The Colours of September

My memory of autumn in the west is that it is the season that whizzes by very quickly and usually leaves you feeling a bit cheated. Its a quick transition from summer to winter. The trees turn various shades of yellow, some close to orange, until an almost annually early cold snap kills it all off in time to warm up again. We then spend the rest of October looking at various shades of brown.

We know that there is a red maple leaf out there. We have heard that it blankets other parts of Canada out east. Unfortunately, the closest we generally get to seeing it is as it flutters from our flagpoles.

Mom and I left Quebec City thoroughly impressed with what we had seen during the drive from Montreal along the St. Lawrence River, and looking forward to spotting a few more of those red maples. As we drove along the southern shore of the St. Lawrence river to Rimouski, and then crossed the entrance to the Gaspe peninsula and into New Brunswick, there were moments of utter silence in the Jamboree as we both gazed at the colours along the sides of the road.

Cooler temperatures coincide with brighter colours. Leaves like fire; like cooked crabapple jelly and pumpkin pies; like crumpled satin and wrinkled velvet. A carpet of grand fall shades escorting us down the road. Patches of green, touches of yellow and orange and streaks of red filling up any available space for as far as the eye can see. Standing on real hills, merging on little mountains and down into valleys. The setting sun melting over them like butter.

Like a Bob Ross painting-in-progress.

Add to this autumn scene a bit of water, a string of quaint villages dotting the road like pearls on a necklace, stalls on the road overflowing with the seasonal corn and pumpkins, and fresh seafood stands – poisonneries – and the drive becomes even more lovely.

My mom is a lover of trees and flowers and the ways mother nature marks the seasons through them, and so much of this drive was accompanied by her exclamations attesting to the beautiful scenes passing us softly by. It is a view she's always wanted to witness, as have I, and now that we both have, I'm glad we saw the colours of September in the east together.

There were also three somewhat odd aspects during this drive worth noting.

Across the street from our campsite in Riviere-du-Loup was one of Santa's chateaux. A little Christmas in September?

The Jamboree's fridge decided to stop working unless it was plugged in. No matter how many times I restarted it or checked the propane, it just wouldn't stay on. Luckily I've had it fixed – for a pretty penny, of course – in Moncton and now can camp in Wall Mart when I can't find an open campsite and still have cold beer to sip on through the evenings.

The final odd, and for me, rather unpleasant thing was the few dead moose we saw stretched out in undignified manners on the backs of hunter's trucks. Apparently the last few days have been “moose season” for hunters, and I saw three of their prizes being carted home in both Quebec and New Brunswick. One pulled up right beside us at a gas station. All I can do is hope that they will provide an entire family with meat for the winter – a practice which I know many rural people still follow – and won't simply be a trophy over someone's mantel.

Mom flew out of Moncton yesterday back to Calgary, and now I am parked here, planning the next stage of the journey: the four Maritime provinces! Campsite closures and the threat of eventual winter both dictate my moves from now on; many campsites are closed by the end of September, and I've been told more than once to go to Newfoundland sooner rather than later. So I envision the next four weeks to include a bit of back and forth, and with all there is to see and do around here, that suits me just fine.

QCity to NB

Quebec City

Wandering the streets of old Quebec City, inside the walls, I felt like everyone else does when there: that I had left Canada and suddenly found myself on a little holiday in Europe.

It is the only walled city in North America, defining its role in North American history. Quebec City was where it all came down to whether or not Canada would be British or French; according to Wikipedia, a 20 minute battle on the Plains of Abraham, just outside the walls that still stand and mark this part of the city as an outdoor museum, decided the fate of the newly found and highly sought after colony to turn to British rule.

This was in the 1700s, and it was then called Nouvelle France, a region that extended across what is now Eastern Canada and south to Louisiana. The Queen (this would have been Victoria) spent a nice chunk of money on a military citadel carved into the hill overlooking the St. Lawrence River to defend against the possibility of American invasions. In the end, the US took the southern part, Quebec remained French in culture while the British (but not only the British) set themselves to spreading across the rest of Canada, until Canada became Canada in the year of Confederation. The citadel now hosts the residence of the Canadian Governor General, the Queen's representative in the Canadian government, since apparently we no longer need it to fight off the Americans.

