Things you can do in London: walk along the Thames; visit Covent Garden; and see St. Paul’s Cathedral. We did all of those things in the original London, once upon a time.
Earlier this month, we managed two out of three in London, Ontario. The cathedral was closed. Some other time, maybe, since you can drive from metro Chicago to the Canadian London in about six hours, provided traffic snarls on the highways just south of Lake Michigan aren’t any worse than usual and you don’t encounter a testy Canadian border guard, as I did on Canada Day all those years ago, for the most thorough border-crossing inspection I ever received, before or since.
The Thames as it passes through downtown London. The banks are mostly parkland.
Actually, that point is the meeting of the North Thames and the Thames, locally known as the Folks. The river is called as La Tranche in French and Deshkaan-ziibi in Ojibwe, Antler River.
The King Street pedestrian bridge connecting the banks.
Near the Folks is the HMCS-NCSM Prevost, flying these colors – the Canadian Naval Ensign, if I understand correctly.
All that is a fair amount to unpack: the ensign is flying on land because the Prevost is a stone frigate, a naval facility on land. HMCS is His Majesty’s Canadian Ship, of course, but this being Canada, it is also NCSM, Navire canadien de Sa Majesté. The site is a training and recruiting center for the Canadian Navy, and also home to the Battle of the Atlantic Memorial. Another sign is in French, but I only made a picture of the English.
The memorial is still under construction, according to the London Free Press, and it looked like it, with memorial stones being put into place on a small slope. Dedication will be next May, on the 80th anniversary of the end of that battle, which lasted until the Germans surrendered.
I decided to look up one of the ships memorialized: the HMCS Valleyfield.
Commissioned in December 1943. Torpedoed and sunk May 7, 1944, with the loss of 125 Canadian sailors in the gelid North Atlantic.
After the riverside, we took a short walk through downtown, especially Dundas St.
An unexpected mural on that street.
“Johnny and June” by Kevin Ledo, a Montreal artist, and completed only in 2023. (If you want to see a large Ledo mural depicting a young Alex Trebec, go to Sudbury, Ontario.)
The mural, on the side of London’s Budweiser Gardens sports-event venue, is impressively large, at 45 feet tall and 20 feet wide. Larger than life, certainly. A nearby sign says it commemorates the moment on February 22, 1968, when Johnny Cash proposed to June Carter on stage during a concert in London.
As for Covent Garden, that’s where we had lunch. Site of a public market since 1845, though I expect things have been cleaned up some since then.
Not quite as grand as the one in the larger London, but well worth the stroll to look at the shops, and find an eatery. We ate at a Brazilian place. Don’t see too many of those in food halls. Most satisfying.
Lots of goods. Is there a Canadian content requirement?
A few more London details, near Covent Garden. We didn’t see on foot the part of town I found more intriguing, which we drove through: the area around Western University (a.k.a., University of Western Ontario, enrollment more than 40,000). Might be a good place to look around if we ever take that trip to the Stratford Festival, which is practically down the road from London.
I have to like a place with a name like that.