Canadiana Backpackers Blog

Canada regularly ends up either on top or very near the top of the U.N.”s list of “Livable Nations” year after year.

Toronto too, is considered to be a clean, tolerant, friendly, sophisticated, multi-cultural and, above all, safe city. In fact, mathmatically, Toronto (North America’s 5th largest metropolis) is 35 times safer than it’s closest American rival cities Chicago, Houston and San Francisco.

We ARE  little reticent to publish this blog entry. We are a little afraid we will jinx things.

It’s quite obvious that living in Toronto we have a lot to be grateful for; but our weather can be challenging, to say the least. Our summers can be so hot and humid that, you can’t even breathe. Our winters can be so cold that, you don’t dare to breathe.

This winter has been remarkable (so far) it is already almost the end of January and there is no snow and the forecast for today (January 25th) calls for +2C and the forcast for the 27th calls for +4C! This is traditionally the coldest month of the year!

To date, we have had only one brief dusting of snowfall that didn’t last as temperatures rose. Our streets are bare of snow as we write this.

Our bitterly cold days (-10C or more) have been relatively few and far between. To our newcomers and visitors, if you had to experience a Toronto winter, you really picked the right one!

It has been an exceptionally mild winter (thus far). But we Canadians no the tricks Old Man Winter can play. There is still February to come and we will not be lulled into thinking that winter won’t yet come at us with a vengance.

If you have ever booked your stay in a hostel online, chances are you did it through a major Internet Hostel Booking site such as Hostelworld.com or Hostelbookers.com. There are a lot of companies in the hostel booking game; but these two are the “big boys” on the block.

These booking companies maintain an enormous data base of virtually every hostel in the world. Infoprmation on just about any hostel can be gleaned from this single source and youcan check outlocation,  facilties, services and ratings. In many cases, a hostel’s ratings is the determining factor in a decision to make a booking. But quite often the ratings can be misleading.

It might seem a little odd that we would mention that, because the ratings for our hostel (Canadiana Backpacker’s Inn) are consistantly high. (Approval rating currently 87% on Hostelworld; 89% on Hostelbookers).

These ratings are very important for hostel business. A hostel with a consistantly poor rating will almost certainly soon close down.

So what can be misleading about our consistantly high rating? We strive to please our guests and maintain our rating. In fact, only a rating of 100% is beneficial to us.

But we think we deserve to be higher. Please look at the example of the ratings below then hear me out.

This comment was left on Hosteworld.com by a Swiss guest: “It is exactly the kind of service you want in a hostel. Clean rooms, a nice kitchen and a lot of young travelers. “ , her rating: 80%.

A rating of 80% sounds good, but the reality is that it actually hurts us. It brings our overall average down. In fact, it is 7% less than our average rating.

On very rare occasions in the past, we have been reluctantly obliged to ask a guest to leave our hostel for offenses like and disorderly conduct; theft; aggression towards other guests or similar offenses. If they booked through a booking site, you can imagine what their “ratings” for us look like.

The bottom line is that any rating below our current average is damaging to us. So, if you liked us, please keep that in mind.

At least once a month, our hostel’s staff members have an “evening out” get-together at a local pub. The management treats the staff to beer and chicken wings!

Our former “Local”, the Fox and Fiddle has closed (to make way for a 40 story condominium) and their legendary wings are no more to be had.

But we discovered that the city’s oldest pub, “The Wheat Sheaf” (a continuously operating pub since the mid-nineteenth century) also has “Special Wing Nights”  from Sunday to Tuesday.

We tried out this new “source” on the occasion of Yoko-chan’s birthday. Yoko is one of our two Japanese speaking staff members who hails from Shikoku, Japan.

The verdict on the Wheat Sheaf wings is they are perhaps the “best” we have ever had!

The Pub has now (officially) become our hostel’s choice for beer and wings. If you get there, remember to try the “Smoked BBQ Sauce Wings”!

..

This winter we have begun offering  hostel residents a Wednesday night meal at a very attractive price. It’s free!

This past Wednesday we prepared Spaghetti Bolognaise and began serving it to all hostel guests at 6:30PM. As it turned out, there was enough to feed everyone and even the staff managed a portion.

