Ontario, Canada Travel

Sault Ste. Marie’s slogan brags that the city is naturally gifted and it is! The city is surrounded by a world recognized icon in the Great Lakes with waters containing more than sixty species of fish including lake trout, walleye, pike, perch and more. Fly fishing in the rapids at the city’s edge is popular for salmon, whitefish and rainbow trout with catches made just in time for dinner.

All this is happening under the International Bridge, which links Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario with its twin sister, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The cities share their name and the St. Marys River’s beautiful waterfront; it lends an international flavor to both sides.

Sault Ste. Marie is the “Gateway” to the scenic Algoma Region. Set along the shorelines of both Lake Superior and Lake Huron, the opportunities for outdoor vacations are endless and world class. In the summer of 2003 this region was the host to the internationally famous Eco-Challenge, North American Champioships. Many of the components that made up the course are now accessible to the public and breathtaking kayaking, canoeing, hiking and mountain biking are available.

To really see this scenic wilderness, the unique ability to travel by train is a highlight when visiting Sault St. Marie. The Agawa Canyon Tour Train leaves daily from early June unit mid-October each year. This 228 mile round trip brings visitors beside lakes, over rivers and past waterfalls with a two-hour stopover in Canyon Park. Full service dining cars provide breakfast and lunch and dome cars are available with fully-narrated CDs to enhance the experience.

For those who like to see the local arts and culture, there is much to consider. To begin there is the Canadian Bushplane Center, which was voted the “Best Indoor Attraction” in Canada by Attractions Canada. This 25,000 square foot museum offers a look at the history of flight and fire fighting in Northern Ontario. The exhibits include a flight simulator, a fire tower and a visual experience in an “Object Theatre” which gives visitors a sense of actually flying a bushplane.

The Soo has many citizens of Italian heritage and its many fine restaurants reflect that in their cuisine. There are “shop till you drop” malls and the Casino Sault Ste. Marie to test your luck. You can walk the mile long waterfront boardwalk and watch thousand foot ships lock through the world’s busiest lock system or see them up close aboard the Lock Tours Canada Boat Cruise.

There are many local festivals and events such as the RotaryFest in July marking its 80th year in 2006; the Algoma Fall Festival in October timed to allow visitors to enjoy the magnificent fall foliage; and the Ontario Winter Carnival Bon Soo in January billed as the “Greatest Snow on Earth!” There is a Film Festival in February showcasing the best in international, independent and Canadian documentary films.

Stopping at the center of the waterfront will find you in Roberta Bondar Park, named after the city’s most famous hometown citizen and Canada’s first woman astronaut, Dr. Roberta Bondar. This area was historically known as Bawating or “meeting place” by the Algonquin Nation that settled here.

One of the city’s newest features is the Crimson Ridge 18 Hole Championship Golf Course. Waterfalls, creeks, numerous elevation changes and mature hardwood forests create spectacular views. Crimson Ridge was named one of the best new golf courses in Ontario and named as two of the top ten signature holes in Canada.

Nearby is the Searchmont Resort which is THE ski destination of the entire area and offers fantastic downhill and cross-country skiing. There are 18 runs and 3 chairlifts, with a full service main lodge and plenty of villas and chalets for accommodations. Both in the city and the immediate region, there are hundreds of kilometers of cross country ski trails and thousands of kilometers of snowmobile trails.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Canada Vacation

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My schedule in Ottawa this past weekend was extremely compressed, but there was one place I wasn’t going to miss: the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. As a person with no formal background, yet a keen interest in the visual arts and photography, I have been wanting to visit this museum for a long time. And my Internet research revealed that the Museum is featuring a very special exhibition right now: two photographic series by Sunil Gupta, an Indian-born Canadian citizen, exploring issues of identity, culture and the immigrant experience.
Let me start first with the Museum itself, a rather unique venue in Ottawa with a long history. The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography began its life all the way back in World War II as the Still Photography Museum of the National Film Board. Its activities include collecting, publishing and organizing traveling exhibitions and educational programs to foster the efforts and development of Canadian photographers.

