Whirlwind Tour of Canada, Part VI

And on we went to Quebec City, where we would be staying with Madeleine and Bruno. Madeleine had come to visit us in Korea, so Ty was quite happy to be seeing her again. Bruno made us sushi and we chilled out for an evening of good conversation and wine.

The next day, we started off for La Pocatiere. Ty was starting to feel a bit worse, which made me quite sad as I'd been talking about my years in La Poc, and really wanted to show him around that whole area - you know, the woodworking shops, the restaurants, the villages like Kamouraska - as well as hanging out with all the people who had been so important to me while I lived there.

We arrived in St-Jean-Port-Joli in time for lunch by the shores of the St Lawrence and a quick tour of the sculpture garden, then headed on to La Poc.

It's always funny for me to arrive there - somehow it does feel like "coming home". My friends from that time had planned a barbecue for our arrival, which was amazing. It was great to meet up with them (and their kids - some of them are up to 3 now!), and sit in a backyard and enjoy the small town life again.

Ty, not feeling well, ended up sleeping the afternoon away, while I reminisced with old friends about what was happening now in our lives. It was just as well -- I kept speaking French and forgetting that he didn't understand!

The next day, we had a big breakfast (or, well, I had a big breakfast, while Ty slept until 2pm -- poor guy!). The great thing about Quebec and its food is that, half the time, the cheese that you're eating is from a small fromagerie down the road, or the bread is from an ancestral mill. It's just amazing.

Once Ty had woken up, a group of us took him for a walk along the St Lawrence, and then out for poutine. Ty had held off on eating poutine until getting to La Poc, and he treated himself to a duck and wine poutine (not the traditional gravy and cheesecurds). Once again, we found ourselves in a huge group of old friends and kids. We rounded out the evening at Miguelle's house, where a few of Les Gamines du College posed for a photo.

We returned to Quebec the next day, and Ty and I wandered around the old part of town. Of course, he still wasn't feeling 100%, and we only had the afternoon, but I was still able to show him some of my favourite parts of the old city - including a stop for ice cream coated in maple sugar and a ride up the mountain on the funiculaire.

Quebec City is celebrating its 400th birthday (!!) and the foundation of the Chateau Frontenac has been excavated to show remnants of original buildings that had been under the Terrasse Dufferin. Also, the Fetes de la Nouvelle France were starting up, so we were treated to people walking around in original dress as well.

 

 

That evening, Bruno, Madeleine, Ty and I went to a special free street performance by the Cirque du Soleil. Starting at different parts of the city, three groups of acrobats converged under an old highway overpass. It was absolutely amazing! We rounded out the evening by heading to a special film presentation that Bruno's company had worked on that was projected, outside, onto big grain elevators. We missed the performance, but made it there in time to watch the credits and see Bruno's name. A final pub visit in an old house in St Jean Baptiste rounded out the evening.

The film was projected onto the silos at the bottom of this pic

The next day, we returned to Montreal. We stopped to see Katrina, who has been working with birds of prey (Kestrals and Shrike - aka Butcher Birds because they hang their prey up on thorns and barbed wire). The captive-bred birds are all housed in large rooms, and we got to stand and watch them fly around us - really cool. The wild birds that are being studied or rehabilitated could also be quietly observed.

We headed on to meet up with The Girls again (minus Ellie). This time, Ty was treated to authentic Montreal smoked meat. Unfortunately, we were only there for one night, and had to head off again early in the morning to make it to Toronto.

When I was getting ready to move to Korea, I got to meet Brent and Stephanie, who ended up living in Mokpo, but visiting me in Suncheon a few times. When my Mom came to Korea, we got to stay with Brent and Steph, and once they'd returned to Canada, even met up with my Mom once! I was super-psyched to meet up with them, but now, I was the one who was starting to feel under the weather.

   We arrived back in Toronto and found their place, then headed out together to Korea Town in Toronto. All of a sudden, we felt like we were back there -- all the signs, advertisements, etc are written in Hangeul (which we were surprised to discover we still understood). We got to a great Korean restaurant and, suddenly, knew everything on the menu and were looking forward to tasting it again! Sitting there, eating bibimbap and kimchi with Brent and Stephanie in a small both in a restaurant with a soju ad up on the wall just made me feel like I had gone back in time.

