Back to the US

I got up early the next morning and threw my pillow at the girls. They were sleepy-eyed and not in a mood to enjoy the joke. I cleaned myself and went downstairs to have a doughnut breakfast in the lobby. I read the morning paper while waiting. The headline of the day was an air show disaster in Germany. More troubles in the world, but I really wasn't interested; I was going shopping.

I parked the car at the Victoria subway station and we all took the train in. At Yonge Street they got out and I stayed on until the transfer stop for Spadina. Chinatown was in full swing. I headed for the restaurant we went to last night to get another good Chinese meal but they were closed on Mondays. So I walked with the throngs of people in the street and eventually found another place. I had a bowl of chicken porridge. Hadn't had that for such a long time.

I had a small surplus of money because I had paid for the motel room with a credit card and my companions had reimbursed me with cash. I was wondering how to spend most of it so I wouldn't have assets tied up in Canadian currency. Down at Queen Street West I found the solution: an old book store. Penguin paperbacks were overpriced in the US and I happily walked away with a pile of paperbacks. That and a LP of Andreas Vollenwieder's Down to the Moon did it for shopping.

My companions were anxious to leave soon to reach the Niagara Falls hostel in time. I thought leaving at 3 pm would get us at Niagara in good time but I had not reckoned with Toronto traffic jams. Not even quitting time for work and the Gardiner Expressway was clogged up. The traffic dissipated as we drove eastwards on the Queen Elizabeth Expressway.

My companions dozed off in the afternoon heat, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I felt very unperturbable at that point. It wasn't that I was satisfied with life, it was more an absence of either sadness or joy. I didn't want to think about going back to Rochester but neither did I want to stay on the road much longer, I had run out of all clean clothing.

I had always thought Niagara Falls was like an old lady who has seen better days. It still drew crowds but gone were the days when honeymooners made it their destination. I think they go to the Caribbean these days. The Canadian side is not as sleazy as the American side but has its share of game parlours and side attractions. I drove past the falls, through the fine spray, which was like a persistent drizzle on the shore attractions, partly to show my companions what the falls were like and partly because I was looking for the hostel. There was a queue at the office when we arrived and the girls spent several nervous minutes before being told that they had got the last beds in the place. They were visibly relieved. I said my goodbyes to my French friends. I was getting weary of P's prattle, but not in any way put out.

So I was left alone again to cross the border. It seems that one is always alone when facing the small crises of life, like dentists and border crossings. I would have crossed at the Peace Bridge but in my desire to finish off the last few frames of film, I drove around and discovered a second bridge further downstream. This one was a strange double decker steel structure. I think the upper deck carried pipelines. Always one to try an untried path, I drove on. Fortunately the immigration formalities were quite nominal.

At 5 in the afternoon I decided it would be possible to buy wings from Barnaby's, said to be make the best wings in Buffalo. The last time I went through Buffalo, it was too early for them to be open. This time, the wait was worth it. I ate half in the car, parked outside Barnaby's, and saved the rest for later. Then I cleaned my hands as well as I could and set out in search of a soda machine. Seeing a car wash, I decided it was as good a time as any to get all that grime off the car and fill up with petrol. The counter clerk started on his deluxe car wash wiith all trimmings spiel, like a tape recorder, but I cut him short, saying that I only wanted the minimum wash. He was disappointed not to get his word in. In America, selling frivolous extras is a standard ploy to increase profit margins.


Car sparkling clean, I headed out east. It would be good to sleep in a familiar bed.

Toronto

No sign of the French hostellers when I went downstairs. They slept on the living room couches last night—the hostel was that packed. The warden said they were gone. Too bad. I filled up with petrol and had a breakfast at Harveys, a fast breakfast place. Plastic plates and cutlery. I got lost looking for the entry ramp for the highway but eventually found it. Just as I was about to enter the highway, I saw this group of rain drenched hitchhikers looking for a ride. It was none other than my French companions from yesterday. A lucky break for them. They were so excited that they jabbered in French. Yes, I can take them to Toronto. So I pulled off the entrance ramp and they loaded up the trunk. The weather had turned rainy again and it got thick in some places. By the time we reached Toronto the sun was out. 

Toronto hostel was perennially crowded because it was under capacity for a city its size. They said they could take me and N because we were IHYA members but not P and M because they didn't have membership. They wanted go off to look at a cheap hotel the warden had recommended. I decided to follow them, on the chance that the hotel might have parking and save me the expense of parking near the hostel. At the hotel they discovered that the room is not as cheap at they thought. I suggested we go to the suburbs and rent a motel room for 4 at a lower price. This sounded much better to them and I found one out in Scarborough, right by the lakeside. It was quite a long drive out but the suburbs were much nicer than the inner city. 

