Day 22

It’s the start of our last week and Halloween.
As I’ve said previously, Halloween is big here and tonight we are going to find out at Trick or Treat.
It’s quite a nice day with sun shining but an icy wind, however the slothfulness in is drives us to take a walk around the “hill” previously mentioned.
The streets here are all very neat, however there is a sameness in all of them, as the development is quite set with a certain style of housing allowed.
Most of the houses are attached to their neighbour, with the garage being the common meeting point at the front, with a small porch to the side.
Unlike many Canadian homes these are on only two levels. The older Canadian homes all had a basement, first floor and second floor. The first floor is usually above ground level, so the basement has small windows, and you walk up to the first floor, then up to the second floor.
Mike’s home is on two levels; however his basement is as big as the floor plan of the house itself. The basement is quite vast.
Most of the walls are board with some sort of blue plastic to provide weather proofing, then clad in brick or plaster. The roofs are nearly all a tar based shingle, which is quite flexible. The closest thing would be malthoid. They have to replace them every 10 years or so.
There are virtually no tiles as in terra cotta and no corrugated iron.
We went out to Leamington, the headquarters of Heinz Canada, where they have the big tomato. That’s about 25 miles from Windsor, along these dead straight roads that cross dead straight roads.
It is on a hill, well a rise anyway, looking over Lake Eire. Lake Eire is of course one of the great lakes, and is so big you cannot see the other side. It has its own light houses.
There are lots of Mexicans on the street, as they are field workers, so Mexican food is quite big in Leamington.
They have just started putting in wind turbines, and they are not very popular, by many locals. The farmers however are quite happy as they get paid of course to have them on their farms.
The other odd thing is that some of the fields have the large oil pumps, as there is oil in the area. The farmer gets a share of that as well.
The evening is devoted to Halloween, at one of Sue’s other brothers, Randy.
They have bought about 300 lollies, chocolates and sweets to hand out. They have a Halloween pumpkin on their porch with a candle in it.
At about 6.00PM the kids start coming out, usually the small ones first with their mums and dads.
They all say Trick or Treat however all really want the lollies. There is not Trick!
Many have gone to great trouble to get dressed up. We have pirates, ghosts and goblins, the Mario brothers etc
Their parents often pull small hand carts to manage the amount of booty.
There was a pretty pink ballerina who came with her mum. Her grandma was there too, dressed as a witch with a LED red flashing cat.
When asked if she would like some treats, she replied, “No, but a glass of wine would be great.”
At some points we had kids lining up the stairs to the porch, virtually knee deep.
It was funny seeing Muslim kids, in burga’s, also dressed in Halloween gear, collecting lollies.
You can see some in Picasa right at the bottom of the Canada pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/monfries.julian/Canada?feat=directlink
Within 90 minutes all the sweets have gone.
Once families run out they blow out the candle in the pumpkin and the kids know not to call in.
It’s quite exhausting, standing on the porch, in the cold, and it was cold.
The kids loved it, though some were more into it than others.