It was another side trip that we made up to Canada last year, but we weren’t going to any of the wine country areas.  My father was born in Canada, and if I go back to the old haunts, in a week’s time, I will be speaking and acting like a native; I could have some black tea in a China teacup with saucer, while sitting on the chesterfield in the parlour. 

Now this trip was for my Bride, as she wanted to see one of her old friends that she grew up with, almost every weekend at her parents’ cottage in Kettle Point, which her father had built.  He leased the land from the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, but that is another story.  She didn’t want to make a side trip to see the cottage, but we drove to the major community of the area which is Grand Bend.  Grand Bend was known as a party town and a great weekend destination, even when I was a kid, especially for the motorcycle crowd.  We walked along the main street and down to the beach and she was getting nostalgic and we finally ended up at Willy’s Beach Bar, and I am sure that during the high season the floor is covered in sand. I do believe that the main beverages served were tequila, beer and rye.

Of course, we decided to have cheeseburgers, fries and guacamole, the food that one immediately thinks of when one thinks of Canada.  We were just a couple of Yanks, but we did use Malt Vinegar with the fries, instead of ketchup, which I don’t think I have ever known in my life. We ordered a bottle of wine for lunch, and that did raise a few eyebrows.  We had Famiglia Cielo Prosecco DOC Brut “Blu Collection” NV from Cielo e Terra, also known as Gruppo Cantine Colli Berici near Verona.  They market wines from DOC, IGT and Vini da Tavola.  The winery is in partnership with over two thousand wine growers, with different labels for different niche markets.  The business was founded in 1908 by the Cielo family and has been family owned ever since.  This sparkling wine is pure Prosecco (Glera) and made with the Charmat Method and comes with a distinct wavy engraved shaped bottle.  A light yellow colored sparkling wine with medium size persistent bubbles that offered notes of golden apples, white flowers and lemon peel.  On the palate this wine displayed tones of fresh fruit and citrus and ended with a short-count finish of fruit and citrus.  An easy drinking wine for a party-culture environment.

We then set off to Stratford Ontario, and we were going to meet her friends on Sunday for lunch.  The city was settled by almost equal numbers on English, Irish, Scottish and Germany immigrants around the 1830. The center of the town was on the Avon River and is known as Stratford-upon-Avon, the town was incorporated in 1859 and the city in 1886.  The swan is the symbol of the city, and each year, twenty-four white swans are released into the Avon River.  The town is noted for the Stratford Festival, which performs Shakespearean plays and other genres from May to October.  The Stratford Shakespeare Festival began in 1953, and Alec Guiness spoke the first lines of the first plays produced; Richard III and All’s Well That Ends Well. Some of the other famed actors that have tread the boards there are Christopher Plummer, Dame Maggie Smith and William Shatner.  The evening that we arrived without any dinner reservations, which was a mistake on my part, and we wandered around the downtown area searching for a table.  While we roamed the streets, we looked at store front windows, which proved to be a big expense the next day.  We also discovered commemorative “Stars” on the sidewalks, and we will go back another time to discover more.  I wanted my Bride to pose next to one of her favorite stars, but she insisted that I have the honor, I think she is holding out to pose with Christopher Plummer.