Canadiana Backpackers Blog

When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the end of his gig in Monterey, California in the spring 1967. He thus began the ‘Summer of Love’ and started something electric. He then blazed through four years in a psychedelic haze before his sudden demise in October 1970. However, in that short period he left his mark on the world as he ‘lived in the moment.’ Although I am not likely to set the world alight in quite the same fashion, I think I’ve learned the value of trying to live in the moment.

I am known to everyone at Canadiana Backpackers as Tony the Tiger. I’m a blind-deaf traveller who explores the world with a different point of view! I began when a teenager, crashing hostels at all hours of the night, travelling to rock concerts, getting locked out of dorms etc. I was young and wild back then! I travelled the world by day and drank by night. I did it all; drinking anything from ten to fifteen beers a night and several hours later I would be jumping off the highest structure I could find, hopefully strapped to a bungee chord, but not necessarily caring!

My first oversees adventures took me to the US in a combination of study and travel, I discovered much, especially about drink and opposite sex! One such adventure involved something as simple as an outing to Hooters! Another journey took me to New Orleans where I engaged in a week of heavy drinking plus lots of Jazz, and food – Southern culture is terrific!

I later headed to Australia and New Zealand. My mission was to escape, just as many young backpackers want. The pressures of family background and fear of responsibility the usual excuses. I wanted more, I needed to prove myself – take on the world blind and with my cane in my hand.

I travelled the entire country of Australia in two months, living in the moment, hitting bars, chasing and annoying girls, rocking to any live music I could find, jumping out of aeroplanes, rafting rivers, feeling crocodiles – anything that was slightly wild or daring.

Not caring of the dangers, I wanted to feel it all. Things like the thrill of crashing into an unknown wave of water or exploring the drop of cool air with my entire body. Trying to anticipate what I could not see was frightening and electric.

I’ll live and die having fun on the road. This is my epistemology. Have fun and live in the moment. Life is very short. I found this out when aged just seventeen. I lost my best friend through an illness and my dad through old age. It eventually taught me a valuable lesson. Life is very short, we only live once so enjoy it and do what ever makes you happy.

In 2004-05 I decided to take on the entire world, beginning in South America and finishing in Africa. One friend said I was mad to go to South America, with no sight and no command of the Spanish language. I just grinned and said “I would manage”. I wanted the challenge. A friend had been somewhere I had not; therefore, It was a land I was anxious to explore. I got my mobility confidence when young and I try not to let anything stop me. I put my faith in the kindness of fellow travellers and locals and off I go.

That trip taught me many valuable lessons of the humanity in my fellow man. I’ve learned that the poorest people are often the kindest – they will give you their hearts if that is all they have.

I also learned that possessions mean very little after getting everything stolen in the while camping. I could have been in the tent and attacked or killed, I was lucky. I have learned that health and happiness are the only real things of value in life. I am the luckiest person I know, my disability has afforded me the time to travel, but I put my mind and body into it and have found the desire “to live in the moment’.

I no longer drink, partly because it was killing me and partly due to a kidney disease. I have been travelling with this problem for the last four years and it has finally forced me to take things slightly easier. However, I aim to never stop travelling. Quitting drinking was the best thing I ever did because, it provided another dimension to travel. It meant I could ‘see’ the world through all my senses; skin, ears, smell, feet, heat detectors, and most importantly, my mind. Being sober meant I could experience my surroundings much more deeply.

I am able to meet people and see in them their true character just by listening to their conversation. I can appreciate totally the change in atmosphere as I climb a mountain, enter woods or swim in the ocean. Being blind gives me my own imagination. This is how I travel. I create pictures in my mind from sounds, smells and energy from my surroundings.

I now travel for the people and for the isolation. New Zealand, Iceland, Southern Argentina, Canada and Alaska have both these qualities. Amazing people with time, humour and open-mindedness in abundance and miles of open isolated terrain – the things I consider beautiful.

I live to travel, to meet people, hear their individual experiences, be introduced to new ideas and different cultures, I live for the moment. If it ended tomorrow, I’d have no regrets.
I have been to forty one countries. I have visited all fifty US States and just crossed the Arctic circle. My next challenges are to get a kidney transplant, reach Antarctica and walk the Appalachian Trail.
I have dreams and goals, ideas and aspirations that I pursue. That’s living in the moment.

By Tony Giles

Of all of the hostels in Toronto, we probably get the most students. We get them from all academic levels. From those who are here to study elementary English to Doctoral Candidates here for academic conferences.

It rained yesterday and we had a lady return to the hostel after visiting Niagara Falls on her bicycle. It is a mere 140 kilometers according to a rather damp, Monika - a doctoral candidate in the field of Linguistics. You see, 140 kms is a walk in the park for this lady from near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.

