Camping on Prince Edward Island
On Monday, June 29, I set off with my sister Margaret, her husband Brian, and their son Paul, on what we hoped would be a pleasant camping trip. Nineteen days, 6051 miles, and a vehicle and a half later, we returned, dead tired, from a trip that wasn't exactly unpleasant--but was far from what you would call a dream vacation.
We had planned to head northeast-to New England and Canada's Maritime provinces, hoping eventually to make it all the way to the island of Newfoundland. Somehow our plans had not taken into account just how large a distance that is. The route we traveled would have been well over 3000 miles one-way. I just checked my atlas and found that Fairbanks, Alaska, is closer to Iowa than Newfoundland is. We soon realized that our plans were far too broad, and we gradually limited the scope of our trip. A host of other factors limited it far more. We never did make it to Newfoundland-we made it to Amherst, just inside the province of Nova Scotia, Canada-where we spent all or part of six days. That is why I have entitled the summary of this vacation "Amherst".
Margaret and Brian drove up to my place from Galva last night. We got to bed fairly early, but I don't think any of us slept particularly well. This morning we had bagels with cheese and jam for breakfast. Shortly after 7:00, Margaret drove away in her little red Toyota pickup, towing the tiny trailer she and my brother Paul jointly own. Brian and I dawdled a bit more. We had arrange to pick up Brian's son, also named Paul, at his mother's home. ...We had scheduled to meet him after 8:30, so we timed our departure accordingly.
After picking Paul up we drove north on Interstate 35 and into Minnesota. We stopped at a rest area on the border and were surprised to find Margaret there. She had started driving well before us, but because her pickup had very little power when towing the trailer, we had already caught up with her. We exchanged greetings and then drove on northward.
We stopped for lunch at Burnsville, Minnesota, at the south end of the place that everyone up here properly calls "the Cities" (short for Twin Cities), but that I grew up calling Minneapolis. After a long lunch and some time out to shop for some supplies, we set off again. We drove eastward around the beltway, in and around the city of Saint Paul--and I must say that is a far easier way of getting through the area than going west, through Minneapolis. Traffic is far lighter in St. Paul, and the lanes on the freeway are continuous.
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We drove ... through the Minnesota forest, stopping only briefly to buy gas--at the Willow River Mercantile, an old general store that is straight out of a frontier movie set. We met Brian and Margaret again at an information center at the south end of Duluth. There were seagulls all around there, and Paul had fun feeding bread crumbs to them-sometimes throwing the crumbs in the air and watching the birds dive and catch the crumbs in their beaks.
Duluth is not an easy city to get through. Interstate 35 ends right in the middle of downtown, and you have to drive on U.S. 61 through business and residential areas for over fifteen miles to get out of town again. Margaret and I had both driven in Duluth before, and neither of us cared to repeat the experience. We had come into the information center on a road called "Skyline Parkway", which seemed to be a pleasant scenic drive that followed the top of the cliff above the city. The maps showed this drive continuing all the way to the north end of Duluth, thus avoiding the mess downtown. We decided to follow Skyline Parkway, figuring it couldn't be any worse than the through-city route.
We were wrong. Skyline Parkway follows at least a dozen city streets, going up and down various hills on the west side of the city. There are at least three different kinds of signs marking the route, and turns are not well marked. I was following Brian through the city, turning wherever he did. At one corner there was no indication whatsoever of which way Skyline Parkway went. Brian decided to go straight ahead. We were soon out of town, but on county roads--far from the main highway.
Unlike in Iowa, Minnesota's county roads follow no regular pattern. In all but the hilliest places in Iowa there is a grid of county roads every mile, running mostly straight in north-south or east-west directions. It's hard to get totally lost in Iowa, because these farm-to-market roads will always dump out onto the main highways-and there will almost always be a sign at the intersection indicating what highway it is. Minnesota, especially in the north, is not nearly so agricultural, so there is no need for such frequent service roads. There are also far fewer signs along the roads in Minnesota, so it is much easier to get lost. We drove around north of Duluth for forty-five minutes before finally coming out on Highway 61.