The next day, Ty and I were both feeling too ill to enjoy ourselves on the Harbourfront, so we had to cut our visit short and return home, where my Mom was ready to coddle us with tea.

The road trip from St. Catharines to La Pocatiere was supposed to be the highlight of our visit, and in some ways, I guess it was. For me, it was like traveling through time, as I followed the same path that I'd taken over the past 10 years. From Ontario to Montreal, to La Pocatiere, then back to Montreal and then, with Brent and Stephanie, a mini-return to Korea.

We were almost at the end of our visit to Canada, but the fun was not over yet.... and neither is the seemingly endless "Canada blog".

Plastic, Whales and Capitalism

The Middle East International Film Festival is in town - or it was in town, not our town, but Abu Dhabi. Surprisingly, it featured quite a lot of movies that seemed to have an enviro-political bias -- which is fine by me!

In celebration of our birthdays, we decided to head up to AD for the weekend, stay in a nice hotel, and see three movies that had really caught our attention.

The first movie that we watched was Plastic Planet. Originally in German (as are most of these videos here), the film was introduced by the film maker, Werner Boote, and there was a Q&A session after.

There is no way that I can do this movie justice...

Mr Boote, whose grandfather worked in plastics, takes on the entire plastics industry in a sort of Michael Moore-ish way. He interviews presidents of plastic companies, plastic surgeons, visits a toy manufacturer in China (and later has one of their toys tested to find traces of major, illegal, toxic substances in it), trolls the Pacific ocean with a ship that collects and tests particles from the famous plastic mass, and interviews several scientists who have proven that we, you and I, have plastic in our cells. He discovers that he, himself, has lower fertility due to chemicals associated with normal contact with plastic over a lifetime. One of the scarier interviews was probably an American researcher who found odd results when their lab rats all started miscarrying. She discovered that the plastic cages had been washed with a detergent that degraded the surface of the cage, meaning the rats were now exposed to the chemicals used to make plastic: As she put it, the effect of plastic went through 3 generations - the mother rat, the fetal rat and, in the case of female fetuses, the eggs that were still developing. Scary stuff.

The movie was not super "green" or made for tree-huggers. He didn't interview the president of Greenpeace, he was interviewing scientists. We've been hearing the environmental message for long enough, and it's clear that most companies simply don't care about the effects of their noxious products. When it turns to their own bodies and their children, maybe that will get a reaction. And change.

But what can we do? I've always considered myself an environmentalist, yet I still have a house full of plastic products - I refuse plastic bags and excess packaging when I can and, now that we have a water purifier, no longer have to rely on bottled water to drink out here. It frustrates me that, in many cases, I simply don't have another option than to use products that already come encased in plastic. I think of all my friends who have kids, or who are currently expecting, and wonder how their kids might have been poisoned because we, as consumers, do not always have a choice.

The fact is simply that plastic is made up of dangerous substances. The plastic that you use today will last 500 years, and leech chemicals into the atmosphere, the ground, the water, your blood over those 5 centuries.

Umm, end of diatribe.

The next movie we saw was the incredible Oceans by the same team known for Microcosmos and Winged Migration (Le Peuple Migrateur). This time, it was all about the absolute beauty of the ocean, and the diversity of life that is found there.

First off, it was absolutely amazing visually (Ty said that he looked at me part way through the movie and I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open - and I don't doubt it!). As scuba diving is now one of my favourite hobbies, it was also quite amazing to see these amazing rare animals and realize that I've been lucky enough to actually see some of these creatures in the wild.

Of course, the movie also carried a powerful message. A rather brutal scene featuring a net trapping the same animals that had just been celebrated on screen for their beauty and rarity, and a definned shark gasping at the bottom of the ocean as it slowly dies... these are the images that remain, amongst the scenes of freedom and nature, after the movie.

Jacques Perrin has said that, in making Oceans, he didn't want to simply show how beautiful the undersea world was, since that would lead us to believe that our oceans are actually healthy. The official (French) site is here. It takes a while to load, but if you select "Medias" and "Images" or "Videos", you will be able to see photos or videos taken in the 4 years they spent making the film.