Having a chance to see and feel this sense of Canada's past that extends beyond the most recent 150 years while wandering through Quebec's walled streets helped me to understand (in a different way than reading about it in a book or on Wikipedia) that we do have a history here in Canada. While admittedly still a toddler compared to some of the world's nations, Canada”s history is rooted in Quebec.

Mom and I spent two days walking through Quebec's quaint old streets, but just couldn't drag ourselves away from this historical part into the more modern and less touristy sections of the city. We ate crepes for breakfast at cafes that could very easily exist in any city in France, revitalized after hours of walking over Martinis named after Rene Levesque and Trudeau – some of Quebec's political heroes – at the Farimount Hotel Frontenac, and dined on typical French Canadian cuisine at the Restaurant des Anciens Canadians in what was one of the oldest houses in the city dating back to the 1600s. We were distracted by artsy little shops, taking lots of pictures, and stopping into pubs offering local beer.

Tres civilized, and I am glad that I could experience this city with my mom oohing and ahhing beside me through this gorgeous part of Quebec.

Quebec City

Montreal, Part Two

It was suggested that leaving the Jamboree parked on Montreal's streets for over a week meant it could be a prime target for thieves, so I found a safe place to park it in the neighbouring community of St. Eustache while there.

The safe place is actually a hardwood flooring and granite counter top business. It happens to have a large lot attached, where the owner will allow people to park and store truck trailers or RVs. 50 dollars allowed me to leave the Jamboree on in the locked yard, guarded by a German Shepherd, for up to a month. So there the Jamboree sat for 10 days while I invaded my friends Fran and Dan's apartment in the centre of town.

While when leaving the Jamboree I initially felt a touch of apprehension akin to leaving my cat alone for a week, this week has been a welcome chance to stay put; a little holiday in its own right away from life on the road.

There were a few parties to occupy my nights, which included one night of Fran and her friend, Amy and I youtubing our favourites from the 80s and serenading the neighbourhood until 6am (which, of course, we were under the deluded impression that we gave extremely talented renditions until we woke to the foggy memory of it the next afternoon); once we got over that hangover, we induced another by dancing to 50s/60s soul/funk music spun my another of Fran's Montreal friends on a dance floor packed with university students.

We also attended a few possibly more acceptable cultural activities. One of these included a thought-provoking, absorbingly cool, and gratis exhibition by the artist Michal Rovner; if you get a chance to see her stuff, wherever in the world the exhibition is, GO! You'll not regret it. Another was the World Press Photo, which originates in my beautiful Amsterdam and then tours to major cities around the world. Same advice to offer as Michal's work.

Since I was taking advantage of Fran and Dan's generous hospitality for over a week, I also had a chance to do more everyday things, like hang out in a cafe sipping au soyas and reading, exercising at the Y, and making dinners and baking muffins in the kitchen. I met up with Melanie for a day, a friend from Tokyo who I hadn't seen since we both left 9 years ago. I spent several afternoons walking around, one in which I had planned to spend behind the lens of my camera but, of course, once I got a good enough distance away from home to not want to turn around again and I finally took the camera out, the batteries died. Luckily, I had another afternoon to try again.

Chinatown was closeby, so we ate a few dinners there. One was at the Little Sheep, a Mongolian “Hot Pot” restaurant where you have your own electric stovetop burner on the table in front of you. The waitress puts down a pot of broth - your choice of regular, spicy, or a half and half mix. The flavours are floating in the broth- many forms of unidentifiable balls, some which looked like nutmeg, chilis, garlic slivers. You fill your plate at the buffet with an array of veggies, tofus, noodles, fish, and, if you aren't a vegetarian like me, meat. Plop it at your leisure into the soup, let it cook, eat it, top it off with sauces such as soya or sesame. Mmm.

That wasn't the only culinary delight I experienced in Montreal. I also gorged on poutine while everyone else tried to get their mouths around Montreal smoked meat sandwiches one evening.