We camped for the night at a private park called the Wagon Wheel, right on the shore of Lake Superior. Margaret and I made dinner ,and later we hiked on the rocky beach. Paul blue up an inflatable raft he had brought and played in the water-which was extremely gentle for this lake. The mosquitoes soon came out, and we went to bed.
Margaret's trailer is small, and there really wasn't sufficient sleeping room for four grown people (even though the manufacturer claims there is). Margaret and Brian had a topper on their pickup, and it was decided that Paul and I should sleep in the bed of the truck while Margaret and Brian took the double bed in the camper. I, who am used to sleeping alone in a double bed in a large room, felt extremely cramped in the pickup. It seemed like the only possible arrangement, though. I certainly didn't sleep well-it seemed to take forever to get to sleep. I did wake up somewhat rested, though.
It was neither early nor late when we got off this morning. We drove along the North Shore, through endless resort towns and mining towns, with occasional glimpses of Lake Superior en route. Margaret was riding with me this morning, and we stopped briefly in Grand Marais to buy some groceries and mail some letters. We then drove on to Grand Portage National Monument, just south of the Canadian border.
Grand Portage is where the Voyageurs (explorers and fur traders sometimes lumped together as the "Northwest Company") portaged their canoes from the Great Lakes to the Quetico Lakes (known in the U.S. as the Boundary Waters). For years the border between Minnesota and Canada was officially defined simply as "the common route of the Voyageurs".
We waited at Grand Portage for Brian and Paul to catch up with us, and then proceeded to the border. We waited a long time at Canada Customs while the woman in charge gave a very thorough inspection to the car in front of us. We began to expect the worst, but eventually a young man came out, asked us a few brief questions, gave us a pamphlet, and told us to have a good trip. He made Brian open the trailer, but otherwise there was no trouble at all.
Just inside Canada, we stopped at the Ontario Information Centre, where a TOO-helpful girl gave us far more information on the province than we wanted. She was really very nice, but it's sad so much money gets wasted on printing and distributing unwanted travel literature. All we really wanted was a provincial map-instead we got an armload of paper.
The travel centre hostess was originally from New Brunswick, and she was happy to hear we were planning to go there. She mentioned that she, like a lot of New Brunswickers, had left the province because there were no jobs there. Canada has a much higher unemployment rate than the U.S., and the Maritime Provinces are especially bad off. Ontario has always been the economic center of Canada, and Canadians seem to be moving there in the same way Americans are flocking to the Sun Belt.
The road got somewhat worse in Canada. Still called Highway 61, it suddenly carried more traffic and was in worse repair. The speed limit was 80 kilometers per hour, roughly 50 mph. Try driving 50 when you're used to 55-it's almost impossible.
Before long we arrived in the city of Thunder Bay. We stopped at a mall, found a bank, and changed money. This was especially important because tomorrow was Canada Day (the equivalent of our Independence Day, it used to be called Dominion Day), when all banks and most businesses would be closed. There was an enormous line at the bank, and Margaret and I waited more than a half hour before being served. When we finally were served, we waited again. Margaret and I had different tellers, but both of them had problems with their computer terminals. (Mine had lost a very large deposit from the previous customer.) Eventually we got our money-at the not-so-good exchange rate of 75 U.S. cents = 1 Canadian dollar, minus a $2 commission for the service.
While waiting in line I read a most interesting sign. Canada Post, the national mail company, had been on strike for nearly a month. The sign told Visa customers how to pay their bills during "this time of inconvenience". It suggested that during "the disruption" customers should estimate their credit card purchases and pay their bills at the bank.
Canada Post always seems to be on strike. On at least three different occasions when I have been in Canada the post office either was or had just been on strike. The demands of the letter carriers are reflected by high costs. It costs 42 Canadian cents to send a postcard from Canada to the U.S.A.-that's about 32 U.S. cents. To send a card the other way, the US Postal Service charges just 14 cents. It's expensive to send mail inside Canada, too. It costs 36 Canadian cents (27 US cents) to send a letter within Canada, a full nickel more than it does in the States. For all that expense, Canada Post doesn't seem to be terribly efficient. Canadians make more jokes about the mail service than Americans do, and on the whole it seems to take longer for mail to reach its destination in Canada than in the U.S.A.
