St Catherine's, Canada

I had such good intentions of blogging about St Catherine's a week or so ago and now here it is, my final night, before I leave tomorrow at 5.3am to get the shuttle bus up to Toronto airport to fly to Chicago.
So I shall do my best to do some catching up, now.
After I left Singapore I flew to Hong Kong where I transited, boarding my flight to Toronto.  Now this was a good moment because it when I was upgraded.  Seriously, Air Canada upgraded me to business class. All I had done when I was at the check in counter was simply ask for an aisle seat if possible and when the woman handed me back my boarding pass she said that they would try their best but couldn't guarantee that they could.  I thought this was a tad odd until I looked at the boarding pass and it didn't have a seat allocation. I was mildly disconcerted by this.
When I got to the gate I told them that I didn't as yet have a seat allocation and was told that they were working on it and to come back in 15 minutes. And then another 10 minutes.  Well all I can say is that it pays to wait patiently. Because when they did eventually hand me my boarding pass the seat as 10A (a window)...Now I was chuckling away to myself thinking how funny the whole thing had been and I still didn't have an aisle seat when it occurred to me that 10A seemed to be awfully far up the front of the plane. I examined the boarding pass more closely and this time saw the word 'Business'. OMG!  I thought of course that there had been some terrible mistake and as I handed the boarding pass as I was about to enter the tunnel to the plane someone grabbed it off me and took it away. 'Hmmm I thought' this is where they will come back and very apologetically explain that a working class lad like me could never fit in business class and that it had all been a dreadful mistake.  As the Air Canada person came back towards me I steeled myself for the inevitable anticlimax when she whispered to me 'we've upgraded you. Have a great flight'.
The smile was on my face until I was half way across the Pacific! 
I won't bore you with the champagne upon arrival and champagne whenever I asked for it...or the menu from which we selected our meals...or the comfortable full length bed that my seat became...or the amazing attention from the flight attendants....but it has definitely spoiled me!

Arriving in Canada almost three weeks ago, I was whisked off by shuttle bus to St Catherine's a city of about 120 000 people about 75 minutes south east of Toronto and located in the Niagara region.  Indeed Niagara Falls is only about 25 minutes down the road.  I visited these a couple of weeks ago.  What a strange, crazy place - with the stunning falls, the beautiful parklands and the tacky, kitschy, sideshow alley-like roads leading down to the Falls. 

I have been based at Brock University, in the Department of Tourism Management where I was given the title of Visiting Scholar and had my own office.  It's been a very enjoyable and productive time. I've been working on the analysis of some of my Singapore data as well as mapping out a couple of projects with a colleague from Brock.

I've been living in a lovely all, vast home which is a ten minute bus trip (plus another ten minute walk to the bus stop) from Brock and the neighborhood is full of interesting birds and squirrels.

The Canadian people are oh so polite and genuinely so and it has been a lovely few weeks.  On Sunday I caught a bus up to Lake Ontario which is at the northern extremity of the city and spent a few hours exploring an 'eco-park' and also Port Dalhousie.  I left Brock today at about 1pm, came back home, did my washing and then started packing before strolling into 'downtown' a 20 minute walk, to Gords, a bar with a lovely beer garden, where I had a couple of pints of raspberry ale and a California burger.  Life is good!

And it gets even better when I meet up with Steve in Chicago and we begin Our Great Big American Adventure!