Beautiful Vintage Cars on Display at the Copper Kettle Festival, Creemore, Ontario

Copper Kettle  Festival - Creemore, Ontario

Creemore is a quaint small town about thirty minutes drive from Collingwood.  But last weekend, it was bustling with people and activities.

A spectacular house garden in Creemore, Ontario

Sponsored by a local brewery company, the kettle Copper Festival takes place in this small town every year.

It happened on the same weekend we visited our friends and we were happy to take advantage of the opportunity and went to the festival.

Vintage tractors on display at the festival

There were a number of events happening in Creemore during this annual  festival weekend.

On our first stop, we were at the ground of the Canadian Legion Hall where numerous antique tractors were on display.

D. loves these tractors!

Our friends from the country were very excited at the sight of these old tractors which reminded them of their youthful and good old days on the farm.

A motor cycle made out of pieces of nuts and screws

I enjoyed looking at the beautiful and creative projects created out of used old scrapes of metal such as nuts and bolts.

There were two main locations where the Kettle Festival took place.

On the downtown main street, there was an antique car show.

Owners of vintage vehicles meticulously restored their cars, having spent lots of time, money and efforts restoring them to their original glory.

Walking down the main street, there were rows of magnificent shinning antique cars being displayed and admired by visitors to the festivals.

Proud owners of these vintage vehicles presided over their pride and joy at the Creemore;s vintage car show

Proud owners of these enviable vehicles brought with them lounge chairs sitting close by, taking in the fine weather and enjoying the ahhs and uhhs of passersby. 

A new band making its debut performance at the festival

There were music, entertainment, bands playing outside, displays and the most popular place for many was the free tasting of local beer as well as the imported beer.

Free beer tasting - most popular place at the Copper Kettle Festival

We went in for the free beer tasting, lingered in the brewery for a little while.












There was a free tour of the brewery facility but we were too busy enjoying ourselves and didn’t join the tour group.

Another area where a lot of booths displaying local crafts and selling various foods were at the Mad River Park but we didn’t have a chance to visit before it closed.

It was a great weekend for us!

R.T.
Creemore, Ontario

Alpacas - Adorable and Gentle Animals Which Spit at You When Threatened!

View of Collingwood from top of the hill

We went to visit our friends in Collingwood after we left our cabin.





A town of about 12,000 people, Collingwood is a four season vacation town where tourists come to ski in the winter, swim, hike and bike in the summer and fall.





Collingwood has many beautiful grand old houses.










It also has cosy little houses and cottages.

We stayed the night in this lovely town and met our friends for brunch at one of the restaurants serving pretty good breakfast and lunches.


We are rarely here for Saturday and this time we caught the tail end of a farmers' market behind Loblaws in downtown Collingwood.                

Farmers' Market - Collingwood, Ontario

Our attention was caught by a couple of very cute animals, the Alpacas, a mother and her seven day old baby!

A mother alpaca and her seven day old baby

Apacas are friendly, curious and gentle animals originally come from the Andes mountain of South America.



According to the ranchers who keep these animals, alpacas are adaptable animals and do not mind the cold, rain or snow that we have in Canada.

Alpacas have soft padded feet with two toes and they do not have claws or hooves to use as protection.

This seven day old baby alpaca was very alert and cute indeed!

To defend themselves , they spit at their aggressors. They spit when feeling threatened or nervous. However, they rarely spit at people.








We learned that sweaters made with alpacas' hair is seven times warmer than wool and that alpacas are hypo-allergenic. People with allergies are not bothered by sweaters/ clothing made with alpaca fiber.

Alpaca clothing is seven times warmer than wool

From now on, I will be looking for sweaters made with alpaca hair for family and friends who are allergic to wool sweaters!

R.T.
Farmers' Market
Collingwood, Ontario

True Friends are Better Than Gold!

A big tree on our property north came down and blocked the driveway

We got a call from our neighbour up north that one of the big trees was down on our lakefront property.

A small part of the fallen tree landed on our neighbour's driveway.

We were anxious about this news.

Feeling anxious about the damage to our little cabin, we drove up north for the weekend to assess the damage.

When we got to our property, we saw a big soft maple tree down blocking our driveway completely and also a little bit of our neighbour's.

But we were so thankful that there was no real damage to our little cabin except the lock was broken on the front door.

Our friend helped us to clear part of the tree

I went over to see my neighbour and she was quite upset. She told me that we needed to remove the part of fallen tree from their property and that her husband could do it, but not for free. She suggested $300.00 for her husband to remove that part of fallen tree.