With the cold weather approaching, we thought it might be a good idea to warm people’s spirits with a free dinner (to go along with our free burger BBQ on Saturday’s.)

We are still in the process of figuring out what kind of meals the average backpacker will enjoy. We are in the process of planning the menu for next Wednesday.

So if you want to make suggestions, comments or have any sort of input into the process, leave a comment on this blog and/or the Canadiana Hostel’s Facebook page.

We hope you enjoyed the spaghetti!

Here at the Canadiana we organize daily “events” for backpackers. These are held to give travelers a chance to meet fellow guests.

The events range from Nightclub visits; trips to “ethnic neighbourhoods” (Chinatown, Little India; Little Italy; Greektown) to sample various cuisines; Pub Crawls and Karaoke; Theatre trips (Stage performances); Sporting Events.

There is much to do in this city and we do our best to facilitate our guests to meet and enjoy themselves.

How do we plan events?

We try them out for ourselves first. When we are searching for some good “ethnic cuisine” we often take the hostel staff members out first to get varying opinions; or we try different pubs to sample their “chicken wings” to get a consensus of the best on offer.

Recently, we took staff members and their friends bowling, a pastime that has lost a lot of popularity  in recent times. Nonetheless, bowling is a lot of fun.

Sandra (our hostel manager) is pretty good at it. It’s just her natural athletic ability because she really doesn’t have time to play anything regularly (except basketball).

Whether or not we will institute bowling as a regular or even occasional event will be discussed at our next “staff meeting”. But it seemed to work as a convivial event.

We have our 14 seater van (The Black Beauty) to drive guests to various venues when needed.

So if you see an announcment (on our board or website) sign up at the front desk. Space is often limited by our vehicle’s capacity.

When you operate a backpackers inn in Toronto’s Entertainment District, you never know who you might run across during the course of a day.

We met a lone traveler the other day who described himself as a “Keyboard Player” from Richmond Virginia.

Really? A keyboard player? I suppose that’s true. The same way you might call Issac Stern a “fiddler” or Wynton Marselis a “horn player”.

It turned out that James Pettis, our self-decribed “keyboard player”, is actually an internationally acclaimed classical pianist (and an altogether pretty remarkable human being.)

He is a multi-award winning pianist and even won a Virginia State University competition while still a high school student. He then attended the famous Julliard School in New York City on a scholarship.

He’s been a solo classical performance artist for over half a century and was recently the recipiant of the E. Azailia Hackley Award in Detroit Michigan. The awards and honours still continue today and he has even received an NAACP Freedom Award.

This multi-faceted performer even had a recurring role on the long running soap opera “The Guiding Light” as, you guessed it, a piano player.

He was in Toronto for a single performance at St. Paul’s Trinity Church where he played classical selections from Bach, Beethoven, Lizst and Rachmaninoff, as well as some Gospel Music of his own arrangement and even some Scott Joplin ragtime.

He’s due to return to Toronto in the Spring for another concert. He has promised to keep in touch with us and we will gladly post a notification of his future performances here in our city.

We attended his musical evening last night and his virtuosity made it hard for us to believe that he only has ten fingers.

American Football vs. Rugby:

This is an ongoing (and usually acrimonius) debate wherever Rugby afficianados meet with North American sports fans (especially English speaking backpackers from the UK, Australia/New Zealand and SouthAfrica).

First of all, it is a meaningless debate. They are two very different games.

Matthias is from Bavaria in Germany so you would expect him to prefer the game of rugby. For whatever reason, he plays American Football (a.k.a. Gridiron).

At 240 lbs., (approx.  110 kg.) he’s a pretty big boy and plays centre. He hands off the ball from his position in the middle of the line that has the job to protect the quarterback.

It’s a brutal sport in which on virtually every play, it is the job of everybody on the field to hit somebody. To the uninitiated, it can seem a bit ridiculous because it actually is and it’s definitely complicated.

Matthias is what you might call a “gentle giant”. He’s very popular with other backpackers and hostel staff. But if he wants a career playing American  Football, he’s about 40 or 50 kgs too small to play the position of “Centre”.

