Author Christopher Walters on his time in London
Author Christopher Walters dishes on the Canadian discoveries he made in England
How did you end up living in London?
When I was 27 years old, I went to England to do a master’s degree and decided I wanted to stay much longer.
I graduated flat broke so I rented a cheap, one-room “bedsit” in a grey part of London sandwiched between the Central Line Tube and Wormwood Scrubs prison.
What was that like?
Well, the first train at 5:10 a.m. woke me up every morning, but thankfully I never met my next-door neighbours in the prison. Apart from that, my digs were a bit primitive. My bathtub was in my kitchen under the counter. If I wanted to take a bath, I would have to clear off the counter of dishes and clamp it to the wall. It reminds me of what Bette Midler once said: when it’s 3 o’clock in New York, it is still 1938 in London. But I didn’t care. The place was mine and I was thrilled to be there.
What inspired you to write this book?
One of the first jobs I landed was as a tour guide for U.S. high school students visiting London. They thought it was funny that a Canadian was showing them sites connected to their own history and would ask me about Canadian landmarks occasionally.
Apart from Canada House in Trafalgar Square, I couldn’t name any. So over many years I set out to find our own Canadian connections in the city.
The result was London Eh to Zed, 101 Discoveries for Canadian Visitors to London.
What is your favourite walk in London?
That’s a tough one. London is a great city for walking and there are so many fascinating areas with Canadi- an discoveries: Fleet Street where Canadian newspaper barons once ruled, Greenwich and its associations with Capt. James Cook and Maj.Gen. James Wolfe, and Whitehall with its many military and political figures linked to Canada.
Even a stroll through Green Park and St. James’s Park has interesting discoveries like the Canadian geese that are descended from a flock brought over in the 1600s.
They are all great walks.
What was the most interesting piece of Canadian trivia you uncovered?
I’d have to say it was a pocket watch that I found in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It’s called “K1” after its maker Larcum Kendall and is about the size of a bread plate. Capt. Cook took it on his third voyage in 1776-80 and used it to determine the longitude of Canada’s west coast.
He was the first person to determine the size of Canada from sea to sea.
What do you miss most about London?
Well, I certainly don’t miss the awkward baths. But I do miss the little discoveries you can make every day walking around London.
I think that is probably true for any visitor in a foreign city who has time to explore beyond the A-list museums and galleries.
It’s fun when you can relate discoveries to our own national story. I think the Canadian journalist Charles Lynch may have summed it up best when he said: “I miss England. It took a lot of our history with it when we cut it adrift.”