I returned to the wood and granite shop in St. Eustache to retrieve the Jamboree, and when I saw it parked quietly as I had left it ten days earlier, I mistakenly, fondly, thought that it was waiting patiently for me to return. When I got into it, unpacked, and lovingly found my way behind the wheel again, I turned the key in the ignition, expecting to hear its familiar rumble to life. Sadly, I discovered that, while when I left I had emptied it, I had irresponsibly left the fridge turned on the whole time, drawing on propane and battery power, and so was confronted with a very silent and unmoving Jamboree.

My mom has flown into Montreal to join me for a week to explore Quebec a bit more. There are so many reasons why I'm happy to have my mom with me for a week here in Quebec. And not least of all, because she was the one who finally got out of the passenger seat of the Jamboree after ten minutes of watching the boys from the shop try to boost the Jamboree's battery without even a hint of a twitch, to inform them that they had it hooked up incorrectly; thirty seconds later, the Jamboree roared back to life, the boys smiled somewhat embarrasedly and thanked her for showing them how to boost an engine. And mom and I were on our way.

To Fran's mom's place in Lachute. A small town about half an hour north of Montreal where Fran grew up, I (and mom) were once again treated to outstanding hospitality at the hands of almost strangers. Who quickly became, not strangers.

And so mom and I go to find the colours of Quebec in September.

Montreal Pics:

Montreal

Montreal, Part One

Sat in a corner of a colourful little lunch cafe in the heart of the Plateau district of Montreal, I attempt to put my finger on the unique atmosphere that envelopes this city. The obvious answer to reach for first is the French aspect. The architecture is frencher, the food is frencher, the people even somehow dress a bit frencher than the rest of (English-speaking) Canada. You hear a lot more French than English on the streets, and have the opportunity to dig back into the recesses of your memory, find that file labelled “Middle School French lessons”, dust it off and try to order your cafe au lait - mais pas au lait, avec soya, s'il vous plait - en francais.

And if your pronunciation blocks your communication, you can easily switch to English. Its still widely used here, thankfully. Equally gratefully, these aren't the only two cultures evidenced in the city; multiculturalism is as tangible as a strong bass thumping through the streets.

But there's more to the beat of Montreal than that.

Tourists love to walk through the city, exclaiming that its “just like Europe!”. Um. Well. Ok. Sort of. Except that its not. It is a very, thoroughly, Canadian city.

There's the usual mess of cars, bikes, and pedestrians on the streets; variety of shopping options; bars and restaurants and cafes offering everything for any taste. A chinatown that offers cheap and filling bowls of noodle soup, and the vieux Montreal to browse through quaint shops, cheesy souvenir stands, and sip a glass of wine on a terrase. There are the homeless, begging on busy shopping streets with their dogs and old, mangled coffee cups; young students bursting with fashion and loud opinions and heavy backpacks laden with books; noisy streets at all hours of the day, waking you up with a drunken shriek or a battered muffler in the wee hours of the morning.

The smells of the streets - fresh bread, smoked meat, and sewers - mingle with the sights and sounds, a cacaphony of humanity living in close proximity.

The streets are slightly more pockmarked than other Canadian cities; older, with deep potholes badly in need of repair. Dirtier. Brick and stone buildings lining streets, crammed up together with colourful doors and stairways to mark their individuality from one another. An older city, more lived in and comfortable like your favourite pair of jeans. Well worn, well washed, fit for all occasions.

Everywhere exudes culture: art, theatre, film, exhibitions, music. Its the hub for much of what is currently cool in Canada. And historically cool as well; when I was informed that I had just walked passed Leonard Cohen's house, I admit that I very briefly entertained a fantasy that perhaps I'd catch a glimpse of him sitting at a table in the window, having his morning tea.

Happening. Easy. Friendly, of course. Et bien sur, with an Edge.

Between Toronto and Ottawa...

