Toronto, Canadian Firstbud, and the Magical White Groundhog!

Tobermory, ON → Toronto, ON
170.0 mi (273.6 km)

Good morning, everyone!

After sleeping like rocks that had walked 18 kilometers, Danielle, Scooter, and I were up bright and early to bid farewell to Tobermory and head south toward the great city of Toronto!

First, though, Scooter had a special request! The Bruce Peninsula is home to a very famous groundhog celebrity, Ontario’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil! His name is Wiarton Willie (pronounced “Wire-ton”), and Scooter insisted that we had to meet him! Who was I to argue?

The tale of Wiarton Willie got started in 1956 when three wise groundhogs named Grundoon, Muldoon, and Sand Dune predicted the birth of a white groundhog who could predict the weather. At least, that’s what Mac McKenzie told a Toronto Star reporter who followed him to a Groundhog Day party in Wiarton, thinking it was actually a festival. Apparently, the first “Willie” was the fur hat of Mrs. McKenzie, set in an impromptu burrow and left to prognosticate!

Willie himself came onto the scene in the 1980s, a true Great White Groundhog, and has been predicting the change of seasons ever since! His accuracy is debatable, but the annual Wiarton Willie Festival is a major draw across the country! Plus, the entire town has filled up with Willie lookalikes!

Today, Willie lives in a posh enclosure at the Wiarton Chamber of Commerce building, with an indoor chamber full of corn cobs and an outdoor play area where he can enjoy the weather, with or without his shadow!

We found Willie sitting comfortably outside, enjoying the spring sunshine. He greeted us with the pomp and elegance one could expect from a fine stateshog. He said it was a big responsibility moving the seasons every year, and it took many months of planning to decide whether to have a long winter or an early spring. Usually, it came down to whether he felt like getting up on the morning of February 2nd.

Scooter was a little giggly in the presence of the celebrity, but afterward, he told me he didn’t remember this Willie from his visit back in 2005. I think that’s because the secret of Wiarton Willie is that he is many groundhogs! The one we just met was born “Wee Willie 2,” and took the title of “Wiarton” from his predecessor, who entered the eternal burrow in 2006!

After bidding farewell to Willie, who had a very busy schedule, I spotted some blossoms in the park overlooking the water. My beaver instincts kicked in! Firstbud! As you’ll remember, the first blossoms found after the Spring Equinox signal the start of this beaver holiday, and I was very excited to introduce Scooter to the festivities! We played tag along the shore under the clouds of spring midges and climbed up among the beautiful flowering branches for the view! Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve ever introduced someone to Firstbud offline! How neat!

Fun though the frolic was, Danielle reminded us that a) we still hadn’t had breakfast, and b) we had a long drive to make if we wanted to see some sights in Toronto! So, we hopped back in the car, grabbed some sandwiches and doughnuts from Tim Hortons, and headed south for three hours, across kilometers and kilometers of flat, uninteresting farmland that reminded me of the Spanish Meseta!

At long last, the tall buildings of Toronto came into view, including the 553.33-meter CN Tower, the tallest broadcasting antenna in the western hemisphere (85 meters taller than the Pearl TV Tower), and our next stop!

The idea for the CN Tower came about in the 1960s when the Toronto skyline began to get taller and taller, which caused a lot of transmission problems when the buildings started blocking signals. So, four days after Groundhog Day in 1973, construction started to build the tallest freestanding transmission antenna in the world! It took 40 months and a near disaster with a helicopter before this marvelous tower rose up to define the Toronto skyline!

After paying for admission, we rode an elevator up, up, up, until our eardrums popped! Then we jumped on another elevator to go even higher (447m) to the SkyPod and look out on the sprawling city of Toronto going one way and across Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls the other way! Architecturally, Toronto looks like a thin city with lots of tall, cylindrical buildings that remind me of batteries! In many ways, it looks a lot like how I imagine cities of the future!

We dropped back down a hundred meters onto the LookOut Level, which has a glass floor capable of supporting three and a half Canadian orcas, 35 Canadian moose, and 1,091 Canadian beavers! That’s a total weight of 21,835 kilograms! That was comforting to know as Scooter and I stepped out onto the glass and did as visitors to the CN Tower must do: take the falling photo!

After soaking in the views, we headed back down to the bottom for another stop on our whirlwind tour of Toronto. Walking the streets, it was easy to imagine we weren’t in Canada at all but in New York! This is a very cosmopolitan city with great public transportation and a lot of folks out walking on the streets. Take a lesson, Los Angeles!

We were heading for Nathan Phillips Square, named for Toronto’s mayor from 1955 until 1962, but originally a major immigrant reception area and site of Toronto’s first Chinatown. As you can imagine, from places like China Slough, it didn’t take much to get voter approval to demolish this Chinatown and turn it into a large public square! Now, it’s a central meeting point for photos by the famous Toronto sign and ice skating in the winter. Plus, it’s a great place to try poutine, which is basically French fries covered in cheese curd and gravy and sticks to your ribs on those long winter nights! Watch out for the seagulls, though! They will fight you for your poutine!

As the afternoon wore on, we had to hustle to our last destination: the Toronto Islands! This chain of islands is a short ferry ride from the Toronto waterfront and boasts an amusement park, lighthouse, airport, and even a nude beach! We only had enough daylight to see one sight, though: the sunset!