At the bank there were pamphlets entitled "Let's Sing 'O Canada'", urging Canadians to sing their National Anthem on Canada Day. The leaflets featured the words to 'O Canada' in English and French. It seems there are fewer Canadians who know 'O Canada' than there are Americans who can sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" all the way through. I picked up one of the leaflets. Here are the words:
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North, strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
The words are nothing special, but then unless you know the history of Ft. McHenry, our national anthem makes very little sense. The music to "O Canada" really is quite lovely. It is gentle, but strong-really beautiful for a national anthem. Unfortunately, it is every bit as unsingable as "The Star-Spangled Banner". The final "Canada" and "guard" hit that same high note as "the rockets red glare".
Before I get off the topic of the bank, I suppose I should comment a bit on Canadian money. Canada, like the U.S.A., uses the dollar as its currency, but Canadian and American dollars are worth entirely different amounts. Canada prints currency in different colors, with bills slightly fatter and shorter than their American counterparts. One-dollar bills are forest green, while $2 bills (which are VERY common in Canada) are maroon. Both feature portraits of Queen Elizabeth on them. The $5 bill is blue, the $10 is purple, and the $20 is olive green. The $50 is red, and the $100 (which no one really uses) is brown. The $20 bill also has Queen Elizabeth on it, while the other bills feature famous prime ministers of Canada. On the back of most bills are illustrations of various Canadian industries-forestry, whaling, chemicals, farming, etc. The government is in the process of changing to new designs on its money. Currently the $5 and $2 bills are available in new designs-with different illustrations on them. The new $2 has a much more recent portrait of Queen Elizabeth-the old one shows her at her coronation, over 30 years ago.
Most of Canada's coins are the same size as the corresponding American coins. Except for the nickel, though, they weigh less than their American counterparts because they are made of cheaper metals. The Canadian penny is also different from America's, because instead of being truly round it has 12 sides. This makes it possible for blind people to easily tell the difference between a penny and other coins that are nearly the same size.
This summer Canada introduced a new dollar coin to replace the $1 bill, which is no longer printed. The coin is gold colored, with nine sides, and larger than a quarter. Basically it is the same size and shape as the Susan B. Anthony dollar that bombed in America a few years back. There are two main differences, though. First, the gold color makes it possible to tell the dollar apart from a quarter easily. Secondly, Canadians seem to like the coin-which the newspapers call "loonies" because they have a picture of a loon (bird) on the back. Because the government is not printing any more dollar bills, Canadians will have to use the coins-like it or not, and even in the first month of circulation I got them as change twice.
It was after lunchtime when we left the bank, and we were quite hungry. The only place to eat in the mall we had stopped at was the K-Mart grill, which was overpriced and not terribly good. For Can$5.78 (US$4.35) I had a meat pie, dessert, and coffee.
I bought gas in Thunder Bay, paying 48.3 Canadian cents per liter. That works out to about US$1.37 per gallon-extremely cheap by world standards, but very expensive compared to American prices. Canada has used the Metric system for about ten years now, and the gas stations seem to have adjusted easily. It certainly sounds better to have gas advertised for 48 cents than for over a dollar-no matter what the measure.
We drove around Thunder Bay on a beltway-a four-lane street really, with no median and stoplights at inconvenient intervals, passing the Terry Fox monument on our way out of town. Terry Fox was a paraplegic who tried to walk across Canada on crutches to raise money for the handicapped. He began at St. John's, Newfoundland, and walked more than 2700 miles before medical complications stopped him at Thunder Bay-roughly halfway across Canada. He died soon after that. The people of Thunder Bay are very proud of Fox, and a long stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway has been re-named after him. (Just two years ago another paraplegic completed his route, walking the rest of the distance and dipping his crutches in the Pacific Ocean at Victoria, British Columbia.)
