Europe in Ontario 2021: Day 2 & 3 - Port Dover, St. Thomas, London, Grand Bend

The second day of our “Europe in Ontario” road trip involved driving west from Port Colborne towards St. Thomas, where we would spend the night.  Even though it took longer to drive, we tried to stay as close to the shores of Lake Erie as possible for the best scenic views.  There is a great stretch on the initial section of Lakeshore Road West just outside of Port Colborne.  The ground was covered with leaves of gold and orange hues and since so many had fallen, we were able to see through the trees to spot the impressive homes at the backs of large properties. Continuing on, we had pretty views of Lake Erie to our left and quaint communities to our right.

Along the way, we stopped at Port Dover to repeat a regular ritual, which was to have the perch and pickerel lunch at the Erie Beach Hotel.  We like this lunch because not only do we get a good amount of nicely breaded fish, but it comes with 50’s styled salads such as horseradish Jello and fruit cocktail with marshmallow in mayo.  On past visits, a personal salad cart was rolled up to your table by a waitress who seemed right out of the old 80’s TV show Alice.  It was a large part of the fun of eating at this restaurant.  This time because of COVID restrictions, we were served our salads at the table on bowls and plates.  Although the food was still good, the experience was lacking in charm and whimsy by comparison.  After lunch, we continued to follow the shores of Lake Erie, hitting our first set of Ontario communities named after European cities, which I described in an earlier blog post.

Our final stop for the day was in the city of St. Thomas, just south of London, Ontario, to take a quick look at the Jumbo the Elephant memorial on Talbot Street. Captured in Sudan, Africa, Jumbo resided for years as a beloved pet in the London Zoo in England, until P.T. Barnum purchased him in 1882 to star in the Barnum and Bailey Circus’ “Greatest Show on Earth” in America.  The circus travelled across North America by train.  In September 1885 in St. Thomas, Ontario, while Jumbo was being led across the tracks back to his cage, a special (unexpected?) freight train appeared and struck the 11 ft tall, 7-ton animal.  Jumbo died within minutes.  To commemorate the 100th anniversary of this tragedy, the citizens of St. Tomas and Elgin County erected a majestic monument as a tribute to Jumbo.  We arrived at the memorial around dusk which was quite opportune since we could see the sun start to set and the lights around the sculpture lit up.  The combination made for quite the beautiful sight with the autumn leaves in the background seeming to shimmer.  A CN Rail caboose that accompanied the Jumbo monument acted both as a reminder of how he died, and doubled as a souvenir shop.

Originally the elephant monument was the only site that we planned to visit in St. Thomas before hunkering down for the night.  But as we were driving towards the memorial, I spotted people walking overhead along what looked like an elevated park, similar to the High Line Trail in Manhattan.  A quick Google search confirmed that an iconic railway bridge in St. Thomas had indeed been converted into Canada’s first elevated park and the entry point was just around the corner from the memorial.  In front of the entrance to the park was a wall covered with paintings of Jumbo the Elephant in different colours, thus linking these two St. Thomas tourist attractions.

The park sits on the 260 meter(853 feet)-long Michigan Central Railway Bridge which was in use from 1929-1996. It now provides a sculpture garden containing artwork and musical instruments, seating, gorgeous views of Kettle Creek Valley, and connects to forested walking/running trails to create a 6km (3.7 mi) Elevated Park Trail.  Since it was getting dark, we only had time to walk through the park section on the bridge, but we will definitely return another time to walk the entire trail.  The nice thing about rail trails are that they are relatively flat by nature since they originally had to support trains traveling on them.

On the third day of our road trip, we left our St. Thomas motel early in the morning and headed into London, Ontario.  Unlike the previous day when we ate a quick breakfast of home-brought fruit and oatmeal in our Port Colborne motel room, this morning we had something special in mind.  Rich had found a hipster diner called “The Early Bird” where we planned to enjoy a hearty breakfast which would hopefully tide us over until our 5pm dinner reservations that evening.  Based on our experiences trying to get into popular breakfast locations in Toronto, like Le Petit Dejeuner where people line up way before opening hours in order to score a table, we arrived at the Early Bird 20 minutes before opening time.  Not only was there no lineup in front of the diner, but there was no indication of activity within the darkened establishment and not a soul on the streets for blocks on end.  We went for a quick walk around the neighbourhood to look at some street art.  Returning about 12 minutes later, it still did not appear as the restaurant was preparing to open.  With 5 minutes to go before the specified opening time, I was starting to declare that we should go find somewhere else to eat, while we both were peering through the windows looking for any sign of life in there.  Imagine my surprise when we turned around and seemingly out of nowhere, there was a crowd forming behind us.  Apparently the locals knew the drill and understood exactly when to turn up.  A minute later, the lights were turned on in the diner and a hostess came out with a podium ready to check our vaccine passports and allow entry.  Because of Rich’s persistence, we were now first in line and scored the coveted nook by the window.  This quirky restaurant ended up to be one of our most memorable and enjoyable meals, but I had to spend the rest of the trip uttering those hallowed words that we both love to hear .. “You were right and I was wrong”.

Since we wanted a big breakfast so that we could skip lunch, we spurned the “Lighter Side” options but were nonetheless awed by the size of our meals.  I ordered the “Hash and Eggs” which consisted of crispy home fries with poached eggs, peppers, onions and an optional side of bacon, topped with hollandaise sauce!  Rich had the “Stacker” which was a huge stack of buttermilk pancakes with both bacon and peameal bacon (because why not?!?), sausage and sunny side eggs topped with syrup.  We also had orange and grapefruit mimosas since that is what you do when you are on vacation.  The Early Bird’s décor is so fun and funky!  I loved the skeletal mannequin and the busts with the rock band Kiss' makeup and Elvis’ hairstyle.

