too much rain

Ask any Ontarian about the weather these days and you're bound to get a disappointed, almost tired shake of heads for an answer. The province is supposed to be hot, sunny and humid in summer, but this year things are different. Rain has been falling in sheets, not every day but frequently enough that even the farmers have more water than they can use. The rivers, lakes and reservoirs are full.

We have had our share of relentless precipitation, though mostly while on the road. While that wasn't too pleasant for the driver, it didn't keep us from enjoying our vacation. In Toronto, Montréal and Québec City we were blessed with sunshine strong and temperatures high enough to make my companion complain and seek shelter in dark basements.

Our drive to Ottawa yesterday was a continuation of this theme. Wet and dark grey on the road, increasingly bright and then sunny while visiting the city. Not a single drop fell on our heads while we strolled through the capital of Canada, about which I cannot write with any sort of enthusiasm. The waterfront (again!) is very nice. It's kept natural and doesn't even need a cement factory to look good, but the positive things end there. The rest is plenty of faux-historic government buildings and some boring glass and steel.

Oh, and the Rideau Canal, a waterway that some megalomaniac engineer had thousands of laborers blast and dig through the virtual impenetrability of the Canadian Shield, is quite a sight. It starts (or ends) at the Ottawa River with a series of half a dozen locks that carry fairly large boats up (or down) an elevation of nearly twenty meters by the force of water alone.

From Ottawa we made our way up north through increasingly smaller towns that were all lively and surprisingly charming. To me as a German it is entirely incomprehensible to see a mere tick on the map, a crossroads of a few thousand inhabitants like Arnprior, have a vibrant main street with shops, restaurants, places of entertainment, beauty salons, coffee rosteries and businesses devoted to ethical trade. How are there possibly enough consumers to keep things going? If Canada is anything like the US, prosperity and growth rest on the twin pillars of house price inflation and excessive consumption. House values impart an impression of wealth, which people spend liberally – and locally because it's convenient. Businesses in town benefit and so does, by way of sales and corporate taxes, the town. Maybe we should try this in Germany.

After spending a night in a rotten motel that didn't quite fit in with the overall rosy picture I had formed of the little town, we continued west towards Algonquin Provincial Park for our first glimpse of what Canada is really famous for: nature, the great outdoors, scenery, lakes, and woods. The country is huge, and there isn't much civilization between the cities, most of which are near the border with the US. Between the cities we visited, we drove for hours along dense forests or sluggish rivers. But the land was completely flat and without much appeal. I began to think that Canada was overrated.

Today, I was disabused. Even though Ontario is probably not the prettiest province – it doesn't have mountains, for example – there are places of great beauty. Algonquin, the first area to be protected by order of the government, is such a place. It has rolling hills densely studded with the widest variety of trees I've ever seen in one place. Ten percent of its surface is covered in water. There are more than a thousand miles of canoe trails (inevitably involving portages to get from lake to lake). Moose, bears and wolves thrive.

We had planned to do a long day hike to get a better idea of what being in nature means here, but when we crossed the park border, it started to drizzle, and the dark clouds all around us didn't fill us with the confidence necessary to set out on a big loop. We chose two little ones instead. The first, very educational, one led us through an environment created over the decades by beavers. We saw dams and artificial lakes with beaver lodges sticking out. We saw downstream lowlands where grass and shrubs were invading. We saw water lilies and a frog, but we didn't see a beaver. At least we stayed reasonably dry.

The second hike was awesome, and that was owed in part to the rain that started pouring like silly fifteen minutes after we had started. We walked along several boggy lakes and then straight through the middle of another. The boardwalk that kept us afloat was partly submerged in murky waters and seemed to drown deeper with every step we made. Crossing the water like Moses, hundreds of feet from (not very) dry ground, was a spooky experience, one that we couldn't have had, had the lake not been filled to the brim after weeks of excess rain.

We returned to the car full of vivid memories but soaked to the bones. My camera was damp despite my most protective instincts and my rain jacket dripping liquid like a fat sponge. Weighing twice as much as dry, it reminded me clearer than after any drizzly London day that it wanted to be thrown out and replaced with a new one. While changing into dry clothes, my friend and I spent a good ten minutes bickering about the conditions and exaggerating our misery. We are wimps, and even with a new jacket I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy canoeing or camping in the park all that much – at least as long as the summer was as nasty as this one.