Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Visiting the C.N.E.
Took the day off an visited the venerable Canadian National Exhibition today with my three-year old daughter Vanessa. Took the Go Train from Danforth station right to the other-wise little-used Exhibition train station right at 10am, and managed to spend almost 8 hours with her there.

We did pretty much everything except the rides (which I really wasn't in the mood for at the time). Spent a lot of time over at the Kid's Village section, where we got molested by goats scrounging for food at the petting zoo, made enormous bubbles at the Kid's Science exhibit, she bounced around in the giant inflated Shopper's Drug Mart Bear's Head mascot, played with musical instruments, watched part of a Doo-Doo the Clown (a name which pretty much stops any criticism in its tracks) show and ate large amounts of cotton candy and popcorn. Also saw the Eukabana Dog Show, spent time at the International Pavilion, watched/heard flamenco music, had more junk food, then went over to the Automotive Building to see the agricultural exhibit, where Vanessa petted some week-old piglets.

Vanessa was very tentative about a lot of things, and I think she was a bit overwhelmed by the scale of things to do at the C.N.E. She found the highly-amplified clown show too loud, got freaked out about the mob of animals at the petting zoo, felt intimidated about going into an inflatable kid maze, and clung to Dad a lot, especially at the beginning. Things got better over the course of the day, and she was really enthusiastic about the agricultural displays, and asking me all sorts of questions about the chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs and deer(!) we saw. The candy went over well, as did more familiar things such as the kids playground.

She also seemed to enjoy the International Pavilion a lot. This is a place where dealers from all over the world come and sell there wares. At the Russian booth Vanessa selected a wooden Russian nested doll and a “regular” doll that I bought for her. Was pleasantly surprised at how much Vanessa enjoyed this part of the show, as she gawked at all of the various goods – ranging from furs to gem stones, stickers to masks, funky hair clips to flamenco music. I had always enjoyed this part of the C.N.E. myself when I was a kid, for much the same reasons. I remember buying a book on Soviet space flight at the U.S.S.R. booth (as it was then), which came in a bag with requisite socialist propaganda pieces, which looked funny to me even back then.

Vanessa also scored big-time in terms of free treats that got handed out at various places. All in all, a successful visit. Man, am I wiped! ;-)

My Aunt Glad Has Died
Sad news when I got back from the C.N.E.: I discovered that my Aunt (actually a cousin once-removed) Gladys de Bathe died sometime over the weekend. I got the news via email from my Aunt Audrey, and I promptly gave my mother a call in order to break the news to her. Glad had had a massive heart attack earlier in the year. I had thought she had been getting better, but I understand from Audrey that she had gotten worse very recently.

I only met her a few times, on the odd occasion when she headed north from her home in Connecticut to visit my parents and Aunt Audrey in Keswick/Toronto. My mother, my Aunt Audrey and her were known as "the three cousins" who settled in North America. My chief regret at this stage is that she apparently had a lot of knowledge about the family history, which I had always intended to ask her about/compare notes with.