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I've known James Doohan was from Canada for decades - at least 40 years. What I didn't know and just found out today is that Sarnia, Ontario was his hometown. I've been to Sarnia! Not since I was about 12, but I've been there a few times. A trip to Sarnia when I was around 7 was my first trip outside the USA. (In fact, Canada is the only "foreign" country I've ever been to and it seems weird to call it foreign since I've only been to border cities - Sarnia, Windsor, and Niagara Falls - which seem as much American as Canadian in my memory. We never even changed our money when we visited.) Sarnia is a bridge length from Port Huron, Michigan. We went to Port Huron a handful of times to visit Mary Maxim - a huge craft store (http://www.marymaxim.com) - watch the ships - we saw the Edmund Fitzgerald once - and cross the Blue Water Bridge to Sarnia. A couple times we stayed a long weekend at a motel in Port Huron - Holiday Inn, maybe? - which had an indoor pool.
I don't actually remember a lot about Sarnia itself. I do remember playing in a park near the water and going to a mall (?) where we got ice cream cones. The entire family agreed that the ice cream there was better than what we got at home. Also, the couple times we went there before my grandfather died in 1973, my folks would buy him tea from England, which we couldn't get in the US at that time. (Now you can get pretty much anything, I think. I'm pretty sure I've seen Typhoo Tea and PG Tips on the shelves at Meijer.)
Irish hasn't had a passport in decades and I've never had one. It's one of my goals this year to get one for each of us so we can at least visit Canada and it's likely that Sarnia would be the first place outside the country we'd go to, mostly because our family reunion is about an hour's drive from Port Huron and I kind of want to go to Mary Maxim again. And if we're in Port Huron, there's no reason not to cross the bridge.
In the early/mid 1990s, there was a Creation Star Trek convention in South Bend every year for several years in a row. James Doohan was at one of them. It would've been fun to mention, when I got his autograph, that I'd been in Sarnia.
I don't actually remember a lot about Sarnia itself. I do remember playing in a park near the water and going to a mall (?) where we got ice cream cones. The entire family agreed that the ice cream there was better than what we got at home. Also, the couple times we went there before my grandfather died in 1973, my folks would buy him tea from England, which we couldn't get in the US at that time. (Now you can get pretty much anything, I think. I'm pretty sure I've seen Typhoo Tea and PG Tips on the shelves at Meijer.)
Irish hasn't had a passport in decades and I've never had one. It's one of my goals this year to get one for each of us so we can at least visit Canada and it's likely that Sarnia would be the first place outside the country we'd go to, mostly because our family reunion is about an hour's drive from Port Huron and I kind of want to go to Mary Maxim again. And if we're in Port Huron, there's no reason not to cross the bridge.
In the early/mid 1990s, there was a Creation Star Trek convention in South Bend every year for several years in a row. James Doohan was at one of them. It would've been fun to mention, when I got his autograph, that I'd been in Sarnia.