From Thunder Bay we drove east on the Trans-Canada Highway. This road, Canada's only nationwide highway, runs over 5000 miles from St. John's, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia. It was completed just twenty-five years ago, and parts of it weren't paved until the 1980s. For a 30-mile stretch between Thunder Bay and Nipagon, Ontario-where we were-it is literally the only road in Canada. Every car, truck, or camper that wants to cross between the eastern and western parts of the country has to travel on this road, which makes it EXTREMELY busy. It carries at least as much traffic as Interstate 80, yet it is only a two-lane road.
The traffic would be manageable, except that people seem to drive like maniacs in Ontario-especially when they pass. Yellow lines are used to indicate no passing zones, just like in the United States, but it often seems as if the government needn't have wasted the paint. Drivers pass when they feel like it, regardless of the stripes in the middle and (it often seems) regardless of any oncoming traffic. I don't know how many times people zipped in front of me, barely missing an oncoming car. One motorcycle rode down the center of the road, passing between me and a car in the other lane, with inches on either side. I was very glad when we got to Nipagon and turned north on a less-traveled road.
We drove north for another hour and camped for the night at Lake Nipagon Provincial Park, a pleasant place in the middle of the wilderness. The bugs were bad, but it really was a nice park. Brian drove into the next town to buy fuel for their pickup. Since tomorrow was a holiday, we weren't sure we could get diesel fuel for the truck. We had dinner, showered, and went to bed in good time.
We didn't get up particularly early this morning, but we were up far before the rest of the people in the campground. Canadians seem to sleep quite late by American standards. We drove east on Highway 11, through beautiful, if monotonous, forest areas. This is the northern loop of the Trans-Canada-much less traveled than its southern counterpart. Ontarians call this entire highway "Yonge Street", after the street in downtown Toronto which it eventually becomes. It also has various touristic names, rather like the "Great River Road" and the "Hiawatha Pioneer Trail" we have in Iowa.
Traffic was light, partly because the road is so far north and partly because it was a holiday. The most common sight were buses carrying the Canadian Forces. A few years ago Canada merged all the branches of its military into one unit-getting rid of duplication and saving a lot of money. After pondering for a while why there were so many Canadian Forces buses out today, in a country that gets along well with virtually every country in the world, I finally considered the possibility that many of them could be participating in parades in the towns along the road. Canada Day is, after all, the equivalent of the Fourth of July.
I stopped in the town of Longlac to buy gas, paying 50.9¢/liter at the only gas station that was open. It was a full-service station, and I think this was the first time in my life I had bought full-service gas. (I normally buy self-service gasohol at convenience stores.) The bugs had done quite a number on my windshield, so it was nice to have the attendant clean it. It certainly is strange to just stand around and watch your gas being pumped, though.
As we drove eastward the road signs gradually changed from English only to bilingual, in English and French. The towns we passed through, places like Hearst and Kapuskasing, were made up mostly of French-speaking people. In this region the forest became scrubbier and the population density increased. The towns seemed to stretch on forever along the road, and most of them were really quite ugly-strings of grubby houses with unkempt lawns. For some reason Canadians have a passion for multicolored, striped houses, and we saw some of the most unlikely color combinations along this road. Picture any two colors that DON'T go together, and we probably saw a house in those hues. The houses themselves weren't all that ugly-some were just odd-but almost all the lawns were unmowed and junk was often scattered through them. It's not that the people seemed poor, though. Many people were building additions to their homes, while at the same time paying no attention to their yards. I'd imagine this area really looks its best during the bitter winters-when the grass is covered with snow and the colorful houses stand out against the white background. In summer, though, it really is unattractive.
Eventually we drove into the boundaries of the city of Timmins, the largest city in AREA in all of Canada. The place has less than 50,000 people, but its city limits include an area thirty miles long and fifteen miles wide-most of it scrubby forest and farmland. We never did make it into the REAL city, but we camped within the city limits-at Kettle Lakes Provincial Park. We hiked a most interesting trail over an ancient river bed, across peat bogs, and among little round "kettles" of water left by glaciers. After returning to the campground, I passed on a shower-as the building was probably half a mile from our trailer. We just tried to get to sleep. Unfortunately it was hot and steamy, and the bugs were worse than before. I lay awake until after 1am, watching Paul toss and turn in the pickup. Finally I went out to my car (which the bugs had not invaded, since the windows were closed), reclined in the passenger seat, and got some sleep.
