After our house concert in Halifax, we played another at Jude's dad's place in West Dublin, and played at a house party the next day. The next morning after partying relatively heartily we got up around 6 in the morning to prepare to leave Nova Scotia for our first really long drive.
Adam loves mornings!
Me, Adam, Jude, Steph , Graham, Meg (who we picked up in Halifax and gave a ride to Ottawa)
Judy and Stephy seeing us off.That day we gave'r through Nova Scotia, and into New Brunswick where we stopped in Moncton for veggie oil. We stopped at a pub, and found the guy who worked there who was in a band, and he was stoked to help us out. Laden with good golden veggie fuel we sped out of New Brunswick and into Quebec, where we stopped at a random clearing by the side of a road and set up camp for the night.
The next morning we drove to Levis, Quebec and found a sushi restaurant there who was willing to part with their waste veggie oil. Again it was all about finding the guy who worked there who was in a band. They were really helpful, and their food was amazing to boot. Here's Meg and Adam digging in their bin:
From there it was off to Montreal where we met up with our good friend and musical compatriot Mr. David Simard, and I got to see my friend Clayton. We had the night off in Montreal and the entire following day to run around and explore, and Adam and I talked at length about the differences between bigger towns and smaller towns, the west coast versus further east, et cetera, and we both came to the conclusion that we have the vague intention of someday living in Montreal. We got to brush up on our French and walk around ordering things sounding like a couple of idiot foreigners. The night of the 17th we played at Montreal's L'Inspecteur Epingle with David's power trio and a fellow named Leif Vollebekk, and both acts were awesome. At the end of our set we had David, his drummer Daniel, and Leif up on stage with us. Here's Clayton and his roommate Becca after the show:
And here's Adam fiddling with David during his set:
I shed a single tear as I bid Clayton adieu, and we made our way back to David's to sleep. The next morning it was a slow start and a short drive to Ottawa to play a house concert at a place called the treehouse. It was full of politically aware anarchist hippie type folks who seemed really cool, further proving the theory I devised in Halifax that if a household has an extensive collection of mason jars for drinking vessels and bulk food storage, the people who live there are probably really cool. Before the show, David and Graham and I made a sweet veggie oil score behind a sushi restaurant:
From Ottawa we swung by Kingston to pick up my good friend Robin (who was coming along for the ride til Toronto), and then made our way to Peterborough, where we had a show at a little art gallery called the Peterborough Arts Umbrella. After the show we ran around Peterborough hopping from place to place until we finally discovered the cool bar there - sadly after Adam had already given up and gone to sleep. Here we are before Adam conked:
That night the five of us, David, Graham, Adam, Robin, and I, all ended up in different places to sleep. Adam in the van, Robin and I at my friend Sally's, and Graham and David at Dave's friend Mel's, and in the morning we reconvened over breakfast at Wimpy's and made our way to Toronto. On the way there Graham was poking his head out the sunroof and his glasses whipped off, and so he is now a blind man stumbling across Canada with us. Here's a photo of him moments before his glasses took their leave of his face:
We had a few hours in Toronto before our show, so we went and lounged around in Kensington Market where we had tasty food and looked at vintage and army surplus stores. I saw way too many sweet western shirts, and received some unsolicited fashion advice from a strange bearded man. Our show that night was a house concert at a psychiatrist's penthouse apartment just off of Yonge street. A few of our very favourite people in the world are currently living in Toronto and came to the show, and some old friends of mine from high school surprised me by showing up. Our friend Anna shed the splendor of her viola on a few of our tunes and we got encored into playing a much longer set than we intended, so the show itself was a lot of fun, but the night took a somewhat nasty turn when David and I were trying to move the van and one of our jugs of veggie oil sprung a leak and spilled into the back. Luckily I was able to keep most of it from spilling everywhere by catching it really quickly but it was still a godawful mess - we had to cut some oil stains out of the foam mattresses in the back and do some serious oil spill clean up using kitty litter - and all this is in a hot parking garage. Anyway, we did manage to get the situation under control, not too many things got veggie'd - a couple of coats got soaked, but they were fine after a run through the wash. So finally after that fiasco we all got to sleep. The next morning over brunch we bid Robin and all of our Toronto friends adieu -
- and we made our way to Guelph. We met up with David's friend Kelly of David and Kelly, and after a frustrating drive around Guelph finding no veggie oil, we played at the Cornerstone. After terrorizing the streets of Guelph and battling with orange pylons, we stumbled back to Kelly's where we stayed the night. The next morning after a fairly slow start we commenced the 12 hour drive to the Sault, stopping in Sudbury where a friendly man from the laughing (smiling?) buddha led us around town on his scooter, us following behind with the van. He led us to a bunch of chip shops, and we finally found one with some waste oil to spare for us. He also gave us some sturdier containers for the oil which hopefully won't burst and spill all over our crap if we slam on the brakes too fast. Anyways, by about 3 in the morning we made it to the house of the Wild Turkeys in Sault Ste. Marie, which is where I am now, being told that it is time to get going on finding more fuel and making our way to Wawa.And THAT, folks, is Nova Scotia to most of the way through Ontario, in one ridiculously long blog post. From here on in I will hopefully be a little bit better about being on top of these things - so perhaps you can look forward to shorter, more frequent posts, hopefully less riddled with poor grammar.
Anyways, hope all is well for all of you! See you in Western Canada!
Taylor
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