It’s a short ten minute stroll from our hostel to Toronto’s oldest pub, the venerable Wheatsheaf. It is in turn, a short stroll to the bastion of historic Fort York.

This is the late 18th Century site (1797) around which grew the present-day metropolis of Toronto. The present fort was rebuilt by British Troops and the Canadian Militia immediately after the War of 1812.

The Americans burned the original fort after their victory at the Battle of York (now Toronto) in 1813. Things weren’t so neighbourly back then when the British returned the favour by putting Washington, D.C. to the torch the following year.

In the mid 19th Century, the Wheat Sheaf was the watering hole for troops who garrisoned Ft. York. It has been a continuously operating Public House since 1849 and claims to be the oldest Pub in the city.

We really doubt that it is but it’s arrogated claim to fame has attracted a lot of local celebrities. Mike Meyers and Bobby Orr have been known to drop in for a pint and the signatures of Allanah Myles and Toronto Maple Leaf legend, Eddie Shack are on the wall among autogreaphs of still other celebrities.

About once a month, the entire staff of the Canadiana go out for Chicken Wings and Beer at a local pub. We often choose to gho to the Wheatsheaf because the wings are delicious (and half-priced on Mondays.)

Note: (The Black Bull, located on Queen Street just one block fron our hostels door, dates back to 1838 however it was rebuilt in 1886.)

Thanksgiving 2011 was pretty memorable time for some of the staff members of the Canadiana Backpacker’s Inn.

About a dozen of us were treated to a tThanksgiving meal at a Marina on Toronto Island on a gloriously warm and sunny autumn day.

The turkey dinner was pretty good (despite the parsimonious portions) but the setting was spectacular. The beer is always good and always welcome.

The view of the city from Toronto’s Island Park is the best you can find and the skyline of the city’s skyscrapers fill the horizon.

The pub we ate at is located near Hanlan’s Point near the Western end of the Toronto Islands.

As the largest and most centrally located Backpackers Inn in Toronto, we attract a lot of “group visitors” such as students, youth groups and academics attending conferences.

We’ve hosted Boy Scout Troops from Scotland, the Manchester Boy’s Choir, Doctoral Candidates, church groups, High School Field Trips and countless foreign language students.

The many post-graduate academics that come here are from prestigious institutions like Harvard, the London School of Economics, Stanford, Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Sorbonne to name-drop but a few.

Has any individual or any institution or group stood out?

You bet.

Interestingly, the group(s), institution and individual all come from the same place. They do not represent a storied institution in an exotic locale. The groups are from West Ferris High School in North Bay, a small city (pop. 50,000) in Northern Ontario.

We have a good number of youth groups staying with us annually. The North Bay/West Ferris High students are, quite simply, the best behaved group of youths we have ever hosted (actually, the best behaved group of guests,  full stop.)

Like many schools from rural regions, the West Ferris School escorts groups regularly to experience  the diversity  of “the big city”. Small towns and cities in rural Canada are often ethnically and cultually homogenous, something which often leads to a degree of xenophobia.

So what makes these particular students unique?

We think it is due to the work of the teachers who escort them to our city. And to John Hetherington (a History teacher) in particular. He is the only teacher/chaperone who has accompanied every West Ferris student group that has stayed with us (so we assume he is the organizer and driving force).

All  students show obvious respect for teachers and chaperones. A colleague of John’s  once confided to us that the respect was largely a result of the universal esteem the students hold for “Mr. H” in particular.

They simply don’t want to let him down. In our experience at our hostel is that, thus far, no student ever has.

To other future school groups, we at Canadiana Backpackers host many, many student groups and are equipped and able to host any group. If you are planning to escort a group to our city, you might be well served by examining and emulating the West Ferris model because they are doing something right.

We have mentioned this before; but it bears repeating. “We live in a world fearful of differences.” We think the teachers at West Ferris High do a remarkable job to build understanding, the best cure for such baseless fears.

***

(This is the fifth entry re: West Ferris High we have posted since we began this blog five years ago. To read previous posts, simply enter “John Hetherington” into the blog’s search box.)