From Timmins we headed east to the town of Iroquois Falls, another city with relatively few people that in area is huge. We then went southeast to Kirkland Lake, a dirty, crowded mining town with traffic jams I wasn't quite awake enough to deal with.
We followed Ontario highway #66 east of Kirkland Lake. Quite suddenly the land became very rugged and mountainous, with pine trees, creeks, and waterfalls making for very beautiful scenery. This is mining country. It is straight north of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and it looks a lot like those states-far more beautiful than the scrub forest to the west. It reminded me a lot of British Columbia and Montana, too. The mountains really aren't high at all, but they are rugged and beautiful.
There's one last thing I should mention before leaving Ontario. For some reason Ontarians have a habit of driving with their headlights on-even in the daytime and in perfectly good weather. Perhaps it helps them to be seen when people pass so dangerously. The only time I put my headlights on in the daytime I did what I knew I would do-I forgot to turn them off.
In the middle of these mountains we entered the province of Quebec, the center of French Canada. There really is nowhere else on earth quite like Quebec. In some ways it is old and European, more genteel and civilized than the rest of Canada. In other ways it is the newest and most American of all the provinces--except that it speaks French. Finally it is by far the largest of the provinces, with a more vast and remote frontier than any other part of Canada. The three lifestyles-traditional, modern, and frontier-come together in Quebec ... and EVERYBODY speaks French.
French is the only official language in Quebec. The national government of Canada speaks both English and French, but the Quebec government speaks only French. Most of the Quebecois people also speak mainly French, and by law all business transactions are supposed to be made in French and EVERY traffic sign and business sign (except trademarks) must be in French. That makes things rather difficult for an American tourist, but really no more difficult than it is for the Quebecois when they travel to western Canada-where EVERYTHING is in English only.
Margaret and I stopped at a supermarket in the town of Rouyn (I think it is probably pronounced roo-ANN, with that nasal French sound at the end.) Of course, the entire store was labeled with French signs ("viande", "legumes", and "pain" instead of "meat", "produce", and "bread"). We walked the aisles and found what we wanted-including some delicious pastries we snacked on as we drove. I carefully tallied my purchases in my head, so I didn't have to pay much attention to the amount the cashier announced in French at the check-out. This store had those new laser scanners, and I must say it is interesting to see the detailed receipt those things print out written in French.
On our way out of Rouyn we saw two interesting things. First there was a sign saying "Danger: Zone de Dynamitage"-it doesn't take too much imagination to translate that one. Secondly we saw a truck hauling guard dogs. It too said "danger", and it showed a picture of the most ferocious dog you can imagine, with true fangs sticking out. You wonder how the driver feels hauling that rig.
Quebec is developed much further north than Ontario is, but nevertheless we were entering a very remote part of the province. The area probably wouldn't be settled at all, except that it is the site of some of Canada's largest gold deposits. The cities of Noranda-Rouyn, Malartic, and Val-d'Or (in English, "Golden Valley") are huge, sprawling, modern towns that rely on gold for their existence. Gold mines are almost always deep underground, so except for the cities the lovely landscape is largely intact.
Since we were traveling in two vehicles, we arranged to meet at set locations every few hours. Usually we would meet at rest areas along the road, but these were narrowly scattered in this region of Quebec. Instead we decided to meet at the tourist information center in Val-d'Or. That was a mistake that made all of us far more acquainted with Val-d'Or than we ever had cared to be. Val-d'Or is a city of 30,000 people, and while our maps indicated that there was indeed an information center there, we had no indication as to what part of town it was in. Normally these tourist centers are well marked along the highway, so we were assuming this one would be, too.
We ended up on what appeared to be the only through street in downtown, an awful two-lane path with the most congested mess of traffic I have seen in years. To make things worse there was construction that made the street only one lane wide in places. As we drove people backed out of parking spaces in front of us without giving any thought as to who might be in the way. Pedestrians crossed in the middle of the road, away from marked crosswalks or corners. Bicycles weaved among the traffic on both sides of the street. Cars and trucks from cross streets kept coming even after their traffic lights were red. There are Spanish towns that are a lot like this, and I gather this must be the way people drive in France, too. Certainly it made the maniacs in Ontario seem tame.
