My boss always wanted a trip report

Yes, I'm back from vacation. I got back yesterday afternoon, but between making a fruit salad for today's church picnic, unpacking, and catching up on some of my regular blogs I didn't feel like writing much.

The trip went well -- the weather cooperated wonderfully -- though not every aspect was a delight.

Pt. Pelee was nice, but not as wonderful as the opinion of my friend and debate partner. A major problem could have been that I waited until getting into the park before searching for lunch and the café there was inadequate. Even so, I got all the way to the tip of the point, the southern point of mainland Canada (two nearby islands are farther south). When I left, instead of going directly to the highway, I took the Lake Erie coastal road about halfway to London. Along the way I saw perhaps a hundred wind turbines (the terrain there is quite flat).

Since Hamilton, Ontario is surrounded by the Niagara Escarpment it has perhaps 30 waterfalls. I managed to hunt down 11 of them over parts of 3 days. I agree with my friend and debate partner that Hamilton does a very poor job of highlighting this natural asset. There is rarely a road sign, sometime not even one in the parking lot, and many view vantage points are obscured by trees. And when you do get a clear view it may be a case of the creek coming out of a culvert under a road before going over the cliff and the concrete around the culvert is full of graffiti.

Three more waterfalls bring the total to 14. Two of those are the big ones at Niagara. That whole area has become a dollar extraction system -- just to park was $20. The last waterfall was in the gorge in Elora.

I enjoyed a morning in Hamilton's Dundurn Castle (actually a house, though about 12 times larger than my own). At one point the owner of this big house was also landlord for 200 of Hamilton's 300 houses. Of interest to me were the servant's quarters and work areas in the basement of the house.

Of the three performances I attended my favorite was Sunday in the Park with George by Sondheim and Lapine at the Shaw Festival. The music was quite innovative and different from the typical musical, though the performers said in the Q&A session afterwards it is very tricky to learn. The best part was that I could relate to the main character, portraying painter Georges Seurat.

I have found that if I don't spend a minimal amount of time with music composition projects I feel that my schedule is just too crowded. So when George the painter tells his girlfriend, "I can't go to the Follies with you this evening. I have to finish painting the hat," (he later sings a whole song about it) I can relate. His problem is that he becomes so focused on the art he loses the girlfriend. There are lots of other wonderful things about the show, such as the comments from the couple who fancy themselves as art critics, and how each person in the painting becomes a full character. Act I ends with the characters forming the scene in the painting. Act II begins by the characters complaining about being stuck in this painting for a hundred years, a way of introducing us to the modern art scene and a song about all the other things an artist must do (like schmooze patrons) in addition to actually creating art.

My bed and breakfast hostess in Niagara on the Lake recommended a restaurant for dinner because she sensed I wanted to eat, not dine. According to her, the difference is 2 hours and I didn't have 3 hours before curtain time. Many years ago I had heard the difference is at least $10. Alas, that turned out to be a restaurant I would not recommend to anyone. The meal was edible and that's all I can say for it.

The second program I saw was Ever Yours, Oscar at the Stratford Festival. This was a one man show in which the actor reads many of Oscar Wilde's letters. While quite interesting, it was much too short, only 1:15. There was a notable change in the tone of the letters between those that were close to frivolous before his imprisonment for gross indecency (from charges brought by the father of his gay lover) and those afterwards in which he becomes an activist for conditions in prison, especially where children are concerned. Alas, the hard labor of prison broke his health and he died 3 years later. More on Wilde's life and works in Wikipedia plus a poem he wrote about a prisoner facing the death penalty in Wikisource. Quite a change in the man.

The third program was the opening concert of the 30th year of the Elora Festival in the tiny town of Elora. The performance was -- seriously now -- in the highway maintenance barn that houses road salt September through May. After intermission one of the Festival board members told about how concerts have been affected by storms and extreme heat (no AC here). The performance of the Berlioz Requiem was quite good, though not quite the overwhelming roster of performers that Berlioz requested -- the barn wasn't big enough for all that noise. The four extra brass ensembles had only a third of what Berlioz specified.