One nice thing about my birthday trips is that I get to celebrate two consecutive holidays: my birthday and Halloween! While I expected a place like Toronto to be full of Halloween activities, there was one event I looked forward to: Halloween On Church.
It sounded similar to the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval (an event I’ve gone to in the past), which meant I HAD to go to this. It had also been years since I’ve had some actual Halloween fun. Last year, my Halloween plans in Vegas had to be dropped, but for a good reason. This year, I made up for it.
I thought about posting this on my Bluesky the day before Halloween, hinting at what my costume would be this year. But I had also brought another costume with me and mulled over which look to choose. In the end, Lily from Duolingo won.
I had a purple wig, some purple clothes, a Duo plushie (albeit an imperfect one), and I nailed down her unamused look (though you can’t tell, I know). I also had four people compliment my costume, which I’ll take as a win because I rarely get compliments over my costumes!
Now, for some really great costumes I saw at the event…
However, Marge Simpson here wins it for the night!
This still has me in stitches.
Though smaller than WeHo’s Halloween Carnaval (which encompasses one mile of Santa Monica Blvd compared to, oh, the half-mile party on Church Street), HoC gives WeHo competition with its eccentric costumes, festive atmosphere, and it being in Canada where (for the time being) people don’t have to worry about their human rights being violated or the costs of their health insurance. (I low-keyed envied all the locals because of those things!)
The costumes weren’t the only things I had my eye on that day, however…
I wish it was a gorgeous woman I was talking about, but it was a baseball game. Namely, Game 6 of the World Series. And the city I was in had their team in said World Series. Why, as an embarrassed SF Giants fan, was I so invested in this? Look at who the Blue Jays were playing!
I hadn’t paid attention to the WS after Game 3, as I got busy with other things. I ended up finding out that there was a Game 6, that the Jays were up in the series, and were one win away from winning it all, with the possible closing game being on, yes, Halloween. How amazing would it have been if the Jays won that Game 6, and to have witnessed that in a crowd full of costumed partygoers. Leave it to the Bums to do what they do best: ruin everything good.
I took this trip to Toronto to not only enjoy myself, but visit my aunt, whom I haven’t seen in almost 30 years. She used to visit California back in the 90s, but had not crossed the border since 9/11. She has two homes in the Ontario province: an apartment in North York (the other place I stayed at for my trip), and in a countryside town 90 minutes east of Toronto called Quinte West. The fall colors I saw while driving on highway 401 were spectacular.
I was 20 minutes away from my aunt’s home when a humongous apple by the freeway caught my eye. Coincidentally, I had just received a text from my aunt about a place called “The Big Apple”. I made a stop and checked it out.
Being a low-carber, almost all the food there was off-limits. (Even when I’m on vacay, with the exception of a few foods, I still don’t cheat!)
Reese’s Pizza…I would’ve been all over that five years ago.
The Statue of Liberty really belongs in Canada, if you ask me.
That big-ass apple that I was talking about.
I watched the last sunset of Daylight Savings Time there, and it was off to my aunt’s house. I didn’t spend a lot of time there as she was hungry, didn’t cook dinner, and wanted to go to a restaurant. She and her husband took me to a place called Chuck’s Roadhouse, and since her hubby was paying for our dinner, you best believe I ordered a fancy dish.
It was cheap, though–only $26 CAD (around $19 USD) for steak and lobster! It’s double the price if I were to get that back home.
It was also Game 7 night that night, and it was wall-to-wall Jays fans in the place. Naturally, they had the game on, and my aunt predicted her Jays were going to lose. I hoped she would be proven wrong, and, from the start, it looked like she was going to be proven wrong. (If only the game ended after that 2nd inning.)
I had been bringing my own lunch and dinner in all my day trips in and around Toronto, and this day was no exception. I had a late lunch prior to my unexpected dinner at Chuck’s, and I ended up saving my uneaten surf & turf dish for later.
If you were not brought up by the metric system like me, this gas price sign will throw you TF off. I adore my aunt so much that she paid for my gas for my drive back to Toronto. The wildest thing was not seeing gas prices in liters, but that she pumped gas first, then paid. She told me that some gas stations in her countryside home allow that. That’s…very Canadian!
Their Rest Areas (known as ONRoutes) also best US ones. They don’t just have bathrooms, but also a gas station, a Wendy’s, and, in the one I stopped at, a large moose in Royal Canadian Mounted Police attire to greet you.
I think I shouldn’t have left my aunt’s countryside home, because as I drove further from it and got closer to Toronto, that’s when the Blue Jays started slipping. I vowed to eat my steak & lobster dinner if the Jays won that Game 7. I ended up eating my other dinner instead. Worst dinner I’ve had this year! 😖🤬
The team that ends up knocking out those Bums out of the playoffs next year will be getting my merch money. But enough about baseball bullshit, for the next day I’d be taking a day trip to a special place on the US-CAN border. It will all be featured in my next installment.
Lex Writes On 