welcome to toronto, where everything is 1½ hours away

This is my favourite time of year in the GTA. The August humidity has cleared, the air is light and breezy, the sun sparkles during the day and you need a light jacket at night.

It brings me back to our first month in Canada. After a pressure-cooker of a summer, we spent our days unpacking and leisurely taking care of business, then sat in our first-ever backyard and enjoyed the peace, both outward and inner. Sheer bliss.

Next week we're off to our first-ever Canadian cottage experience, which I anticipate being much like our old upstate New York cabin experiences, hence wonderful. Looking at the map, the Kawarthas have to be at least 3 hours from Mississauga. But predictably, the Lake Edge Cottages brochure and website say it's an hour and a half.

Ask anyone how long it takes to get anywhere from Toronto, and that's what they'll tell you: an hour and a half.

I don't know if this is peculiar to the Toronto area, or if it's generally Canadian, but why does everyone tell you everything is closer than it really is?

OK, it's not always an hour and a half. But when we ask people how far away any given town or city is from Toronto, and the answer is almost always considerably less than the reality.

Orangeville? Half an hour.

Wasaga Beach? An hour and a half.

The Buffalo airport? Forty-five minutes to an hour.

Windsor and Detroit? An hour and a half.

No.

We've driven back and forth between the airport in Buffalo and Mississauga (closer than Toronto!) more times than I care to remember, and you cannot do it in an hour. As your plane is taking off, you'll be lucky if you're crossing the border.

Detroit is almost 400 kilometres from Toronto. That is not a 90-minute drive!

We've never driven to Wausaga Beach, but if Orangeville took 2 hours, how can you make Georgian Bay in 90 minutes?

I grant you, we don't drive as fast as possible. We're still waiting for our last speeding ticket to come off our ridiculously expensive car insurance, and we're determined never to get another one. On the highway, we'll put on 110 km/hr cruise control and relax.

But still. Is everyone else driving 200 km/hr? Are they using some alternative highways that we haven't found yet? Is it a tesseract?