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Tonight is the final performance of The Wall to be held on The Plains of Abraham (Les Plaines D’Abraham) in Quebec City. Will it be the last concert of Roger Waters ever? I don’t know. I hope not.
I wish I was going to be there. I took today’s photo of The Plains of Abraham from my hotel room in Quebec eight years ago. The river in the background is the Saint Lawrence (Saint-Laurent).
Before posting yesterday’s entry I realized that most of my pictures of Toronto are of this baseball game. I was going to turn it into “Canada week” and have yesterday’s and today’s entry be of Windsor, but I actually have quite a few nice images from Windsor (as I’ve been there twice for a total of about a week, whereas I’ve only been to Toronto for two days–most of that spent at a Blue Jays game and Rush concert). So I’ll save the Windsor pictures for a Windsor week at a later point in time. Tomorrow we will return to Japanese things.
As you can see from today’s photograph, the attendance wasn’t too spectacular at this Saturday game. At this late point in the season both the Blue Jays and Orioles were out of the post-season hunt. The weather wasn’t too good either. Hence, the dome was closed.
What I find most interesting about this picture is (if you look closely after blowing the image up by clicking on it) the distance between the bat and the ball. It appears that the ball is at least two feet below the swinging bat. At first I thought that it must be a foul ball hit straight down, but that wouldn’t explain the location of the catcher’s mitt. I think Roy Halladay really fooled the batter on this one.
The Blue Jays ace, and one of the best pitchers in the American League over the past seven years, was on the mound. He was his usual self on this day, going 7 innings, giving up just one run, and earning the 15th of his 16 wins on the season.
On my way from Toronto to Windsor I saw a sign on the freeway about a brewery tour in Waterloo (or maybe it was Kitchener right next to Waterloo in Ontario). I had nothing planned for the rest of the day so I got off the freeway and found the above Brick Brewery. The tour was fun.
But what I really wanted to comment on is the prevalence of beer in Canadian society. The movie, Strange Brew, really isn’t that far off the mark. For instance, my hotel in Windsor didn’t have a gym so they gave me a free pass to the local gym instead. Behind the counter at the local gym was not water and Gatorade but beer on tap. I kid you not. Beer, at the gym… Unthinkable in the U.S.A.
After touring the Brick I went out for breakfast. The waitress took my order and then asked, “What kind of beer would you like with your breakfast?” Needless to say, that was the first (and last) time I have ever heard that question.
Down the street from Brick Brewery, indeed all over Ontario from what I saw, was The Beer Store. I just checked their website and they actually have 440 of these in Ontario alone. You walk in and there is nothing but beer for sale. Not individual beers, or even six packs, but cases of beer only. The place was packed with people piling cases of beer on massive conveyor belts that rolled your cases of beer to the check out cash register.
There was more to see at the game than just Frank Thomas hit his 509th home run. I was sitting in about the fourth row. The people in the first row had their own little assistant. Even though there was only about six or eight of them, they kept her running up to the concessions and back down to their seats non-stop throughout the game. Maybe free food was included in their tickets or something? I don’t know. What I do know is that they gave her huge tips at the end of the game. I also know that she was more than a bit of a distraction to the rest of us in the first few rows. For some reason no one complained.
I was killing time in Toronto driving around and spotted the above building from the freeway. I pulled off to get a closer look. The structure is quite amazing from a distance. I didn’t get too close. It appeared to be brand new with landscaping still being done around the perimeter.
Now that I think about it, I actually pulled off the freeway because I saw a sign that said something about the world’s largest flea market. It was in trying to find the flea market, which I never did, that I ended up at this location.