ARCTIC Expeditions

The Boat is a funny place. It’s in a completely unassuming building at the edge of Kensington Market, and it’s possible to overlook it entirely. But head up the stairs and you’re inside something that looks, well, very very much like a big wooden boat, complete with portholes. The Boat even leaks - there are actually buckets nailed to the ceiling to catch the worst offenders. It’s a place with a lot of character. Nice stage, too. And it was good to see many of our Toronto and even a few of our Vancouver friends in the crowd.

I think we played a really good set, and by midway through I found I had a lot of energy from it. Some of this was nervous energy. Right when we were about to go on I could not track down my earplugs. I knew I’d had them earlier while another band soundchecked, and I knew they couldn’t have gone far, but they wouldn’t turn up. I ended up using a pair of orange foamy earplugs, which turned everything on stage into a big puddle of mud. My keyboard didn’t appear to be working in Amazed and needed some cable-twiddling. But we made it through without further incident.

After our set, I found my earplugs in the same pocket I’d already looked in five times, but lost my cell phone and had to track that down at the end of the night. All is well, though, and as an added bonus we also found our funky metal water bottles we brought with us on the trip, which had been missing for a few days. We’ve been trying not to buy disposable water bottles, but the catch is, of course, that you’ve got to keep better track of the bottle…

Another thing we’re trying to stay conscious of is not going to chain restaurants and stores if we can help it. We’ve been shocked by how many towns have hollow, dead downtown cores while the main road is littered with the same identical bland strips of the same identical bland box stores and chains and fast food restaurants. It becomes impossible to tell one town from the next (was the Arby’s on the left here or across from the Reitman’s down from the Home Depot?). Just a little further down the road, there are gorgeous, character-soaked classic buildings sitting vacant, and interesting independent businesses struggling to survive.

It’s as if there’s no point in even travelling any more. I suppose people seek the familiar, but when every place is so familiar (and in Ontario, even the landscape is pretty much the same), it’s like you haven’t gone anywhere at all.

On our drive up to Montreal, we stopped in Belleville and bypassed the main strip for lunch, heading to the old downtown section. Todd spotted a little place called Bren’s Bakeshop & Cafe, which turned out to be fantastic. I was a little worried at first when they appeared to be out of most of their lunch menu except a few soups and wraps, but it was clearly because the food is so damn good that there was none left by the time we got there. We had veggie curry soup that was so obviously homemade, it felt like being in your aunt’s kitchen or something.

We’re going to go there again on our way towards Waterloo on Saturday. Take that, Denny’s!