For dinner, I took them to Chinatown and introduced them to a noodle shop. The girls found noodles strange but tasty, but P had a harder time. I stocked up on Chinese groceries to take home. We walked around the city and saw City Hall. A Philippine festival was in progress. The French marvelled at the black squirrels. They had never seen these before. Down by the city offices, a brown and a black squirrel got into a fight. Squirrel racism?

My companions would like a nice place to sit down and enjoy the scenery. No doubt they are used to outdoor tables in Europe. They will find out soon enough North American culture is different. But I had a good idea, I would show them Lake Ontario. So we watched the sunset over the lake from Lakeshore Drive. My companions met a Quebec couple who had returned from New York City. Since my friends were heading for NYC, any information was of interest to them. There were some geese out in the breakwater and they were hopeful, but I had no bread. The scene was very tranquil and lovely but as Murphy would have it, I had no camera with me. 

I watched the Hound of Baskervilles on the television before going out for a late drink with my roommates. I encouraged them to decide what they want to see tomorrow. I had never been up the CN tower but suggested this might interest them. They were nervous about New York City because of all they had heard about it, i.e. that it is dirty, expensive and dangerous. All this was true, but must be qualified. They were thinking of spending just a day in NYC and going on to Boston and to not even try to get a place to sleep. I tried to allay their fears with facts and told them NYC is unique and is a must-see.

Kingston

I hoped to reach Kingston. Toronto would have been nice but it was just too far. Besides I remembered Kingston as a mellow place. I bought a breakfast from the hostel and set out to tour the town before driving off. There was a nice harbourfront plaza, with some gulls hanging around for food. I think that gulls, with pigeons and sparrows, may be the few birds left when all the other species have become extinct. Near the City Hall were sign boards about the history of the town. It seemed the harbourfront had gone through various stages, including one incarnation with a boardwalk.

Trois Rivières had some urban decay but was undergoing renewal. The difference between urban decay in Europe and US is that in Europe urban renewal tends to maintain the spirit of a neighbourhood while in the US, the spirit is generally destroyed and interesting architecture replaced by ugly, modern buildings. My friend J told me the tale of the late great Penn Station in New York. But that is another story.

It was sunny, in contrast to the overcast weather I had been having the past few days. I really didn't wish for the sun because hot weather just made me sleepy, which was a disadvantage for driving. Along the McDonald-Cartier highway I saw a flock of Canadian geese in a pond, probably resting before going south. I saw lots of popup trailers. I thought those gadgets were amusing. I half expected to push a button and have a whole house spring out of the contraption.

I reached Kingston well ahead of hostel opening time and killed some time looking around the neighbourhood. The hostel was located right in the middle of collegetown for Queens University. The last time I was here I met an albino cat with pink and blue eyes at the laundrette. I wondered if that cat was still around. It was the start of a new academic year and students were busy moving into the houses. Many of the houses had seen better days. Backyards were littered with old appliances and beer bottles. A bohemian neighbourhood. I met a cat resting in a doorway but it was not the one I remembered. I played with it for a while and when the owner came out to look, I exchanged some pleasantries with him.

Kingston hostel was very popular and was booked out for the evening. The warden, a nice elderly lady, was very nice about it and even asked me to read the confusing reservation letter from a Frenchman to see if I could make more sense of it than she could. It seems the writer wanted a bed for Saturday but had written Sunday's date. When nobody turned up by 6 pm, she let me have his bed with a clear conscience. The warden was one of those elderly people who enjoyed having company and young people to fuss over. While I sat there waiting she handled requests ranging from money changing to calling a cab.

While sitting there waiting, I struck up a conversation with three French travellers, a boy and two girls. The girls, N and M, spoke good English, but with a marked Manchester accent because they had worked there for a year. P's English was poorer but better than my French. He was very talkative and was constantly trying to tell me one thing or another. He talked about music, hobbies and sport. Yes he saw Au Revoir Les Enfants, but felt that the war memories shouldn't be dug up, for the sake of European unity and 1992. The girls teased P all the time, but he was quite good-natured about that. N was slender while M was plump. Both girls were short. P was tall and beefy and exuded good-nature. We found an terrace restaurant called the Firehouse, overlooking the channel, for dinner. I ordered some wings and quite good they were too.

Kingston was a strange town. When you enter from the east you drive through very working class neighbourhoods. But there were fancy retirement condos and communities to the west. My colleague, who studied at Kingston, told me there was a Canadian forces base and a maximum security prison near Kingston.

Later that evening, I accompanied a group of English girls to the Toucan club, which advertised live blues music. The blues singer sounded more like an Irish folk singer but the beer was good. The girls had come to the US for a girl scout training camp and were on their way home. L was taking legal studies in university and hoped to be a barrister some day. There was a German girl and an Irish girl too in the group. The French turned up for a short while later. We got back just in time to beat the midnight curfew.

Saguenay Region and Trois Rivières

After a breakfast at the hostel, I drove off. But first I took a few pictures of the Michel Falls, just opposite the hostel. This was just a minor waterfall, more like a weir actually.