We finally did find the information center, and eventually we all met there. We had cheese and crackers for lunch (how very European in this most European province), and then drove on southward. Just a few miles southeast of Val-d'Or is an enormous provincial park called "Reserve La Verendrye", named (I found out later) after a family who explored western Canada. The atlas calls the road through the park scenic, but it really is nothing special. The forest is scrubby again, like in northern Ontario, and it was really a very boring drive.
Boring at least until we hit CONSTRUCTION!!!! The road through the north end of the park was not good; it was a fairly narrow blacktop in less than excellent repair that wound among hills and lakes. It was fairly heavily traveled, and perhaps it needed work-but it wasn't THAT bad. The speed limit was 90 km/h (55mph), and it wasn't too difficult to drive the speed limit. Suddenly, about halfway through this park we were warned of construction ahead. We weren't particularly worried, though, since through the trees we could see equipment (though no workers) in the process of building an entirely new road, wider and straighter than the one we were on. It appeared that the new road would basically avoid the old one and we had nothing to worry about.
Again we were wrong. For some reason none of us has yet figured out the construction workers had torn up the blacktop on our road, leaving us with a BAD rock surface (not a good gravel surface, like an Iowa county road-we're talking bad, hard rock and dirt). This didn't cause the Quebecois to slow down, of course. They raced through it all at the same speed as everywhere else in the province (pushing 100 km/h). Dust rose everywhere, making it almost impossible to see. We drove for miles through this mess, all the while looking at the new road being constructed off in the distance.
Eventually we made it past the construction and onto a much better road. It was late in the afternoon when we finally left the park and headed east toward Mont-Laurier. (In case you haven't guessed, for some reason two-word French place names seem always to be hyphenated.) We were very tired and very hungry when we got to Mont-Laurier. There was construction in that town, and again they had entirely torn up the blacktop, leaving us to drive on rock and dirt. We made it through that mess and stopped at a rest area to decide what to do about dinner and camping.
We all piled into my car and drove back into Mont-Laurier to find a place for dinner. We decided to stop at a mall, figuring there should be a variety of food in there. The parking lot at the mall was entirely full, and I ended up parking in front of an apartment building two blocks up a side street. When we got into the mall we found out why the parking lot was so full. It was (you'll never guess) country music day, featuring bad musicians singing American country songs in French far too loudly (there are rock concerts that are quieter) and salespeople in ten-gallon hats and leather jackets. It all seemed terribly out of place in Quebec, but as I said before this is very much a place where cultures meet.
There were two choices for food in the mall-either a hot dog stand in the hallway where we couldn't have been heard to order over the music or the Pignon-Rouge, a quaint European-style bar (which also seemed entirely out of place in a mall). We opted for the bar. Looking over the menu we figured we would have the least difficulty ordering if we all had omelettes, an item which is both easy to pronounce and doesn't require a lot of extra questions. We were surprised when the omelettes came with potatoes, coleslaw, and peas on the side-making a much more complete meal. Four omelettes with coffee or soft drinks came to Can$25.75. We left a better than average tip for our waitress, who obviously spoke no English but was very understanding with us.
We drove on another half hour, to the town of Sainte-Veronique, which is named (like most towns in Quebec) for its parish church. We camped at a very pleasant park run by the town, which was mercifully free of mosquitoes. I again slept in the car; I really felt much more comfortable there than in the pickup.
We left Ste-Veronique fairly early this morning, again getting up well before the other campers. I stopped on the highway just outside town to buy some gas. It was an "Ultramar" station, a brand that is very big in Quebec (and I found out from my credit card invoice is affiliated with the American Gulf chain, which in turn is affiliated with Canada's national oil company, Petro-Canada). I was intrigued by the name, which in Spanish would mean something like "across the sea". I don't know what it means in French, but its garish blue and yellow signs are everywhere in Quebec. Gas is extremely expensive in Quebec. I paid 54.5 Canadian cents per liter in Ste-Veronique, which works out to US$1.55, still far lower than they pay in Europe, but by far the most I had ever paid for gas.