She is in Toronto to deliver a speech on the ongoing work of her thesis. She has just returned from several months in Chinas remote Xingjiang Province on the border with Outer Mongolia. It is an extremely remote region of China that had been closed to all travelers for almost half a century.

She was in China to study the development and evolution of the language of the Dzungar-Tuvans - a Turkic speaking ethnic minority who have lived within the borders of China since, at least, the third century.

The closest public transport still left her 500 kilometers short of her destination on China’s northwestern frontier. It is here she got on her trusty mountain bike and cycled to the Mongolian border region. It was an uphill grind that took her from about sea level to elevations as much as 3000 meters! It included a grueling climb of more than 100 kilometers uphill.

As a linguist, Monika studied Mandarin Chinese before embarking on her trip. She was entering a region so remote that finding any English speakers was a highly unlikely proposition.

Monika is planning to return to Xingjiang next year to further her studies with he isolated Turkic minorities. Her trip to Niagara in the rain was a mere warmup for the long 500 km. uphill grind ahead of her.

Monika with a fellow guest posing with “Francois” the hostel’s bear.

Most of our guests at the hostel are from Europe, South America and other countries where football/soccer reign supreme. Canada is hockey mad in general and Toronto in particular.

Europeans and Latinos are apt to say “we won” and ride a euphoric high after their team wins a match. Actually, “they” won nothing! a bunch of overpaid athletes playing a little boy’s game won. Sports fans really have to get a grip!

On Sunday’s all winter long, we rent a gymnasium for a few hours and hold indoor five-a-side soccer games for our guests. As you might have guessed, it’s a pretty popular event. We even put up notices for guests at other hostels in Toronto to join us if they like.

But now that spring has arrived (at long last!) we no longer hire a gym. We now have the freedom of playing outdoors in a park. The most popular place to go involves a short ferry ride to the Toronto Islands. It is an enormous park consisting of a series causeway connected of islands in Toronto’s harbour.

There are acres and acres of parkland as well as beaches; including a clothing-optional beach! The islands also provide the finest unobstructed views of the Toronto skyline.

So join us every Sunday for an outdoor soccer game. The games usually begin right outside our hostel’s door while they wait for everyone to arrive from other hostels. The times for the Sunday games are posted on our website.

www.canadianalodging.com

..

This week sees two long term friends leave the hostel. Pearcey who once organized events for the hostel and Mika who once stayed with us for two years while studying in Canada.

Both had returned to Toronto as visitors to do the “tourist thing”. While Pearcey worked for the hostel, he didn’t manage to see much of the country except for a very brief sojourn to the Pacific coast.

When Mika first arrived she had minimal English skills but is now fluent and ended up working aboard cruise ships as a translator. She’s off to Europe in two days time then home to Osaka.

Pearcey left two days ago heading for Mexico by bus. It is a three-day trip to San Antonio, Texas then another bus to Veracruz to visit Genesis one of the original members of his Lager Lout/ Animalette group.

Both of them will be missed here at the hostel. Tiny little Mika with the big voice and Pearcey with his “Beau Bells” Cockney accent complete with rhyming slang and Malapropisms.

Aniko is an award winning dancer who goes by the stage name Sefirah. We first met her three years ago (summer of ‘05) when she was a guest at our hostel for six weeks.

Anilko/Sefirah is from Hungary where she teaches and performs full time. She’s back in Toronto for an International Bellydance Conference.

A highlight of the Conference was a sold out performance at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Toronto. They packed the auditorium at $25 per ticket! Not a single seat went unsold and it was standing room only.

The last solo performance of the evening was “Sefirah” before an ensemble finale. She was last in the lineup because she was, quite frankly, the very best! She would have been an impossible act for any dancer to follow. The audience simply went wild!

The five day event attracted 150 Bellydance stars from around the world. Of all the great dancers on the program our Aniko/Sefirah was the standout! We just hope it’s not three years before we see her again!

Our last blog entry was about St.George’s Day here at the hostel. It’s England’s official non-holiday and a pretty good excuse for a party and a visit to an English styled public house.

The Dutch, not to be outdone celebrated “Queen’s Day” here at the hostel. I guess you might say that it is the official non-holiday of the Netherlands.

Our Dutch guests (and there are a lot of them in Toronto hostels in the summer) dressed in orange and played party games while copious amounts of beer flowed.

I can’t go into detailed descriptions of he games that were played without earning this blog an “X” rating. Suffice to say that they were a little risque and a lot of fun.

Now I had never heard of Queen’s Day before last night so it’s possible that our Dutch guests are just having us on and there is no such thing in the Netherlands.

It really was quite a mid-week party so it’s liable to become a Canadiana Hostel tradition even if it were just made up bu a bunch of Dutch travelers looking for an excuse to party.

Wouter (on right) Dutch party organizer NOT wearing orange!