We cleared our neighbour's drive way

I took a look at it; it was not a lot. Frankly, I was surprised that they did not remove it since it had been sitting there for almost two weeks according to my neighbour.

A true friend is better than gold!

Our friend who was with us to see the damage came prepared. He took out his chain saw and started cutting the fallen trunk.











With our friend cutting away the branches, my husband and I removing the cut pieces, we were able to clear the fallen part of the tree landed on my neighbour's oil tanks. It was less than an hour's work.

We also went around and marked the trees that need to be trimmed or removed.

I was really glad that our friend was here to help us. He has been extremely busy with his own property in another town, but he was willing to take time out of his busy schedule to lend a hand to help us!

We numbered the trees to be trimmed or cut down

Good friends who are willing to help in times of need are like gold, even better than gold!











We are extremely grateful we have true friends just D.M.!

R.T.
Bracebridge
Ontario
0826

Good things about Guangzhou; Two Thumbs up for the City of Guanhzhou!

We just came back from our two week trip to China, safe and sound! Considering how fearful we were prior to our departure for China, we are happy to say that this was a very successful trip!

View of Guangzgou from the top of Baiyun Mountain, with the Canton Tower in the background.

The last time we visited Guangzhou was the year 1990. Two young children in tow, our family of four embarked on our first family trip to Asia. That trip did not leave us a good impression of Guangzhou as the weather was too hot and humid; it was the first trip for our young sons and we jointed a tour from Hong Kong for a three day trip of Guangzhou.

 We did not see much of Guangzhou and the only thing we remembered was the garbage we saw littering along the highways as the tour bus took us from Hong Kong to Guangzhou and its surrounding cities.

It was a pleasant surprise for us on this trip to discover how much the city of Guangzhou has changed and how hard the people, city officials, and Chinese government have worked at improving the city since we visited it thirty years ago.

Followings are what impressed us the most about Guangzhou on our recent visit to the city:

 1.  Cleanliness of the city – Our memory of the garbage lining the highways, roads and alley way haunted us from our last trip. But on this trip, the city has cleaned up so much that we did not see a lot of littering or garbage! What we saw was uniformed city cleaning crews diligently sweeping and picking up litters off the streets of the city.



In fact, we were so impressed by their work that we stopped, talked to two of the city cleaning crew members, gave them a thumbs up and thanked them for their excellent efforts in keeping the city so clean and pleasant for residents and visitors alike!

One of the city highways of Guangzhou

  

 2.   Greening of the City – It is not easy to keep a city of eleven

million people clean and free of litter and garbage. 

Not only is the city of Guangzhou doing a fantastic job in keeping the city clean, it has even managed to beautify the city’s highways. 

      I was awed by how hard Guangzhou at trying to greening their city by using climbing vines to wrap around 
     and beautifying the support columns under the city's highways!  Seeing these huge green columns remained me of the majestic tall trees we saw in Tuscany, Italy!

    ( City of Toronto can learn a thing or two from Guangzhou and making its city cleaner and highways more beautiful!)

  

City highways in Guangzhou are lined with beautiful flowers!

 3. Affordable and Efficient public transportation – We traveled on public transit systems in a number of big cities across the continents such as New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, Paris, Rome, Tokyo,  and Hong Kong. The Guangzhou Metro can hold its candle to and at times cleaner and more efficient than some of the subway systems we have taken in our travel!!! Two thumbs up for the city of Guangzhou!

A daughter and her dad on the Guangzhou subway

   

    4.     Improved living standard – It was evident to us that the living standard of  many Chinese has improved drastically over the past thirty years.

     Off course there are poor people living in every country.

Little well dressed girls and their mothers in a park

     However, when we visited our ancestral villages, we did not see the very poor peasants starving or living on a meager existence as described by our parents and in some media. 

     What we saw in Guangzhou on the streets were many happy kids beautifully dressed and taken care of by their parents.  We were delighted to see this happy blissful scenes repeated many times during our trip in China.

     However, China is still a country without universal health care and pollution is a big problem. We did see on two occasions,  family members with their sickly loved ones begging on the street for donations to help pay for their medical treatments. This broke our hearts. But providing free universal health care to 1.4 billion people is a huge challenge! Is it even possible?

     We were glad to see that China has made great strides in improving its country in terms of creating employment opportunities for its citizens, investing heavily and building massive infrastructures such as public transportation enabling the mobility of great number of its people throughout China, and recently, increasing educational opportunities for students from Grade 1 to junior high school etc. 