Sainte-Veronique is just about the edge of the settled part of Quebec. Whereas yesterday we traveled through uninhabited mountains and scrub forest, with only occasional mining towns, today it was settled all along the route. First we drove through very pretty mountain scenery, an area filled with ski resorts. With town names like L'Annonciation, La Conception, and a variety of Notre Dames, it's not hard to tell the religious heritage of the region.
We stopped for breakfast in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts (St. Agatha of the Mountains). It's a strange town, very modern and American, very French and European, and all nestled high in the mountains. Strangest of all, every corner in Sainte-Agathe seems to have a car dealer-for the strangest brands of cars. You can buy every kind of expensive car (Porsche, BMW, etc.) as well as cheap cars from all over the Communist world (Yugos, Soviet Ladas, etc.). What we didn't see were North American cars; it would appear that Fords and Chevys aren't good enough for the French skiers. We pulled into a McDonalds (they are in every big town in Canada). I rehearsed the words for what I wanted to order many times while waiting in line. The strangest item is the "Oeuf McMuffin"-if you know the American breakfast menu it doesn't take much translation to figure out what an "oeuf" is. Everything went very smoothly; it was really no different from ordering in Spain-where I really knew the language.
After breakfast we drove south on Highway #15, the Laurentides Autoroute ("Autoroute" is the French word for "interstate" or "expressway") toward Montreal. Margaret had had unpleasant experiences driving in Montreal years ago, so we decided to avoid the city itself and cut across the countryside north of there. We turned east at he twin towns of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Jerome.
At Saint-Antoine Margaret and I stopped at another mall to find a bank. With the weekend coming we wanted to be certain we had sufficient Canadian funds to get by. Again we waited in an unending line at the bank, but this time there was nothing we could read as we waited. Eventually I went up to the teller, mumbled something about "changer" in pseudo-French and proceeded to sign my traveler's cheques. The very friendly woman hesitantly, but correctly, counted my money back to me in English. Margaret's teller was quite a bit less helpful. Worst of all she gave Margaret her exchange in $100 bills, which are virtually unspendable.
It was raining as we drove eastward from Saint-Antoine, but it was a very pretty drive nonetheless. We were in farm country once again; the Laurentides region is home to Quebec's dairy industry. We passed beautiful old farmhouses, much better kept up than the houses in Ontario, and quaint little towns with narrow streets that could have been shipped straight from Europe. The church is the center of every one of these little towns, and you would be hard-pressed to find more beautiful churches anywhere. All of them are huge stone masses that tower above the countryside. Their towers and spires make them seem more like great cathedrals than small-town parish churches. Each one is different, but they all have the same grand style. There is no such thing as a Protestant church in these towns. In Canada as a whole most people are Protestant, but Quebec is solidly Catholic.
Rather oddly, these churches don't seem to hold very frequent masses. Most of them don't have daily mass, and there is never more than one weekend service. I wonder if there may not be a shortage of priests; the masses from one town to another seem to be scheduled so a priest could travel through the towns-much like the old Methodist circuit riders.
We drove eastward to the town of Joliette and then south to the "Fleuve Saint-Laurent" (the St. Lawrence River). I drove on the old North Shore Highway, which passes through beautiful little fishing and farming villages. The homes in many of these towns are row houses, and they are usually right next to the highway. There are no lawns or sidewalks, and their front stairs go straight down to the road. Many of the homes are whitewashed; others are painted in the multi-color stripes so common everywhere in Canada. The towns aren't exactly pretty, but they are interesting and really rather fun.
At Berthierville we got onto another autoroute which we took to Trois Riviers (3 Rivers), where we crossed the Saint Lawrence. This river is the first part of the massive St. Lawrence Seaway, which carries ocean-going ships as far inland as Chicago and Duluth. At Trois Riviers the St. Lawrence is at least as wide as the Mississippi, and since the bridge has to be high enough to let ocean-going ships pass, it is a massive structure indeed. It is almost scary to drive across so big a bridge; I really was glad to be on the opposite shore.
--2004 David M. Burrow
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