Northern Hotel Winter Adventures

Welcome back to Blogville my friends. Today I’m drinking a hot chocolate with a nod to Northern Ontario winter adventures. One advantage as an adoptee is that I was able to be raised in the North by my adoptive parents, as my birth family had moved to Southern Ontario following my birth. Read on to learn what I would have missed out on . . .

My husband and I were both raised in Northern Ontario, and we raised our four children to adulthood in Northern Ontario. We have experienced the benefits of winter activities both as participants and as spectators. Northerners do not let winter travel stop us from driving from community to community for activities like hockey tournaments, curling bonspiels, skiing, swim meets and a myriad of other types of competitions! Therefore, winter stays at Northern Ontario hotels when there is also a tournament in that town are always adventurous.

Just curious, have you ever stayed at a hotel in Northern Ontario in the winter? If you have, you will likely relate to this blog. If you haven’t yet, this blog should help prepare you for your first time. Recently, we took a trip down south with a stop halfway. When we arrived and saw that trucks and trailers had reduced parking spaces by half in the hotel’s lot, that was our first clue that our overnight stay would be an adventure. When we finally squeezed our truck into a remote spot, and exited it, we were immediately surrounded by the distinct smell of snowmobile exhaust, classic Northern Ontario! Bath and Body Works should look into that unique scent for a candle, maybe they could call it ‘Northern Winter ‘. We could gift them to friends and relatives about to come north for the first time. Or gift them to homesick college and university students or former Northern Ontario residents. Just a thought.

Anyway, we hurried towards the hotel building and when the main entrance’s automatic doors slid open to welcome us, we were hit with the unique odours of empty pizza boxes and hockey equipment bags. An odour that can only be found in Northern hotel lobbies! I feel I should note that no candle product should be created to smell like a hockey equipment bag does. Happily, the new smell of pizza made us quickly forget the odour of the snowmobile exhaust.

While my husband checked in at the front desk I took note of the stack of at least 50 pizza boxes in the ‘breakfast nook’ area and the haphazardly placed chairs filled with hockey parents laughing and debating the wisdom of the tournament organizers. Even after a four hour drive south on a snow-packed Highway 11, we were clearly still in a Northern Ontario hotel. It was apparent that we had unknowingly booked ourselves a room at a hotel in a tournament-hosting community so we prepared ourselves for the trek to our room. We shouldered some of our luggage and were wheeling the rest toward the bank of elevators when we suddenly stopped, looked around while listening carefully, and realized that there was not a child in sight in that very busy lobby area. Uh oh.

We loaded ourselves and our luggage into the elevator and selected our floor. After a few moments the doors opened and we instantly realized that we had found the children who had somehow become separated from their parents in the lobby. Here they were in the hallway, just outside of our assigned room. It is a well known fact that hotel hallways are the perfect venue for practicing wrist and/or slap shots. After all, the space at the end of the hallway is just a little wider than the standard hockey net opening. In addition, the walls and room doors act as great sideboards. It is important to note that not having a goalie in net will potentially save any teeth (aka chiclets), from a hallway slap shot. This significantly reduces the risk of having to drag a hockey parent out of the hospitality suite for a trip to ‘Emerg’ to get their child a stitch or two and maybe a dental consult. 

Having had experience with hallway hockey practice during many previous Northern Ontario hotel stays, we planned precise timing for our trip from the elevator to our room while using our wheeled luggage like goalie pads to prevent injury. Finally we were safely ensconced in our hotel room without injury or penalty and we started to relax. Very soon we noticed that the ‘kapow, kapow, kapow’ of the hallway hockey practice was suddenly drowned out by the revving sound of snow machine engines being warmed up outside in the hotel parking lot. To Northerners, this is the ‘white noise’ that helps us fall soundly asleep.

A dedicated Northern Ontario snowmobile enthusiast will often travel to many different regions in the north to enjoy their sport. These adventurous folks load up their snowmobiles on trailers, attach the trailers to their vehicles, and then drive for hours, often on treacherous northern highways, for the thrill of riding on another snow packed, tree-lined trail in a different region from their own. This is a passion I do not totally understand, but, to be fair, my snowmobile experience is rather limited. My last ride was straight up the side of a steep hill, then suddenly falling backwards, machine, driver and me, rolling back down the hill like a sad reenactment of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme. As a result, I cannot relate to the thrill of the ride, but I do understand that snowmobiling is a great way to embrace our Northern Ontario winters!

Before calling it a night, but to avoid another hallway hockey adventure, my husband and I decided to order a pizza. Sigh, it was a two hour minimum wait time for pizza delivery.  By way of explanation for the unusually long wait time, a seemingly frazzled staff member stated, “Sorry ma’am but there is a hockey tournament in town.” Thinking we might be able to risk going out to pick up some food, we ran to the window and were saddened by the view of a very full parking lot. Driving to find food would likely mean no parking spaces left upon our return, well except for the one or two spaces between the commercial garbage bins in the back lot. Oh, and it had started to snow. Lucky for us there was a Tim Horton’s restaurant (you can’t get more Northern Ontario than that) and a small convenience store within walking distance of our hotel. 

Waiting for a break in the hallway hockey game we carefully made our way back to the bank of elevators. Once the elevator doors opened, we cautiously negotiated around the water puddles left on the elevator floor by the hotel guests whose children were competing in the regional swim meet, also being hosted by this northern community. We waved to the desk clerk and told him that we were on our way for a short walk to go grab some food. Looking appraisingly at our footwear he told us to watch our step as the sidewalks and roads were pretty icy. We thanked him and made our way out of the lobby. “Watch out for skidoos” he called out to us in additional warning as we were exiting through the automatic doors. “Don’t worry, we’re Northerners” we called back as the doors whooshed closed behind us. 

I hope you enjoyed my little Northern Ontario travelling tale. Thanks for joining me for this blog. Please feel free to share your comments with me either on the blog page or more privately by email at [email protected]. I love hearing your thoughts.