...lies Kingston. Home to one of Canada's biggest penitentiaries. Also to one of the major Canadian military bases, as well as a military school. Add to this one of Canada's most renowned universities, Queens, and you get an interesting mix to this otherwise quaint city on the coast of Lake Ontario.

It was a busy time to be there. Labour day weekend meant the campsite was overflowing with families cramming in just one more trip before the kids return to school. Queens university was also gearing up for a new year, and throngs of students descended the Kingston streets, conducting frosh activities, marching like a mob one afternoon to the football stadium to cheer their team on against Guelph. Dressed in yellow, blue and red and drawing attention to themselves as only a mob of late teens/young adults can.

After a couple of days I carried on to Ottawa. I arrived in the nation's capital on Labour Day, listening to debates on CBC radio about the irony of Labour Day amongst the unemployed. But I had a destination, and immediately found my way to St. Paul's university campus to watch the premier of Carolynn's Otesha play.

The obvious draw to Ottawa is the Parliament Buildings. Along with its status as the Capital city of Canada, it was not unexpected to find that its a very clean, pretty city. It, too, had a bustling vibe of young professionals, old professionals, students and governmental types.

But the most pleasant discovery for me were the bike paths. Having heard it was a bike-friendly city, imagine my glee at the beginning of the day, upon discovering on of these familiar little Dutch markers as I set off to discover the city by bike.

I'll have to take part of what I said in my last blog about Canadian cities and their common conflict between cyclists and drivers, and urge other Canadian cities to look at Ottawa as an example. Yay! Real bike paths! A long one, called the Ottawa River Parkway Ottawa's side of the river. If you cross either the Alexandra bridge or the Portage bridge, you suddenly find yourself in Gatineau (Hull), Quebec, also lovely and obviously well cared for, and also with a long bike path, called Voyageur. There are paths along the canals to take you deeper into town, and even clear delineations on many regular streets.

Maybe the reason I enjoyed Ottawa so much was because I was allowed the freedom to discover it with Betty in a bike friendly place. Able to see and feel so much more of the city by bike than if stuck on foot or finding parking lots big enough to park the Jamboree. All this + the gorgeous weather = my idea of how to spend a blissful day.

And that about wraps it up for Ontario. Allons-y a Quebec!

Kingston-Ottawa album:

Kingston-Ottawa

The Centre of the Universe

The first thing the Jamboree and I did upon our arrival in Toronto was to get stuck in a ridiculous traffic jam. Welcome to the Big City.

I had to pee and so the second thing I did was to pull over in the shoulder along the eight-lane highway to flash the Jamboree's hazard lights and nip into the bathroom. One of the many reasons I love the Jamboree. I am often one who needs to pull over at most opportunities to pee, and I rarely pass them up even if I don't really have to go. But with the Jamboree, I can pull over whenever I need to, want to and the shoulder is wide enough to do so relatively safely.

When, relieved, I pulled back into the bumper-to-bumper rush hour, I resigned myself to an hour or so of inching my way slowly across the span of Toronto and its satellites. I turned up Jason Mraz, imagined myself strumming along, and sent a few overdue text messages.

I was planning to stay a couple of days with long-time family friends. If you look at Toronto on a map, they actually live just slightly left of the centre of the universe in a place called Mississauga. This place is full of suburbs and shopping malls, and it took Sabine (who's family it is I was going to but who lives in Calgary so wasn't there herself, unfortunately) SIX text messages to detail the directions from the main highway that I was stuck in traffic on to the house.

When I eventually made it to what I thought was one of the exits that I was to follow according to the directions I'd been texted, I manoevered the Jamboree and I into our third Big City adventure: taking a wrong turn and getting lost. Luckily, not terribly lost. Just a wrong turn over some overpasses that ended up in a big shopping mall, and which, luckily, had signs leading us back to the highway again. I like to think of it as a wee side-trip.

Once I'd managed to find my way through confusing 12-lane traffic with my mobile phone in the palm of my hand, referring to Sabine's texted directions, I finally pulled up in front of Bernd and Ann's place. The Jamboree got a beautiful spot on the ample driveway to park and rest its weary wheels for a few days, and I ran into the welcoming house with outstretched arms: outstanding hospitality, good food and wine, the use of the laundry downstairs and the swimming pool in the backyard, and a bedroom.

