(Various Ontario Locations)

As with last summer, my summer travel (so far) has been following the competitive lawn bowling circuit in Ontario. This blog post brings things up to date, in advance of a bigger adventure later this month!

My early season focus was on the Ottawa suburb of Nepean. Nepean’s lawn bowling club has an artificial surface, which means that it is in playing condition much earlier than clubs with a natural grass surface. We took the opportunity to revisit an old favourite: the Baan Thai restaurant. We first ate here about 10 years ago when we saw Johnny Clegg in concert at the nearby Centrepointe Theatre.

Distances in Ontario are vast. From Ottawa, my next major destination was Windsor…750 km to the southwest. I was playing in the Provincial Men’s Fours playdowns there, and I posted about Windsor’s special Ukrainian restaurant (and an Ethiopian restaurant too) in my previous blog entry.

As my team managed to claim the silver medal in rainy Windsor, we will be attending the National championships later this month…in Victoria, British Columbia! There’s more to come in this blog on that prestigious event.

I spent a couple of weekends in Kitchener too, but unfortunately I don’t have any photographs to share from those adventures. But I also played at a few tournaments in East York, at the Cosburn Park club. And one of the great things about this club is its proximity to “the Danforth”.

The Danforth, or more recently “the Danny”, is a portion of Danforth Avenue historically associated with Toronto’s large Greek community. Part of it is still known as Greektown, and Greek restaurants abound. However, much of more recent immigration to this part of Toronto has been from Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. In fact, a portion of it is now known as “Little Ethiopia”. There are about a dozen Ethiopian restaurants within walking distance of each other. So, of course, I had to try one…

We ended up at a restaurant called Lalibela, and I was very happy with my platter. The spicy chicken and the salad (or rather the salad dressing) were particular highlights. I don’t know why, but eating Ethiopian style just feels so right after a long day of physical activity in the sun.

A little closer to home, I often find myself in the lakeside town of Cobourg. Their lawn bowling club has a great location near the beach, and it is just close enough to Kingston to be feasible for one-day tournaments without a hotel stay. And it also makes a good stopover on the way back from events in Toronto and points west.

I’ve been travelling to Cobourg for sports since I was 10 years old. But somehow I had never noticed a place called the Oasis on Cobourg’s main street. You get to it by following an alley (the end of it is shown above) from the street. I was very impressed by the fact that they carry Blanche de Chambly – a very refreshing summer beverage from Quebec.

I don’t think I had ever fully appreciated Cobourg’s beach. It is right downtown, and seems to retain a small-Ontario-town feel despite the new development (condos, etc.) just a couple of blocks away. It isn’t as vast as the beach in ‘s-Gravenzande, for example, but there is nothing like it in the other nearby towns.

East York isn’t the only part of Toronto that I’ve gotten to know through sports. On a couple of occasions this summer, I’ve been in the suburban neighbourhood of Agincourt (itself part of Scarborough). This area is known for its East Asian restaurants, and we found a very interesting one on our last visit.

I haven’t had dim sum very often, but it is something I am going to try again in the future. It lets you sample many different dishes without committing to a lot of something unfamiliar. And the “Graceful Vegetarian Restaurant” obviously takes the dim sum concept one step beyond: everything is vegetarian or vegan!

I don’t know if I would have tried “real” barbecued eel. But I certainly didn’t mind trying the vegetarian version, with the (presumably soy-based) mock eel being very similar in texture to what I think eel would be like. It ended up being my favourite part of the meal.

Stay tuned for my upcoming British Columbia adventure!