thousand Islands region many of the islands are tiny, just rock outcroppings. Wolfe Island, opposite Kingston, Ontario, is much bigger, about twenty miles long. About nine in the morning and in a light rain we took the free ferry from downtown Kingston to Wolfe island.

Once on the island there was almost no car traffic for the twelve mile ride to the other side. Huge windmills were scattered around.

The Ontario public ferry from downtown Kingston had been large, holding about fifty cars. The twenty minute privately owned ferry from Wolfe Island to Cape Vincent NY, USA, was tiny. This day it departed with only our two bicycles, two motorcycles, and two cars.

We had to pass through a U,S, Customs booth at the ferry landing.

Cape Vincent NY looked like the quintessential northeastern small town. Back in the USA!

We propagated a public bench as our picnic spot, and ate our peanut butter and honey sandwiches. In upper upper New York State, summer is celebrated. These boys were going fishing.

What is more American than driving one’s lawn tractor through the main intersection of town?

We were struck by how many people were overweight, obese really, compared to Canada twenty miles away. My only explanation is that this region of upper NY State is among the poorer regions of America, and Ontario along the lake is among the wealthier parts of Canada.

There was nowhere to stay in Cape Vincent NY but online we found a rental two bedroom “cottage” six miles out of town. It had a kitchen but no restaurant. I would have to prepare some kind of dinner.

I like to be environmentally conscious and think people use too many single-use plastic bags. Policies about these bags in America vary. As far as I had seen, in Canada the stores do not bag your groceries at all! Lyman says the city of Austin TX passed a law prohibiting plastic bags until the Texas state legislature overruled them. My local Weaver Street Market in Carrboro NC makes a point of not providing them but all the other stores do. In New Orleans no one gives a shit and grocery clerks use two or three times the number needed. Fellow checker outers look askance as I fumble with loose packages while mumbling “I don’t need a bag.”

New York passed a law a few years ago prohibiting free plastic grocery bags statewide. Until this day I didn’t know that. Lyman and I shopped for dinner at the small local grocery store in Cape Vincent NY. I had no extra room on my bicycle and THIS ONE TIME I needed two plastic bags so I could hang the groceries from my handlebars for the five mile ride to our cabin. Paper bags would break. When I asked for a plastic bag, the older checkout woman winked at me and, like some kind of illegal drug, pulled an illicit stash of white plastic bags from under the counter. She complained about the law.

We biked onward towards our cabin, groceries in hand. This video by Lyman Labry is only three seconds long.

Pasta with tomato sauce, Johnsonville brats, and boiled broccoli hit the spot that evening, helped with a bottle of red wine. The next day, in intermittent rain, we cycled to the remote New York State town of Sackets Harbor NY. Along the way I tried to document the countryside.

I do not know who this guy is.

Small town post office mid-century modernism

Sackets Harbor NY was a military base built to guard Lake Ontario against the Canadians. It was the site of an actual battle in the War of 1812. It has not been an operational base for close to a hundred years but many brick structures remain, most repurposed, some not. Tourists like its lakefront location.

When it is not raining the summer weather up here is delightful. Downtown Sackets Harbor has about three restaurants including an Italian one, where we ate outside.

The next morning we were going our separate ways, him to Syracuse for the flight home, me back to Canada and then towards Montreal. I will report on that weeklong solo ride in the next blog post.

Lyman and I obviously get along well on our many bike trips together. He is a great guy. We have successfully dealt with each other’s quirks and issues. He likes to stay up late and want to go to bed early. On most trips together we sit and eat a full breakfast before setting out. Lyman seems to awaken a little sleepy but hungry. I am just not that way. I usually wake up bursting with energy, sometimes wanting to get up and ride ride ride. Sure, I like a coffee, but I can eat later. On this last morning, when we were going our separate ways I stopped by his room at 6:30 AM to bid him farewell. I cycled off into a gloriously crisp summer New York State morning. It is my favorite time of the day. On to Montreal!