It’s a unique place in a unique venue: the Museum is housed in a former railroad tunnel of the Grand Trunk Railroad. It is accessible through an above-ground entrance immediately west of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in downtown Ottawa, and an elevator takes you 2 storeys down from street level. As a former railroad tunnel, the Museum’s unique dimensions won’t come as a surprise: it measures 166 meters (545 feet) in length by only 17 meters (56 feet) in width. The facility is more like a 32-storey high-rise building laid on its side.

Even constructing the Museum entailed significant engineering challenges: due to the narrowness of the site, squeezed in between the Chateau Laurier on one side and the Rideau Canal on the other, construction trucks had to back into the site, edging their way half a mile along a road carved in the limestone and shale cliff face.
But I wasn’t only there to explore the unique architectural features of the gallery. The main reason for my visit was an exhibition by Sunil Gupta, whose 2 collections shed light on the immigrant experience.

Sunil Gupta was born in New Delhi in 1953 and came to Montreal with his parents at age 15. Over the years he has also lived in New York City and London and just recently moved back to India. Originally he studied accounting, but later moved into visual arts and photography.

Until April 23, 2006, the Museum features two highly personal collections by this artist. Social Security (1988) features Sunil Gupta’s family photographs and his mother’s words to shed light on the story of one immigrant family in Montreal. His family came from a middle-class background in India, and after their move to Canada they had significant adjustment problems. Sunil’s father was forced to work as a security guard and the family experienced a loss of financial security and social status. This was complicated by the fact that his parents were already in their fifties by the time of the move which made integration into Canadian culture even more difficult.
This photo collection illustrates the fact that his parents had traditional desires for both Sunil and his sister, and neither of the two children fulfilled the role expectations put upon them by their Indian parents. Sunil’s sister ended up marrying an American, something the parents did not support. Sunil himself is actually gay and had several long-term relationships with men, much to the chagrin of his parents. Neither offspring fulfilled the role of marrying an Indian spouse and creating a traditional Indian family. As such, the move to Canada was a big disappointment, particularly for Sunil’s father.

Incidentally Sunil’s father died of a heart attack on a Montreal street in 1986. He wasn’t found until several days later. One particularly gripping photograph shows Sunil’s father’s belongings, money, identification, credit cards, that were removed from his body after his death. It took the authorities three days to notify the family, presumably because his father was assigned to the “immigrant” section of the morgue. Nobody had bothered to check his identification and call his family, even though his father had all the necessary papers on him. And his social security card had been neatly cut in half.

Sunil Gupta’s second photo collection Homelands (2001 to 2003) includes large-scale diptychs that juxtapose images from his experience in the West with images from his home country in India. His exhibition explores highly personal topics, such as Gupta’s homosexuality and the fact that he is HIV positive. Gupta was diagnosed with HIV in 1995.
For me the most powerful image of the collection includes Gupta in front of a mirror, stark naked, facing the camera, with a sliver of his mirror image showing right next to an image of India. My museum guide indicated that Sunil has actually commented that he lives right in that narrow line between East and West.

It seems that his cultural identity is tenuous at best and Sunil decided recently to move back to India to explore his own cultural background. It is significant to mention that India does not accept homosexuality, does not offer treatment required for AIDS patients and doesn’t even officially acknowledge the existence of the disease. In addition India harbours a host of dangerous viruses that pose a constant threat to Sunil’s health. Even beyond that Sunil indicated that he lives in constant fear that his medical condition will be discovered and that he will be deported from India.

Both of Sunil Gupta’s series of photographs are highly personal, where he exposes himself (literally), his family members and the dynamics of an immigrant family in North America. His images use colour, atmospheric influences and juxtaposition to express symbolism and speak of an ongoing struggle to find his own personal, sexual and cultural identity at the confluence of Eastern and Western cultures.

For me personally, Sunil Gupta’s autobiographical photographs were almost shocking in their candor and openness. They talk about the cultural pressures and expectations that face second generation immigrants growing up in a liberal Western environment. Juxtaposed to this external environment is their traditional Eastern family milieu with its strict rules and role expectations, almost imposing a schizophrenic existence on their offspring.

It was rather surprising to me that Sunil Gupta decided recently to move back to a country where, as a gay HIV-positive individual, he is not accepted and it speaks to his overwhelming urge to reconnect with his roots.

