Holiday in Haliburton

Ingrid and I spent two very relaxing days at Country Charm B&B, Haliburton. Highlights included a leisurely stroll through the Sculpture Forest and a little excursion up to Skyline Park with its view of Haliburton Village and Head Lake, with the Haliburton Highlands in the background.

Rain had been in the forecast but the weather co-operated very nicely.

Click on the link to see our whole Haliburton Holiday 2012 album.

Here are a few of the photos:

Ingrid and I with the village of Haliburton and the Haliburton Highlands in the background.

Beaver contemplating lamp post. I would  have simply called it Mister Tumnus.

Barb - superb hostess and proprietor. Her barn is reflected in the kitchen window

Autumn or Winter

Today we had snow - and not just a little flurry - real snow which continued on and off the whole day around our neck of the woods.  

This has happened just nine days after a glorious Thanksgiving weekend which inspired me to get out my camera and drive around our neighbourhood to catch some of the local fall colours which I have uploaded to an album, 2008 October Fall-Winter.

Before coming to Canada I was of the impression that autumn was the "proper" word for this season and that fall was just a "lazy American" word.  I will own up to being led to this conclusion by snobbish prejudice. I was wrong and I have spent the last few years trying to be a bit more open to the possibility that I might even be wrong on some other points; I'm just trying to discover what they are :-)

Here's what I found in the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Fall

Noun sense of "autumn" (now only in U.S.) is 1664, short for fall of the leaf (1545).

Autumn

c.1374, from O.Fr. autumpne, from L. autumnus, a word probably of Etruscan origin. Harvest was the Eng. name for the season until autumn began to displace it 16c.

Here are a few photos I have selected from the album.  All pictures in the album were taken less than 5 minutes drive from our house.

Snow falling front of our house today

Happy Thanksgiving

To all Canadian readers, Happy Thanksgiving, though I guess by the time you read this, Thanksgiving will be long past.

In Canada this long weekend is known as Thanksgiving. Like most other students away from home, Stephen and Judith have come home for the long weekend. Today Ingrid made us an amazing turkey dinner with pumpkin pie and home-made cranberry sauce. During the meal we each had a turn to tell the rest of the family something that we were especially thankful for that has happened in the last 12 months. We all agreed that Judith's response to her chemo was the real biggy. Other things to be thankful for included admission to Queen's University (both Judith and her boyfriend,) assurance of a job for Stephen when he finishes university next year, and Sean's job progression over the last year. I nearly included the Springboks' Rugby World Cup quarter final win over Fiji today after giving us all a huge fright by allowing Fiji to score two quick tries with only 14 men, but decided that wasn't quite in the same league of personal thanksgiving.

So what has happened in the six weeks since my last post?

In a nutshell:
Judith has moved into res. at Queen's University in Kingston,
Stephen has gone back to Queen's for his final year,
Sean has cracked a bone in his foot,
Luisa (Mark's girlfriend) has come back from Holland to Toronto and started her Master's,
Mark came back with Luisa, just for a week,
Heather (Stephen's girlfriend) has left to go to India for two months,
Miriam is working full-time on finishing her Master's,
Terry and Ingrid are now taking care of Judith's guinea pigs,
and, of course, Opa came to visit for 12 days at the beginning of September.

Calabogie
Ingrid and I had booked to go back to Calabogie Lodge for a week at the beginning of September and we invited my father in law in Holland (everybody calls him Opa - Dutch for Grampa - his name is Joop) to come out and join us. You can link to the photo album I put together from the links panel on the left. While there we did a one day outing to Ottawa, going to the Museum of Civilization in Hull. The highlight there was probably the IMAX movie on dinosaurs.

On another day we drove to Algonquin Park, one of Canada's most famed national parks - some would say the most famed. At 7725 sq km it is roughly 20% of the size of Holland (41 526 sq km). Seeing as Joop needs a walker to get around we chose to do the Spruce Bog Boardwalk as the most accessible of the trails. See the photos in the album.

The other big thing we did that week was eat. Every evening Joop hosted us to dine at one or another restaurant in the area. It was great. The closest we came to a fast food chain was buying the odd cup of coffee from a Tim Horton's outlet while we were driving.

On our drive back to Toronto we went via Kingston so that Opa could visit Stephen and Judith at their university town. While there, surprise, surprise, he treated us all to lunch which the "poor" students took full advantage of.




Autumn colours
Last weekend Ingrid and I took another drive up to Algonquin Park to view the fall colours - not only at the park itself but also along the beautiful drive there.

Not far from the park we stopped at a place called Henrietta's Pine Bakery to buy sandwiches for lunch in the park later. Now Henrietta is a very South African name and one of about five flags flying outside the store was South African so we could not resist asking some nosey questions. Sure enough, the store is run by a South African couple from Nelspruit and Pretoria who came to Canada two years before we did. Henrietta was the aunt who started the store many years before. Their wares did not disappoint. The carrot cake was the best we have had since coming to Canada - in no small part because they make the icing with cream cheese like you are supposed to. Here is a link to a review of the bakery.
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