I stayed five days. Under blue skies and summer temperatures, the pool in the backyard was a prime destination.

Other destinations included a Rotary club meeting with Bernd, which was interesting as I knew so little about Rotary prior to this visit. I'd thought it was an old boys' club, and while it sort of is, they do encourage younger people and women to participate nowadays. The Rotary brought Theresa, an exchange student from Austria, to Bernd and Ann's and the four of us made up a makeshift family unit for the week.

Together, we went to the Sound of Music musical now playing live in Toronto's theatres, and ate and drank in the old, and newly cool brewery district by the harbour. We made dinners at home accompanied by wine and schnapps, and wore funny hats. I like this family ;) .

I let the Jamboree rest when we took a day trip with Bernd's car to Niagara Falls. I'd always heard that the Canadian side of the falls is simply way better than the American side. I'm proud to report its all true. The American side is impressive in its own right, but is unfortunately placed right next to the Canadian side, which really does make it pale in comparison. It was a bright sunny day (of course) when we went to the falls, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the pictures we took while there. We look like drowned rats! The wind was blowing at a particular speed in a certain direction, I wouldn't say a strong breeze but enough to blow water falling over the falls into the air to land on the tourists along the walkway next to it like rain.

Fortunately when we went behind the falls, they handed out beautiful yellow raincoats. We were already soaked by that point, so, bad timing, but still appreciated. What I didn't know before I went was where all that water came from. I discovered it was from Lake Erie, which fell and then flowed down to fill up Lake Ontario. This lake then in turn flows down the St. Lawrence all the way out to the Atlantic. I am still curious about where Lake Erie gets filled up from. And so on. Awesome to think that all that water out there keeps moving and flowing enough to keep enormous oceans, lakes and waterways filled. That they don't empty like a bathtub when the plug is pulled.

We warmed up to a Timmies coffee and I felt satisfied with my visit to the falls. Tick. The day carried on to include a brisk tour of the Niagara wineries, and lunch in the quaint little town, Niagara on the Lake. Complete with a Niagara chardonnay, of course.

I was also able to participate in some more mundane activities during the week. I found my way, and was grudgingly forced to jog part of the way, to the YMCA for a workout. This has been a grand discovery as I cross the land. A member can visit any YMCA in the country, and I've done so in most cities. most recently this morning in Kingston. I spent an afternoon wandering around Toronto, including shopping at my favourite St. Lawrence market. Sadly, one afternoon by the pool I broke a string to my guitar while tuning it, so found a local guitar shop to repair it for me (for free! Ahem :) ).

A big debate erupted while I was in Toronto. One evening, a cyclist was killed by the driver of a car. When I put it that way, it sounds like the driver is a menace and the cyclist, an innocent victim. Much more came out over the course of the week to reveal that the cyclist was drunk, a bike courier, and very aggressive. That the driver was defending himself from the attack by the cyclist, and a bigwig in the Ontario legal world (he was touted to head up the Liberal party at some future point). This all raised the hair on the backs of both drivers and cyclists, pointing angry fingers at one another about who has more right to the road.

I am both a cyclist and a driver. What I see, from my Amsterdam eyes, is that there seems to be a growing endemic faceoff in many Canadian cities between these two groups, and that a big part of it is that there is very little delineation for cyclists on the roads. They can't ride on sidewalks for the danger of knocking over pedestrians, so they have to go on the road with the cars. Some roads mark off a lane for them, but only few. There are beligerent drivers and cyclists, all manoevering their vehicles around Canadian city streets shaking their fists at one another.

I know that when I cycle here, I am less confident that I am in Europe that the drivers are looking out for me. Maybe, because this tragedy – for both sides – occurred in Toronto, awareness will be raised, conversations will take place and all vehicles on the road will eventually merge into a place of tolerance among a variety of vehicles.

Hmmm. Kind of like Canada. And especially like Toronto, the biggest and most multicultural city in the nation.

