The other London

In South-western Ontario, nestled halfway between Toronto and Detroit, and in one of the most southerly points in all of Canada, lies a little city called London. Only it's not all that little - it's home to roughly 350,000 (proudly laying claim to being Canada's 11th largest city), and one of the biggest and best uni's in Canada. But, like (I expect) most people on the other side of the Atlantic, I'd never heard of it until a year ago. So, some more London facts: it wasn't founded until 1823; has the most thunder and lightning storms of any area in Canada; the 'London Ribfest' is the second largest rib festival in North America; and last but certainly not least, claims 2 Miss Universes in the last 25 years! Oh, and a famous son, Ryan Gosling, is up for Best Actor at this years Oscars.

Me and Joey the kitten

I arrived here a few days before Christmas to a very warm welcome in a very festive house. I could not have been happier. After the lack of Christmas build-up in Australia, it made a real change arriving somewhere with not only a decent amount of decoration, but also the appropriate weather for the time of year. And arriving in the house a couple of days after me was Val's (Angela's little sister) 'secret' Christmas present to the family - an 8 week old kitten. Naming it that night, Val had to be dissuaded from naming it after a helper at her school and local Ice Hockey Star, Jordan Forman. Not just calling it Jordan, but the full 'Jordan Forman'. After Val turned down several alternate suggestions point-blank, she came up with the inspired choice of "Joey from friends", which was shortened to "Joey".

Bastien the New Year Turkey - dressed to kill.

The only problem was the lack of (promised) snow. But, even though I missed out on a white Christmas, I still ended up having an infinitely better one than I had anticipated when I left home last August. I had a proper traditional Christmas week - meeting lots of (Angela's) relatives and friends, opening lots of presents, doing the last minute Christmas shopping, and even having a chat with Him upstairs for the first time in years, with a Christmas Eve visit to church. And I even got a shout out from the vicar at the start of the service.

After seeing in the New Year in London, me and Angela headed up to Montreal to spend a few days observing the French, and chasing the snow. However, Montreal was in the midst of one of the warmest winter spells in ages, with temperatures up to a relatively mild 11 Degrees C. It took a hike up Mont Royale to discover my first Canadian snow - though it was old, iced-up snow that looked as though it could do with a bit of a clean, it satisfied my snow-lust at least temporarily.

Me revelling in my first sighting of snow in Canada

On top of Mont Royale, which overlooks the city, in between the patches of dirty snow, was an outdoor ice-rink. Having ticked 'seeing snow' off of my Canadian to-do list, I decided it was time for another challenge. So, strapping on the skates, I swallowed my pride and set out on to the ice, knowing that there were few places on earth that I would be shown to be an outsider quite so easily and made to look such an idiot so effortlessly. Happily, with my human stabiliser in hand, I only actually fell over once. And with the appearance on the ice of toddlers that could barely walk, having to push midget-sized zimmer frames in front of them to prevent them from falling over, I at least was able to get the better of someone on the ice. Though that still left everyone capable of forming a sentence to fly past me. And some that weren't.

Angela in a snow storm

Returning to London, my due date to fly back to Aus was rapidly approaching, and never one to be aware of outstaying my welcome, I jumped on Angela's suggestion that I try to rebook my flight - delaying it by another couple of weeks. This would also give me the chance to experience a proper snowfall - and for the last week or so we've had some on pretty much every day. I hadn’t really realised before that there were different types of snow. As far as I was aware, there was snow , and ice, and if you really wanted to break it down even further, there was snow that ‘stuck’ or ‘settled’, and snow that just melted. Judging this later category was an inexact science though, and was usually done in the past tense ie. “looks like that was settling snow”, or “turns out it wasn’t settling snow”. Well, apparently that list isn’t exhaustive - I’ve discovered ‘packing’ and ‘powdery’ snow. Eager to get outside and build a snowman, I’ve had the news broken to me that the snow outside is powdery snow. Apparently, the sort of snow I need is packing snow. If I’m going to do it properly, it seems my snowman is going to have to wait awhile.

London, Canada