Part 3: Toronto - Bad at Hockey, Good at Fun

After some great times with family and friends and my initiation into the Habitat Canada family in Niagara Falls it was time to fly solo to Toronto. Although not the capital of Canada, TO has the feel of a big European capital city. It is a sprawling, multi-cultural, urban melting pot with lots of different districts each with its own unique vibe. I had the pleasure of staying with 2 families with whom my own family is close so I got the chance to see Toronto from the insider's perspective. This meant indulging in a few risky activities such as paint balling, roller-coasters and a bungee-jump. Needless to say Toronto started off with a bang! At the request of an old friend I found myself about 2 hours from TO in a town called Kitchener, formerly known as New Berlin, for one of the world's biggest Oktoberfest celebrations outside of Germany. This was an experience that did not disappoint... enough said! I even got to see my first ice-hockey game. Ice-hockey is Canada's national game and, frankly, it is brutal. On reflection, if they removed the puck from the game, the whole contest would be over in about 15 minutes - there is that much fighting!

I thought that all the fun and games that Toronto had to offer was going to take a back seat when my Habitat build came around. I was wrong. I was told to report to a 20 house build in West TO, but when I arrived the site was frozen (literally and logistically) and so I was relocated to the Giltspur Road Build. This is a development of two semi-detached houses, both of which are being built to energy efficient standards and both are wheelchair accessible. Clearly the partner families who will soon get the keys to these homes have had a difficult run at life. I am personally familiar with the challenges that arise in the home when a wheelchair is in use so I was really keen to get started.

The site supervisor Matt can only be described as a legendary gentleman. He put me straight to work with the other volunteers who were a mix of individuals and corporate day out volunteers from Bank of Montreal. Neither houses had a roof when I arrived so my goal was pretty obvious - Get Your Roof On! This required us to secure dry-wall to the separating wall between the two houses for fire-prevention. Laying 16 huge roof trusses 9ft above our heads was the next trick, followed by hoisting and nailing down plywood on to the roof of the house. This final task was particularly interesting as plywood is rather slippery when wet, not to mention that I was standing a good 14ft above the planet attached to a rather questionable harness! Bungee-jumping was a piece of cake in comparison. It was great to get back to building a house, an activity that had eluded me since the end of the Romania build back in August. The physicality of the work is so far out of my comfort zone, and the wave of exhaustion I felt at the end of a hard day was the manifestation of the good deed done. I shared my time on site with some great people, including: JD, JB, Noreen, Rennie, Jennie, Shauna, Sarah and of course Matt, who treated me like a brother, took me to a Toronto Soccer match and is a keen Tottenham Hotspur fan (I guess 2 out of 3 ain't bad!).

As you may have noticed, I am about a month behind in posting tales from the Land of Maple Syrup. I can assure you that this is due entirely to laziness and has nothing at all to do with the fact that this country is so gorgeous I can't bear to look at a computer screen. I hope to get up to date in the coming days. As always please direct any complaints to me via Facebook, just mention Habitat for Humanity and we can be cyber friends, and you can see all my photos from the trip. There are quite a few!