The final movie that we were off to see was Capitalism: A Love Story from Michael Moore. It was a bombardment of facts about corruption in the US government, as well as information about how things could have been different if the banks had not taken complete (deregulated) control of everything.

The preview (posted above) isn't showing the best parts. This was not just Michael Moore's usual stunts - but historical footage, interviews, and scenes where a widow finds out that her husband's death earned his employer 5 million dollars, due to a "Dead Peasants" insurance scam, where even if you've worked for a company for a short while (one woman had worked for Walmart for 18 months 10 years ago), the company - and not your family - gets the insurance payout.

Most interesting, for me, was regarding FD Roosevelt's so-called Second Bill of Rights, which would have protected Americans from just about everything that is wrong with their economic system. The irony is that FDR died before enacting any of these changes. His staff and advisors, however, were the people who were sent out to Germany, Italy and Japan to help them rebuild after WWII. The reforms that could have happened in the US ended up making these countries stronger instead.

Watching all three movies over two days has left me feeling somewhat helpless. Sure, I can continue my personal boycott of shark fin soup, but that will be as effective as my boycott of diamonds. I can refuse a plastic bag at the grocery store, but the next person in line will get the ones I didn't take. It leaves a "little guy" like me feeling like there isn't much I can do, as I'm really not important enough - I'm not the creepy treasurer from Goldman Sachs, eh?

Happily though, the weekend was not all documentaries and environmentalist doom. When we were checking into the Sheraton, we asked if we had a sea view room. They checked the computer and said, "No, I'm sorry. Those rooms are more expensive". My response? "But, but, it's our birthday week!". And they gave us the room... Then, the next day, when checking out, the front desk lady asked us if we'd gotten our cake!

Yup! I got a birthday cake from an international hotel chain! How's that for sticking it to The Man???

Whirlwind Tour of Canada, Part 5

On then, to Montreal, where we met up with "The Girls" (and their Boys) from when I used to work at the SPCA. Funny how after so long, and so many changes to our lives, we are still such a strong group.

After an awesome BBQ at Heather's (and a sighting of raccoons by Ty), we headed out the next day for what turned out to be a few days worth of fun in Montreal, just condensed into one day.

We walked down St Denis street, wandered through the Old Port and Old Montreal, then went to the Gay Village, where DiverCite was happening, and all the terrasses were full of everything from families to transvestites. We rounded out the evening with an outdoor techno concert, then headed back to Katrina's place, via a detour driving over Mont Royal with views of Montreal's lights on all sides.

The next day, we went to the Biodome at the Olympic Stadium, and checked out the wildlife, before heading off to Quebec City in the pouring rain.

It was about this time that Ty was starting to feel a bit ill, so we were quite happy to have a quiet evening in Quebec with Madeleine (who visited us in Korea last year) and Bruno (who spoke English all evening, while making us wicked awesome sushi rolls).

I'll let Ty write a bit about what he thought of Montreal - and the French part of Canada in general - then continue tomorrow with the rest of the trip up to La Pocatiere....

We’ve really managed to extend this Canada blog to far more than we usually would have written, so I’ll keep it brief, and mostly let the photos do the talking.

The drive to Montreal saw the landscape go through several changes, and yet again, I was struck by the beauty, and vastness of the country. One change that I noticed far more than others on this drive was the immediate and sudden one crossing over the border into Quebec province.

If you have not been to Canada, or have not known a Canadian, it is likely that you have heard that there is a French part of Canada or that French is spoken there, but not much beyond that. I had a little better idea, having heard Virginia speak of her time teaching and living in Montreal, and Le Pocatiere. Still I was not prepared for the abrupt and absolute change after crossing the border.

The first thing you notice is that all signs are in French, place names are French, even the styles of housing suddenly changed away from what I’d become used to, to what I assume are more Francophone style houses.  From Heather’s place, instead of going down to the liquor store as in Ontario to get a few beers, I ran down to the nearby dépanneur after first having to find out that this was the French for a corner cafe, and was served by an elderly woman who struggled to speak English. Out in the country everything seemed overwhelmingly French, while going through Montreal things were more bi-lingual, but still majority French.