I took a wander around the diner, checking out all the eclectic posters, murals, paintings and small sculptures that covered every inch of every wall.  Given my hobby of collecting photos of interesting bathroom signs indicating men vs. women, I was sure that there would be something cool to find in this place.  Disappointingly, there wasn’t anything unusual for the bathroom signs which just said “Men” and “Women”, but the crazy art on the walls of the bathroom stalls was something to behold.

Following breakfast, I accompanied Rich on his trip down memory lane at the campus of Western University where he received his post-secondary education.  We toured the University and Middlesex colleges where he had some classes, the Student Centre that housed the pub where he hung out with his classmates and the D.B.Weldon Library where he studied and actually had a personal office in 4th year.

We also visited Sydenham Hall, the student residence where Rich stayed during first and second year.  He was actually able to point to the windows where each of his rooms were.  Western University is located on 455 hectares of land with the Thames river flowing through the campus’ Eastern section.  It is accessed from University Drive by crossing a bridge that spans the river, from which we watched the ducks and kayakers paddling by.  There are some pretty walking trails and including a section of the 110km Thames Valley Trail that we would like to cycle on one day.

Our next stop was the Museum London, an art and history museum established in 1940 with a collection containing 45,000 historical artifacts and 5000 artworks.  The museum is much larger than I expected and mostly displayed art pieces throughout the galleries, with one exhibition area in the basement devoted to the history of London.  The main exhibition was called “Taking the Long View”, featuring works from the museum’s permanent collection that reflect upon the city’s artists and community from mid-1800s through to the 2000s.  A special section is devoted to Paul Peel (1860-1892), one of London, Ontario’s most famous artists, known for his sweet depictions of small children.

 Other sections of this exhibit included “Faces of London”, “London Regionalism”, works by the Group of Seven, works on paper, Canadian abstraction, and contemporary art.  While the older paintings and portraits were arranged tightly in French salon style, the more contemporary works were given more space “to breathe”.  These more recent creations included sculptural and mixed-medium pieces that used materials such as neon lights and found objects.  I liked “meta-ness” of the iron-board shaped painting of an ironing board with a dress and iron.

Other exhibits on display during our visit included two cases containing vintage comics such as Johnny Canuck, and poignant black and white photographs by Stephen J. Thorne depicting the bravery and resilience of wounded soldiers.  We spent some time inspecting the “Labatt Collection”, highlighting Labatt Brewing Company’s 150 year history of brewing beer in the London area.  The collection included old bottles, bottle caps and coaster designs as well as various advertising campaigns.  I laughed out loud at the sardonic one featuring “Chuck & Di .. What you do after a bad sausage …”.   There were also news clippings detailing the 1934 kidnapping and subsequent release of Labatt president John Sackville Labatt for a large ransom that was promised but never paid.

The basement level of the museum contained historic artifacts from London’s past.  There was a 1953 album cover from The Four Chorders, a London-based barbershop quartet who were Ontario Barber Shop champions.  An wrought-iron sculpture is a tribute to Nancy Skinner (1938-2011) who contracted polio at age 9 leaving her paralyzed.  In 1970, she joined the disability rights movement to help make London, Ontario more accessible. Two pretty vases depict scenes celebrating the London and Port Stanley Railway that ran from 1856-1957, and the West London Streetcar in the mid-1890s traversing the Kensington Bridge that spanned the Thames River.  A cell ventilation grate formed part of the “new” London jail built in 1846.  It was interesting to see memorabilia from Western University including a replica of the 1940s Beanie cap that identified freshmen, a school jacket, and a fan inscribed with two popular courses – “Complete Business Course” for young men and “Complete Stenography Course” for young women.

Leaving London, we drove to Grand Bend, the last overnight stop of our road trip.  Our aim was to get there in time to experience what has been ranked by National Geographic as one of the 10 best sunsets in the world.  On the shores of Lake Huron, Grand Bend is a beach town that is hopping in the warm months, but fairly deserted on this cool November evening.  Although most of the shops and eateries were closed for the season, several souvenir shops selling  beach-wear and t-shirts were still open.  It was interesting to see early Christmas displays in front of stores selling surfing gear.  At Archie’s Surf Shop, I found a pretty lavender long-sleeved mock and Rich selected a blue t-shirt as souvenirs.  Continuing down Main Street, we headed towards the beach area.

On the boardwalk along side the Grand Bend Beach can be found the Rotary Community Stage and a snack bar with a lookout platform, with colourful murals painted on the walls.  There is a fun sculpture of a floating musical staff where you can ham it up by pretending to play the guitar or belt a tune in front of a microphone.

At the far end of the beach sits a pier with a lighthouse at the end of it.  This is obviously the popular spot to view the sunset, judging from the number of people gathered on that spit.  We found that we could see the sunset just as well from a covered pagoda further back, and had the added advantage of getting backlit shots of the people, the lighthouse and the birds that swooped down from above.  Not getting too close to a crowd was an extra COVID-precautionary benefit.  We stayed to watch the sun slowly set until it disappeared in the horizon, leaving a red glow in the distance.  For a final view, we climbed to the lookout platform and watched as the lighthouse pulsed with a green beacon.

Following our viewing of that spectacular sunset, we went about looking for somewhere to eat dinner. With the sun down and the crowd dispersed, even the few fast food joints on the Main St. strip that were previously open had now closed.  We were on the verge of driving out of town to pick up some soup and sandwiches from the Tim Hortons on the highway when we found Paddington’s Pub.  We were not expecting much at this point and were prepared for the typical pub fare.  To our surprise, their menu included a Cajun-spiced pickerel served with crispy mixed vegetables and pilaf rice.  As an even greater surprise, this ended up being one of the best meals we have had so far on our trip.