we left Niagara behind us to head back to Hamilton to meet up with an old uni friend of Ash’s and later to drop off the car. Hamilton is a grimy, industrial place with an honest to badness ‘hood surrounding the downtown. For a short, worrying period we wandered around the city centre trying to find our way out again and eventually met up with Justin in Westdale, a leafy university suburb beyond the city center. Justin is a philosopher, and not just a fair weather one; a few pints in us loosened our tongues and the night was spent deep in earnest and entertaining conversation.

Justin: “But what is art, really?”

Me: “I’m buggered if I know, Justin. More importantly, do you like Led Zeppelin?”

Justin kindly put us up in his house’s basement/engine room, and we slept off the jet lag like babies.

The next morning he took us out to an old diner-style café on a scruffy little side street lined with antique shops and rickety horror-film houses; we ate a tasty breakfast of cholesterol and gabbed over a few cups of coffee. Justin gave us directions to the freeway; we said goodbye, hoping to be able to meet up with him again before we leave, and headed off for Peterborough. (Needless to say, we spent the first half hour driving aimlessly through Hamilton trying to remember his directions.)