I had not expected the line between French speaking Canada, and English speaking Canada to be so clear cut, especially after noting the sheer diversity of groups in Toronto. This split has strong political-historical basis, and from what I gathered, has plenty to do with laws in Quebec which aim to keep it’s French heritage as intact as possible. I started feeling like I’d left one country and entered another, and that feeling only grew as we headed to LaPocatiere and back to Quebec city.

Here’s some more pics from Montreal, a very arty place, full of street performers of all kinds, artists painting everywhere, plenty of eccentric people wearing anything from a wedding dresses to skimpy thongs (or both in one case). It’s an astounding place, packed with more old buildings than you can wave a stick at.

 

   

Whirlwind Tour of Canada, Part 4

Are you still there? Alrighty... it's my turn to talk about the Canada visit. I know you all enjoy seeing Canada through Ty's eyes, but I got to play tourist too!

After more than 2 years away, I was struck by how green everything was... how beautiful storm clouds are... how pretty and diverse our wildlife is... and how friendly Canadians are! Yup! It isn't just a stereotype.

We left Zach's place and followed our handy dandy GPS to Charlene's house in London, Ontario. I'd never been to this part of Ontario, so it was a treat for me as well. We had a lot of fun pissing off our GPS-voice-lady by taking random turns so that we could really enjoy the wide open spaces, farmland, barns and fields.

We got to London just in time for cupcakes with Char and her kids Kaylin and Maks. It was a short visit, but we were kitted out (by Char) with some nifty Roots Canada t-shirts (that have become a part of our weekly repertoire - you know that shirt that you wear as soon as it comes out of the laundry? Yup, those are them!).

Continuing on, to Brantford this time, to meet up with Kelly and Steve (and their kids Cohen and Adella) at Steve's parents' campsite/trailer, right on the banks of the Grand River.

We had a BBQ and a campfire and played with the kids in the hammocks.

I've got to say that, if you're going to go camping, bring along someone who owns a restaurant (the food is always excellent) and someone who can sing and play a mean guitar (necessary objects for the campfire). It was awesome and chilled - but alas, too short at only one night!

We returned to my sister's house for the next few days, taking care of my abandoned-when-I-moved-overseas cat Luna, and Sunset the snake (that we had to feed mice to). Not much happened as we were laundering and repacking and getting ready for our super roadtrip to Quebec. We met up, at Strega, for lunch with Ms Wilson, one of my English teachers from high school who had taught overseas as well, and who still hasn't slowed down!

With just about everything we'd brought with us packed in the car, we started east, towards Kingston, Montreal, Quebec, La Pocatiere, Quebec, Montreal, Toronto. We spent a lot of time just driving, and it was, again, a bit of a surprise to see just how big Canada is. I mean, I've done the Montreal - Toronto thing a million times, but after living in 2 very small countries, I was certainly taken aback by how the road just keeps going and going, and the trees just keep coming and coming....

On our way to Kingston, we decided to take the scenic route of the Loyalist Highway. We did manage to get lost (and find a wicked awesome chocolate shop), but eventually found our way to Kingston and Wolfe Island - where we would spend the night. This was the only time we stayed in paid accommodation - the rest of the time, we'd been staying with friends.

The B&B on Wolfe Island - Wolfe Manor - was a refurbished and renovated former Catholic priest retreat. Everything about it oozed "haunted house" (<-- an article about the history of the house and a record of its reported hauntings)- from the cemetery in the back lot to the widow's walk on the roof to the nooks and crannies inside. The decor (like a white rocking horse at the bottom of the stairs and shelves full of Stephen King and esoteric books) also made the whole place suitably spooky. We loved it. The owner was super nice (and decidedly skeptical about ghosts himself), and even gave us a few bottles of wine to enjoy on the porch as we relaxed after our long drive. No, we didn't see any ghosts, and actually had a good laugh the next day when we saw the place in full sunlight. When arriving at dusk, it does seem like a rather eerie house.

Once again, we didn't have enough time to truly enjoy Wolfe Island - except for the amazing sunsets over the mouth of the St Lawrence.

On then, to Montreal....