I concede that's maybe me being naieve. Its a busy city, for sure, and pulsing and lively. Especially concerning its status among Canadians across the land as the Centre of the Universe, a moniker I apply with tongue in cheek, as no matter all the other qualifications that can be given to it, it still feels truly Canadian.

Unedited Toronto Album (sorry for any repeats that I haven't yet had a chance to delete):

Toronto

A weekend at the cottage

I lay on the wooden dock, my eyes closed, floating with it in the gently lapping waves along the shore of Stony Lake. Welcoming the sun. A motoroboat off in the distance, getting louder the further away it drives. Another one passes by, the driver, according to custom, waves a greeting. A power tool, maybe for cutting hedges – or is simply a lawn mower? - at one of the cottages nearby. I can't see many of them, tucked up in bays, on hills surrounded by trees, each with their own private perspective out on the lake.

Its the last day of August and the sun is shining bright in a clear blue sky. The ground was wet with late summer dew this morning, so it will take a few hours to warm it all up. I am looking forward to a swim then.

This is a little lake when compared to the likes of Superior and Huron where I made my camps last week. I can see the other side quite clearly. This is cottage country, a wee bit north from Peterborough, somewhere between Toronto and Ottawa. A weekend at the cottage is the essential Ontario experience, and so I'm glad for my friend Kristin, who lives in Ottawa and has this one and graciously had us there for the weekend.

Not only a weekend at the cottage, but also a reunion of sorts with Fran and Dan and Carolynn and Kristin. The last time most of us were together was exactly two months ago, June 29, in Amsterdam, a day we all saw fit to get drunk on a canal boat and jump into the Amstel River. Suitable that we'd come back together now, in our gorgeous native land, for another weekend before getting on with our new Canadian lives. And on a weekend like this there's bound to be somebody new to meet, and her name was, also, Jen.

The weather was not great. From Friday to Sunday, the sky was an unpredictable collection of cloud, sun and rain, and it was necessary to wear a sweater most of the time. When the sun did deign to come out and play for a bit on Saturday afternoon, we transformed quickly into bathing suits for a silly dip in the water.

The cottage really feels like a cottage, with a cottagey wooden interior. Wooden chairs and tables and cupboards that seem like they sprouted from the walls spontaneously one day a long time ago and have been witnessing the comings and goings through the cottage ever since. Old comfy sofas and two of those deep round chairs that you curl up and get lost in while reading and napping away an afternoon. A bookshelf teeming with books and movies on VHS tapes. A variety of board games and card games scattered across surfaces and in crevaces where they were probably placed after the last time they’d been played, waiting to be chosen again for a drizzly afternoon’s entertainment. Folding accordion doors like you might otherwise find in front of closets, open up to reveal bedrooms and a bathroom. A telephone. A TV. An old record player with a small collection of random records, and, on the other side of the room, a little “ghettoblaster” style stereo with a pile of cassette tapes and a few CDs next to it; equally random and long abandonded since they had gone out of style. Photographs of the family that grew up in this cottage, who have been coming to it for summers as far back as they can remember. Old knick knacks lining the fireplace. Trashy magazines lying everywhere, waiting to be devoured. And they were.

Windows overlooking the grass outside, leading down to the lake. A few lawn chairs strewn across the grass, facing out to the water. A dock floating quietly just ahead. Outside beyond the edge where the grass meets the water, you can see across the lake. Motorboats whizzing by, canoes quietly slicing through the water. Small boat houses backing out onto the water. A bacci set.

We played bacci, settlers, train ride, scattergories and charades. We took boats and floatation beds out on the water. We cooked scrumptious breakfasts and dinners, we drank quite an impressive amount of beer and wine. We napped. We read books and cooking magazines and got caught up on famous people fashions and gossip. We watched the rain fall and the clouds change. Dan caught a few little fish with a fishing rod off the dock.

And on the day they left me there by myself, the sun went down in a blaze of glory, the stars came out at night and the following day I layed on the dock in the sun. And I felt very relaxed.

Some illustrations of the weekend:

Stony Lake Cottage