Travelsmartplanet

In the stately columned Auckland War Museum, you can discover the world’s largest collection of Maori and Polynesian artifacts. Sitting impressively in the center is a large ornately carved Hotunui meetinghouse from 1878 and a Waka (war canoe), Te Toki-a-Tapiri from 1836. They’re heart and soul of the museum, yet there’s lots more.

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The Kauri trees are endangered so it’s really special when you can go into a forest and see quite of few very old ones. The Arataki Visitor Centre goes to great lengths to preserve and protect them. You can climb up a high trail and see then at the top reaching for the sky. The circular cluster is called The Cathedral.

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The silver fern has been a symbol of New Zealand since the 1880s. To Maori, the shape of the fronds stood for strength, resistance, and power. To other New Zealanders, it’s exemplifies their homeland as it grows throughout the country from the North Island down to the coast of the South Island. It is the most abundant of all ferns in New Zealand. You can find it on all kinds of souvenirs. We bought sports socks with ferns on them as a momento of New Zealanders who enjoy lots of physical activity. 

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Here are three of the famous Canadian Group of Seven painters who started painting the Algoma scenery starting in 1918 with J.E.H. Macdonald. The others in the group are: Lawren Harris, Franklin Carmichael, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnson, Arhur Lismer, and Frederick Varley. They hitched a boxcar onto the Agawa Canyon train going up to the mines in Northern Ontario.

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The Group of Seven were Canadian painters who, in the early 20th century, especially enjoyed painting Canadian scenery. A few at a time, the men would live in this spartan boxcar which would get hitched to a train. They would be let off on a rail siding for a few days to paint scenery to their hearts content. 

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Canadian famous Group of Seven painters started painting the Algoma scenery starting in 1918 with J.E.H. Macdonald. the others in the group are: Lawren Harris, Franklin Carmichael, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnson, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley. They hitched a boxcar onto the train going up to the mines in Northern Ontario.

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How would your town (population of only about 10,000) handle it if 38 planes with 6,579 passengers landed on your doorstep unexpectedly? In Newfoundland, they have a local expression about visitors – they call them “the come from aways” – so that’s how the hit Broadway Show Come From Away got its name.

David Hein and Irene Sakoff, Canadian husband and wife librettists and composer-lyricists, took the thousands of stories of passengers and residents on that infamous day, September 11, 2001, when those jets landed in Gander Newfoundland, and turned them into a heartwarming award-winning Broadway musical.

The 90-minute show is drawn from real people’s experiences in Gander on Sept. 11 and on the subsequent days, and  turned them into 12  composite characters: American Airlines Captain Beverley Bass – the first woman captain in the airline’s history, gays, an anxious passenger worried about a missing relative, a man ignored because he looked Mid-Eastern, Southerners, Northerners and foreigners,  These terrified passengers are set down by frightening unexpected circumstances in an unfamiliar land, and are forced to depend on the kindness of strangers.

One can’t even imagine the needs of so many people, besides language, religious and cultural barriers on top of it. Cultures clash and nerves run high, but uneasiness turned into trust when the Newfoundlanders came through with untold hospitality, opening their hearts, their homes, their schools and their stores. When a volunteer went to round up supplies at the town pharmacy, the manager simply said “Take whatever you need off the shelves”.

The dozen in the cast are marvelous, and they somehow 3-D print themselves into a community of people. It’s truly an ensemble, all equally acting and singing their hearts out. To me the superlatives have to go to the set designer, as I’ve never seen chairs star in a show before. Bob Verini of Variety wrote, “passengers and officials…, shuffling set designer Beowulf Boritt’s furniture pieces into a range of evocative public and private spaces”.

Come From Away is now the longest-running Canadian musical in Broadway history. Producer Corey Brunish said, “It’s about how people respond to tragedy.” It shows, he said, that “there’s hope in the world, there’s hope for us as a human race.” “I can’t imagine a musical we need more right now”, Entertainment reported.

Now that eighteen years have passed, you can google the story and learn that the gratitude grew into enduring friendships, and how the passengers paid it forward.

Come From Away is “celebration best of humankind, and an uplifting piece of art for all our times” said The Daily Beast. Go see it and uplift your life.

Location: Elgin Winter Garden Theatre
Address: 189 Yonge St, Toronto, ON
Dates: til September 29, 2019
www.mirvish.com

Sir Henry Pellatt, a Canadian stockbroker and entrepreneur built this full-sized castle in Toronto around 1913. It has secret passageways, breathtaking views and elaborately decorated rooms. Unfortunately financial miscalculations caused him to have to leave his “castle on the hill” and he died in poverty.

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The home of Sir Henry Pellatt was one of the first in America to have recessed lighting installed in the domes of some rooms creating glowing ceilings.

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The famous Oak Room of the splendid Edwardian era home of Sir Henry Pellatt. The finished panels fruit, flowers, ribbons and birds took 3 years to carve and were so exquisite that in 1913 when they arrived they were first exhibited in Montreal’s Musee des Beaux Arts before being installed in Casa Loma. 

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