Toronto & Montréal: Mist maidens and angry god-lamb

Our quest to conquer Canada started bumpy when it took us an hour to escape the Toronto airport. Alchemizing our American gold into Canadian loonies, racing from floor to floor, we would have barely made it onto the finish mat for Amazing Race. Speaking true-true, we were bleary-eyed and I don’t even remember what we had eaten that day besides katsu’d Tomakazu porker.

Toronto feels to me like New York: humid warmth, garbage bags spilling into alleys, shwarma late night. At 2:30 am, we each have a quarter of a pizza and then flop down onto Holiday Inn beds to wake up again for platters of breakfast at Daybreak Diner. With real maple syrup! Somehow our hotel is in the gay area of town, and we pass so many rainbow flags and ambiguously gay duos and trios. We’re even down the street from a bar called “Zippers,” and on Friday nights, it is “Where the Bears (and otters, wolves, and boys) Run Free!”

A big bus picks us up from a little bus in the morning and we’re at the back with a little Latina terrorist who alternates between achingly cute and screamingly lacking in volume control. We’re disgorged at Niagara Falls and commanded to throw our faces for an hour at a buffet that overlooks the waterworks. Post-gorge, we are handed neon blue ponchos before filing onto one of the Maids of the Mist.

Somehow the New Yorker cartoon that won me this free trip to Canada failed to adequately portray how packed these ships are as they take you to the all-encompassing embrace of Horseshoe Falls. Even Monsieur FriFri donned a protective layer of hot plastic as we’re all hosed down. I can’t even see as I aim my camera sight unseen at the water.

We dry off quickly despite the humidity and we’re given some time to poke around a questionable gift store situated above some Class 6 rapids swirling into a whirlpool. Next destination was Niagara-by-the-falls, a sleepy tourist explosion of a town that sells pastries, souvenirs, bad beer, and adorable stuffed animals. We finally end up at an awful winery that has won somehow three hundred golden prizes (and a hall to display them in), but at least their wine plus the long day of seeing-all-the-things is roofie enough to knock us out for the journey back to Toronto proper.

Dinner is at the Dumpling Queen, which I assume turns from Taiwanese family-run joint into a gay bar catering to a specific clientele after dark, and then we peer into Zippers, mulling the fun of a nearly empty gay bar while the abyss of a drag queen peers right back at us with a grin. We ultimately hit the sack early to make the train to Montreal at 6:40 am. There will be more and better beers in our Canadian future.

Montréal

I’ve wanted to do a long train ride for a while now, so bucket list takes another hit. The responsible thing to do would have been to catch up on sleep, but I wanted to finish an emo movie, write a bit, and instagram all the blurry Impressionist paintings outside. It never got old to lean against the window, the countryside and farmland flashing by as our train blitzes towards the City of Saints.

As soon as our bags hit the hotel floor, we’re hauling ass towards the Basilique Notre-Dame. A fiver gains you admission, though it is free if you attend services. Everything is lit up by spotlight, candlelight, or tourist cameras. I take my obligatory picture of the baubles upon Catholic baubles at the front, but my favorite was the side chapel with the God-Lamb ready to do battle. It’s clear that He is sick of your whining after all that He has done for you.

We’re ready to eat a small Canadian child after the church, so we crash land into Stash Café, a Polish joint that has old church pews as seats that fit 3/4ths of your arse. Red demi-lanterns lit up the table as the server brought us pierogis, pickled herring, stuffed cabbage, all washed down with the first decent beers we’d had in Canada.



As post-script, I later regret not finding out about the brewery Dieu du Ciel until we were already out of town, not that I didn’t manage to successfully have five of their brewed wares by bottle proxy later. Best coffee imperial stout I’ve ever had. Péché mortel!

Our early wakeup is starting to ride us now, but we rally by sinking into the hotel pool and sauna contraption. Post-dinner, we inhale some shish taouk, the Montreal take on Lebanese kebab, as we make our way towards the Jacques Cartier Bridge. It was perfect timing for the International Fireworks Festival that night, and my homeland of Hong Kong was flaunting its pyrotechnic chops down by the amusement park across the water.

We camp out on the bridge’s early span and watch as giant fireballs set off car alarms and make children scream. I make everyone nervous by sticking my phone out past the bars, but all went well, and on our way back, we didn’t even dropkick any children.

The night wraps up in the Gay Village, where strands of pink baubles dangle over all the twinks reenacting Lady Gaga dance routines. The possible bars are just so plentiful that we drift through the gayborhood for a long time, pausing just to wonder why gay bars with “eagle” in the name are always Daddy dens. In this case, L’aigle noir was ready to suck Chris into its furry sweaty clutches.

Pink baubles above Gay Village

I suppose we all can’t expect that an Irish neighborhood in San Francisco to suddenly become a sufficient mecca for gays from all across the States. As a light sprinkle starts at the end of a fire dancer performance and for lack of smartphone guidance, we walk into Sky Pub Club, which turns out to have a sweet drag show in progress.

“Is there anyone here who speaks only English still? Fuck you!” said the cheerful drag MC, and we are immediately enraptured by her twirling and lipsyncing sisters. Katy Perry and Rihanna scroll by before a Cabaret montage steals the show. We stumble into the misty 2 am night in search of Erik’s perfect old man cocktail before bed.

We have a lazy morning before the next train voyage to Quebec City, so it’s off to Al-Baghdadi Pastry, a Middle Eastern bakery for some kanefeh variations and cardamom-drenched coffee. My eyes are sucking up every allergen it can at this point, and I’m just leading us around the city blindly.