     All these are good signs of progress and proud accomplishments achieved through the hard work and determination of a stable government and its people.

     It is our sincere hope that China will continue to improve the living standard and especially the medical care, pollution problem and human rights of its citizens!

     R.T.

     Reflections of Our Trip to

     Guangzhou, China

A busy week for us with our loved one home to visit

On our way to London, Ontario!

It was a busy week right after VBS!

We attended a couple of social gatherings during the week and even managed to go away for a couple of days to London, Ontario, got together with friends whom we had not seen for over forty years!

The guys were manning the BBQ while the rest of us relaxed! 

It was good spending sometime with Anna and her family.

We caught up with each other and exchanged stories about our grown children.

We had a reunion with our elementary school mates!

 Josephine and her sister were there as well!

We came back to Toronto for F.'s fantastic BBQ at his house. E. sent an email telling us he would be home for the weekend as well on the same evening. It was perfect timing! We missed him when he was in Toronto recently and glad that we were home this time.

We were happy that  E. came home for his high school buddy, Eric's wedding. He came home straight from his  two and half week trip to Europe, and stayed for a few days in Canada.  He has changed job recently and he seemed to be so much happier, more talkative about his new job, his recent business travel in London, Stockholm and Cologne. We loved listening to these stories!

Theodore was born a few weeks ago; he's very cute and alert!

I didn't want to leave the house when E. was at home for the weekend. On Sunday, we were invited to Rose's house for a BBQ to see Richie's new baby. Theodore was just born a few weeks ago and looked absolutely adorable!

A new baby was born to the family!

As I was holding him, I talked to him and he followed me intensely with his big eyes as if he was listening to every word I was saying! It could be that the little fellow mistook my voice for his grandma's!

Wrapped in a cosy bathrobe, E. was working from home on Monday all day. I actually got to see and hear him in action!  He was working in the dining room while I was in the kitchen. All of a sudden, he rushed up to his room and changed into his work clothes. Shortly after,  I overheard him interviewing an applicant for new staff on Skype. He sounded very professional and knew exactly what he was looking for in the applicant applying for the job in his company.

We are immensely proud of our son! Praise God for giving him such a wonderful opportunity in the States!


R.T.
A Grateful Mom
Toronto, Ontario

A Perfect Ten BBQ Dinner Paralleled to None!

F. & A. hosted a BBQ dinner for us in their backyard

My spouse and I are both involved in a few charities in Toronto. The organizing committee meets every month to discuss and plan our fundraising activities.

 We have been involved in the charitable organization since 2010. Little did we know that our involvement with this group of wonderful individuals has also cultivated some great friendship!

F. built the deck, and both shelters for his guests and the BBQ stove by himself! 

For our last month's planning meeting, F. , a member of the group invited the whole committee and their spouses to his home for a BBQ dinner.

Delicious appetizers! 

What a feast F. and A. had prepared for us!

Tomatoes in lychee juice, extraordinary and absolutely delightful!

We could not get over the amount of planning, organizing and preparation it must have taken this couple ahead of time to prepare this BBQ dinner for us.
























It was a feast fit for a king!

Our BBQ chef did an outstanding job!

With a great BBQ chef, C. taking charge, we were treated to a 6 star plus dinner that we could not have tasted elsewhere!

Korean marinated beef ribs were just out of this world!

With every course and wine list of the party's menu neatly typed and displayed for the guests,
F. and A. served us starting with cold appetizers: smoked salmon, Alaska clam meat, mixed salad and a very special dish of tomatoes in lychee juice, which few of us had tasted before.

They were delicious!

Perfectly BBQ chicken wings

When C,. our BBQ chef arrived, we were served Korean marinated beef ribs, followed by chicken wings, then lamb chops and tenderloin steaks!

BBQ lamb chops!

F. and A. were in and out of their house trying to fill our drinks, making us teas, coffee, always serving us something to eat.

Our gracious hosts provided us with a culinary experience that was unparalleled!!

Their kindness, hospitality and genuine interest and attention towards their guests were unparalleled and incredible!

A delicious, refreshing new dessert for us - Mango and Noodles !

                                                                                 
We had an absolutely marvelous time at F.'s BBQ dinner!

Basking in the laughter and friendship with wonderful people, enjoying scrumptious food and some extraordinary desserts, being safe and sound at home, we felt blessed!

All of us enjoyed ourselves at the BBQ tremendously!

We are grateful that God has blessed us with a great group of friends by being involved in the  charitable organization!


R.T.
Feeling Blessed at
Francis' BBQ Dinner
Markham, Ontario