The Canadian Museum of Photography is currently also hosting another installation: Imprints: Photographs by Michel Campeau, Marlene Creates, Lorraine Gilbert, Sarah Anne Johnson, and Sylvie Readmen features 19 recent acquisitions that explore nature and its forces as they intersect with the human world.

Susanne Pacher is the publisher of a website called Travel and Transitions (http://www.travelandtransitions.com). Travel and Transitions deals with unconventional travel and is chock full of advice, tips, real life travel experiences, interviews with travellers and travel experts, insights and reflections, cross-cultural issues, contests and many other features. You will also find stories about life and the transitions that we face as we go through our own personal life-long journeys.

Submit your own travel stories in our first travel story contest (http://www.travelandtransitions.com/contests.htm) and have a chance to win an amazing adventure cruise on the Amazon River.

“Life is a Journey Explore New Horizons”.
The story with photos is published at Travel Stories and Photos (http://www.travelandtransitions.com/stories_photos/ottawa_museum_photography.htm)

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The second person I had a chance to get to know at the Servas Conference was Gilbert Sherr, a communications professional from Atlanta where he was born and raised.

Until college Gilbert had only been to 5 different states and had never really gone on vacation. That changed radically after college when he travelled all throughout the US, followed by a long trip to Europe about 4 years later. He found, however, that travelling, visiting buildings and museums and marvelling at natural wonders simply wasn’t enough - one thing was absent, and that was meeting the people.

That changed when Gilbert learned about Servas in 1981. He said he had tears in his eyes when he realized that there existed a group of people who were willing to share their lives and invite strangers into their homes. In total Gilbert has spent about four and a half years of his life travelling around the world.

As Gilbert travelled more through the Servas network he found that he wanted to give something back. So he started to make meals for his hosts, babysat their children and truly became a part of their family, just like a long-lost relative. That’s when he had an idea for a book “Dishwashing through Europe”, a project that hasn’t come to fruition yet, but I found the title just delightful.

With his sociology background, Gilbert has a true interest in understanding the societies that he travels to. So what he normally does is he stays with 3 types of Servas hosts: an elderly couple or individual, adult couples with children and a younger adult. This gives him a chance to get a much more authentic, complete picture of the society he is travelling to, and to understand the specific issues that are facing each demographic group.

Similar to me, he also ponders which political / economic system might actually work best, and he has had a chance to spend significant amounts of time in countries with completely different economic systems. He has had the opportunity to study different variations of Western-style capitalism, socialism as well as communism, and he has developed his own insights as to which societal systems might work best for the greatest portion of the population.

He also found that the more he immersed himself in foreign cultures, the more he started to understand his own culture, he described this experience with the saying “When a fish jumps out of water, it doesn’t discover air, it discovers water” - a very interesting statement indeed.

Travelling also taught Gilbert that truth is not absolute, that current events are covered from completely different angles in different countries, and that local media can sometimes present a very biased one-sided perspective on issues.

By hosting other Servas travellers, Gilbert found that he is able to bring the world home, and hosting allows him to give back to this organization. Hosting gives him the opportunity to learn about other cultures from the travellers, and it enables him to share his culture. As a result of close to 25 years of travelling with Servas, Gilbert now has a network of family and friends around the world.

In the upcoming interview Gilbert will share his travel experiences, his insights on different cultures and socio-political systems as well as some of the decision-making and sacrifices that enabled him to spend so much time exploring the world. He will also touch on issues such as culture shock when reentering into his native US culture whenever he returns from an extended trip. Last but not least, he will share the insights of insider who has had a chance to discover his own culture through the eyes of outsiders.

Susanne Pacher is the publisher of a website called Travel and Transitions(http://www.travelandtransitions.com). Travel and Transitions deals with unconventional travel and is chock full of advice, tips, real life travel experiences, interviews with travellers and travel experts, insights and reflections, cross-cultural issues, contests and many other features. You will also find stories about life and the transitions that we face as we go through our own personal life-long journeys.

Submit your own travel stories in our first travel story contest(http://www.travelandtransitions.com/contests.htm) and have a chance to win an amazing adventure cruise on the Amazon River.

“Life is a Journey

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