Monday, October 05, 2009

Canada Has Awesome Stuff In It

Exhibit A: Marzipan in pleasing shapes

Exhibit B: Well-timed agricultural festivals

Exhibit C: Apples in sugar, fried (officially called Brit's Apple Frits)

Exhibit D: Interesting metalwork
This is from a large gate by the street which has a sign on it that says "Welcome to tir na nOg (Land of Youth)." After a bit of Wikipediaing I have learned that the Land of Youth is one of the Otherworlds in Celtic mythology. It seems to me like one of those places where you go thinking you'll have a fine time and then those tricksy leprechauns never let you come back and you end up leading a life of endless despair and misery because mortals aren't really supposed to be there. I guess Stratford lives on the wild side and thought a gateway to the Otherworld would be fun. I would be interested to see their Missing Persons file.

Exhibit E: Street performers
When a street performer has a good crowd, they're really fun to watch, and this guy was lucky enough to have a good crowd. I liked him, in spite of the fact that all street performers seem to share 65% of their jokes, until he put a balloon up one nostril and made it come out the other. I cannot handle that kind of thing. Gross. Now that I think about it I should have filed him under the "Weird" post.

Exhibit F: An entire shop devoted to tea and tea-related implements.
I have been looking everywhere for a simple tea strainer like they have in tea houses and where do I finally find one? London? Edinburgh? No. Stratford, Ontario.

Exhibit G: Designer cloud cover

3 comments:

Ivan said...

I know this seems strange, but I'm really hoping you bought that marzipan and ate it...

Anonymous said...

These are awesome. Why is it that I have spent much time in Canada - but never saw such interesting things? Perhaps because it mostly happened before the Internet, when Canada could compete on a more equal basis and did not have to develop a special non-internet, titanic awesomeness.

Simon said...

Canada: one thing the internet actually improved.