Lavender Farm in Prince Edward County
Howard Sutherland sent this email (which I've slightly edited) regarding the posts Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Barrie for a Day:
My father, although a Texan, spent most of his career working for the now-gone International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO), and lived in Toronto from 1972 to 1983. I was a landed immigrant during those years, and spent a lot of time in Ontario, including odd jobs during my school and college years.
Even in the '70s, native Torontonians were calling their hometown the broken-English capital of the world. As I recall, though, immigrants were largely Eastern European and Portuguese, although the Indian fraction - both West and East - became more noticeable over those years. The Chinese I remember as a trace element only. Broken English or no, I thought Toronto was a great city.
I found Ontario's countryside and county towns very pleasant. I hope that's still true. My father bought a small farm to retreat to on weekends, in Prince Edward County (the hand-shaped peninsula that sticks down into Lake Ontario west of Kingston), near Trenton, Ont.
Those years in Canada were an interesting time - in the Chinese-curse sense. It was the reign of Trudeau-pere, who was busy destroying anything distinctive about Canada - especially any attachment to the Dominion's British heritage. They were also the years of the rise of the PQ in Quebec, with which Trudeau had a bizarre passive-aggressive relationship. On the surface Trudeau's Liberals opposed the PQ and sought to homogenise a (bogus) bilingual Canada a mari usque ad mare, while under the table inciting Québécois official mono-lingualism.
The result was effective affirmative action for French Canadians in government employment nation-wide. At the same time the PQ's antipathy to English drove the transfer from Montreal to Toronto of Montreal's traditional role as Canada's banking centre and leading city. One could almost see the national centre of gravity sliding west down the 401!
The results of all of it have been catastrophic for Canada, which is now a country (if it still is a country) that can choose Justin Trudeau as its prime minister. Pierre Trudeau was very bad indeed, but compared to Justin he was gravitas personified.