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31

We had a long drag ahead of us for those days, to get to Toronto--about 200 miles. Today you make the run on Rt.401, the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, and it's probably a cinch to do it in three hours. I think our road traveled the same route but took at least twice as long. Dropping down in a southwesterly direction from Prescott, we went through Brockville, Gananoque and Kingston, much of the road along the river and the Thousand Islands sitting in it as it nears Lake Ontario. I believe this was my first view of the Thousand Islands and although I did see them at a distance, I wasn't greatly impressed. It seems to me that as a boy in Syracuse, I'd heard the Thousand Islands referred to as an ultra-ultra vacation spot and site of many magnificent summer homes, and I guess that was true in the first two decades of the 20th century, but like the Adirondacks, I think they slipped and the slippage was beginning to show in 1934, particularly on the heels of the Depression. The farther we moved down the line, the heavier the traffic got. There were many wild drivers as we moved toward the big city. We talked a lot about them, the Ohio drivers in particular--then as now. At one point along the route, the road paralleled the main line (bow down) of either the CP or the CN and we had the audacity to actually race a freight train for awhile. But we missed the French country. Things now looked too much like home again although when I'm in Canada, I always think I can tell a difference, sometimes very subtle to be sure, but nevertheless there, regardless of the province. I don't know what time we arrived in Toronto but we didn't get dinner until 10:30 p.m. so it must not have been very early. Evidently we were trying to conserve our financial resources because we first tried to get into the Ford Hotel, not the most expensive in town, but they were full, which may have been a blessing. Perhaps the "feeling expedition" into Paquets in Quebec has depleted us substantially. The diary says that we "finally" landed in the King Edward where we had very good accomodations. The Royal York was [[underline]] the [[/underline]] hotel in Toronto and maybe we tried that also and got turned down before going to the King Edward. However, it was too late to eat at the King Edward so we went to Child's for dinner and Charlie and I kidded the girls that we'd finally knocked them down to Child's. But by 1934 Child's had graduated into a chain of fairly good restaurants as I recall it and we had a good repast and discussed plans for the following day, that is, in addition to finally driving to Erie as a last act of the vacation. Charlie and I laid plans to attend the Toronto Fair in the morning but the girls weren't particularly intrigued by that prospect and decided they could improve their time in some other way. We pointed out that the following day being Labor Day, the stores would be closed so that no "feeling grounds" would be available but they still refused to commit themselves. It was on this perhaps disheartening note for the ladies, that we returned to the King Edward and called it a day--and it had been quite a long day too. I think we were getting sadder and sadder by the moment.