Drinking in small towns on the Canadian Waterway: M Town

Trying to keep my blog alive while I work the summer on a boat before returning to the real world, I am coming up with small trips to go on while still keeping a tight budget. I will not be writing about the boat itself out of respect for the company and the confidentiality of the passengers. However recently on my boat I was inspired for postings which I decided to turn into a series throughout the summer. This series I will title “Drinking in small towns” which should actually continue to say, “and the crazy nut jobs I meet while doing so.”

I am going to begin with a village I will call M Town. My adventure started in M town with a nice stroll down the main street which was 3 blocks then the town ended. I noticed quite a cute guy sitting on a bench playing the guitar and singing. It was a quirky town with boutiques and shops suited for Grandmas. Walking past the local pub a few middle aged men were sitting on the patio, they recognized us from our uniforms and started asking questions. One of them asked where I was from. I thought he was talking about my co-worker as she is French Canadian and may have an accent but it was me. I told him, I’m Canadian and he wouldn’t believe me. You’re Polish, he told me. I have gotten this comment before but only when I worked in England where there was a large Polish population. They just assumed since I wasn’t English I must have been Polish. This man thought it was quite funny and tried to copy my Polish accent which turned out more like Apu from the Simpsons. “Thank you, thank you very much, please come again.” Um O.K. so I am Polish with an Indian accent.

We returned to M Town that evening when we decided to get away from work and have a drink. We were a bit sceptical as it was a Monday night and with a population of about 1000 residents there was a chance nothing was going to be open. We found an old pub with some locals sitting around the bar and decided to go in. The cute guy from earlier was there sitting with his guitar. We later found out it was open Mike night which consisted of cute guy, the female bartender, two older local guys and one random drunk. The ladder came over to our table and invited us to join. I am never averse to meeting locals and perhaps cute guitar boy so we moved over to bar stools. Instead of being serenading over pints we were entertained by the antics of our new drunken friend. He overheard us talking about toast for our morning breakfast, which he decided to jump in and say, “Toast! I’ll toast you! Burn the mother fucking toast!”

The rest of the patrons in the bar who were probably either friends or relatives all looked at him a bit oddly. We then started talking about managing employees and the best way to deal with attitudes and slackers. Our new drunk friend got right into our conversation and was pleased to provide us with some insightful advice. He claimed to know exactly how to deal with these issues as he works in a restaurant. He wanted to demonstrate how he treats his employees so he walked right up to me and shouted in my face, “Get your shit together! You making me lose money!” It caused enough of a scene in his demonstration that one of the other locals came over to tell him to calm down. They didn’t realize it was just a demonstration.

We moved on to other topics and it came out that I speak Spanish and my co-worker speaks French (Ok my Spanish is crap but it’s good enough to fool a drunk). He wanted to hear me speak Spanish but I was interrupted and the conversation was changed. Just as we were about to leave the pub he then said to me loudly for the whole bar to hear, “Well are you going to give it to me?” I froze in my steps. Everyone in the bar was looking at me and then him in shock. Then I was relieved to hear him say, “Some Spanish are you going to give me some Spanish.”
This was our clue to get out of this nut jobby town and head to another one.

This posting was brought to you by; Beer