A little piece of Ontario in the heart of Devon

We were in Ontario recently. Sorry that we weren't able to stop by and visit anyone, but we were only there for ten minutes. How is this possible, you may ask? Here's the story....

We were recently in Plymouth for me to attend and present a poster at a conference. Being the naive Canadian that I am, I also scheduled a research interview in Southampton for the day the conference ended. Those of you not familiar with the geography of England, may like me, think that Plymouth and Southampton are both somewhere down along the south coast, so how far apart can they really be? Well, they are actually about 3.5hrs apart, mostly on account of the winding, one lane roads, not simply the mileage. Not exactly close by. Not a horrific drive though, unless you were also naive (read stupid) enough to plan to return to Leeds the same day. We left the conference at 11am and finally returned to Leeds at 9:30pm. That's a long day in the car. We did stop in Southampton for me to do my interview and stretch our legs, but no matter how you do the math, it was a long trip.

Moaning and whinging (classic Brit words!) about the drive aside, there were some fun moments on this trip. Our drive took us through Glastonbury and Oxford. We can cross those off the list of places we need to visit now. There were some nice sea views from the road along the south coast which also made the drive quite enjoyable. Also, we had some time to wander around Plymouth. We saw the Mayflower memorial which, in all honesty, may be the only thing worth seeing in Plymouth! I suggested to Brent that perhaps they made Plymouth dodgy on purpose so that when the Pilgrims were leaving on the Mayflower, if they were having any second thoughts about wanting to leave their home land they would look back, see how bad it looked and decide that their decision to move to the new world was the right one. Brent tells me that Plymouth was very badly bombed in WWII and that most of what is visible today has been built since the war, so likely it wasn't as dodgy when the Pilgrims where departing. I think he was being polite.

The highlight of the trip was our stop in Ontario. Somewhere along the A30 just outside of Exeter we saw a sign with a Canadian flag on it. I thought this was a worthwhile detour along the way so we wandered a little off the road to follow the sign. The signs led us deep into the middle of nowhere, on a tiny road with 20 foot high hedgerows. But, at the end of the road we spotted the Canadian flag flying over Wolford Chapel (we forgot our camera on this trip, so check out the picture at this website: http://www.heritagefdn.on.ca/scripts/index_.asp?action=31&U_ID=0&N_ID=1&P_ID=8802). The chapel was built in 1802 by General John Graves Simcoe - first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. The Simcoe family is buried on the grounds and a the tiny Chapel building holds antiques from the Simcoe family. In 1966 the deed for the land was given to the Premier of Ontario, John Robarts, so it is actually a piece of Ontario in the middle of Devon. It was definitely worth the detour. Perhaps our stop at Wolford Chapel was a bit of foreshadowing?

It is interesting to think that our trip to Plymouth will likely be our last before we return home at Christmas. Our last views of England are remarkably similar to the Pilgrims leaving on the Mayflower. I think we will fly home though rather than take a boat across the Atlantic, but this is just a matter of taste. Hopefully this will prevent us from contracting scurvy, TB and pneumonia like the Pilgrims. New World here we come!