My friend had told me that the Saguenay was the beloved river of the French-Canadians, and that they had songs about the river and so forth.

I saw many hydroplanes on the lake. I suppose that when the weather gets severe and the roads get difficult to use these planes are a quick way to get in and out of the Saguenay region.

At Alma I bought some ham and croisants for lunch. I was disappointed to find indifferent baguettes on sale at the supermarket. Perhaps the better bakers were elsewhere. For all its French heritage, the Saguenay region seemed to be headed towards fast food and shopping malls, like the rest of North America.

I crossed several rivers feeding the Lac St. Jean. At Ticouape enterprising kids offered noisettes (hazelnuts) for sale by the roadside. Mistassini advertises itself as the bluets (blueberries) capital of Canada. Chicoutimi is quite touristy because it caters to the skiers in the winter that flock to the slopes of Jonquierre. At La Baie, Alcan has a large aluminium smelter, powered by the nearby hydroelectricity. La Baie is just on the Baie des Ha! Ha! What a strange name, I thought. Later I read in a tourist leaflet that haha means a dead end in old French.

I passed a couple of hitchhikers just outside La Baie. Unfortunately I was about to turn around and take the Laurentides route back to Quebec so I knew it was no use giving them a ride. Anyway I doubt if they had any problems getting a ride.

Driving through the Laurentides is much nicer than driving past built-up areas although Canada as a whole is nowhere as tacky as the US. Eventually I emerged from the forest outside Quebec. I skipped Quebec, there was simply no time to do it justice, and headed west along Highway 20, the north bank of the St. Laurent. Once in a while, the river peeped out from the trees along the highway.

My destination was Trois Rivières. The hostel was not hard to find although navigating the one way streets took some time. The warden was a nice young French-Canadian but I had a hard time with her Quebecois accent so she had to speak slowly. They flatten out the trailing syllables, these Canadians. Also at the hostel was a girl from Alberta, spending a year at the local university to brush up her French. She was going to be a schoolteacher when she finished her studies. Now that she had found a place to live for the year, she was leaving the hostel as soon as the taxi came. She must have been put in a mixed dorm room last night because she mentioned that in the questionnaire as one of the disadvantages of the hostel. This hostel was cosy and clean but underpatronised.

Trois Rivières is named for the three streams that the Riviere St. Maurice breaks up into at the junction with St. Laurent. The local industry was firmly wood pulp and paper based but tourism was playing a rising part.

I finished off the remainder of the ham and croissants from lunchtime for dinner. The hostel was very quiet and the French warden was playing chess with her friend. They taught me the French names of the pieces. Only the name of the bishop, le fou (the fool), was new to me.

To Lac St. Jean

When I tried to start the car in the morning I discovered that the battery was flat. Damn, just what I needed. I thought it might be the cracked alternator belt the battery shop told me about. I got a jump start and drove it to a service station. I left it to their tender mercies and went shopping in the mall.

Dorval shopping centre is a typical shopping mall. One supermarket, one department store, one hardware store, one pharmacy, lots of clothing and shoe shops. This one also had a collection of ethnic food stalls clustered around a large eating area. I bought a Greek lunch and took my tray to a table. I don't think french fries are authentic Greek food, but the meal was cheap and filling.

I finally got the replacement batteries for my camera at Radio Shack. I also came away with a stack of bargain jazz LPs from the record store. I really should get a CD player, LPs were dying out, but while I could still get cheap LPs and CDs were so expensive, I'd hold out.

Back at the service station, I got a shock when I saw the bill. I had thought only the belt needed replacement. Apparently the alternator was the culprit. The regulator had shorted out and discharged the battery. They had to replace the whole assembly because the regulator was integrated with the alternator.

Car running again and tank full of petrol, I headed out east. The weather was dismal with intermittent rain. I decided to take the south bank of the St. Laurent since I had not taken this route before. This was not such a good idea because I had to go through Montreal's southern suburbs. It wasn't because of the amount of traffic, just too many traffic lights.

Miscellaneous observations: Almost every other town or city in Quebec is named after some saint or other. I wondered if they would run out of saints. In fact this level of piety in place names is not found in France. One can only surmise that the names are relics from the 18th century, when explorers were followed by missionaries. Quebec drivers were quite aggressive. I didn't know if it was the higher speed limit, or what.

At Trois Rivières I crossed the St. Laurent again but headed north without entering the city. Soon I found myself driving through Mauricie Provincial Park along the R. St. Maurice. Logs were floating on the black water. I had expected blue water after seeing the Ottawa river at Ottawa. I assumed the dark colour came from algae. The logs were not lumber length so I assumed they were destined for paper mills. All along the highway were acre upon acre of dense coniferous forest.

Highway 155 meets Lac St. Jean near Roberval. It is not as big as the Great Lakes of course, but with a diameter of 20 km, one can just barely see the other shore. I regretted that I had arrived in the evening as it turned out later this was the major glimpse I would get of the lake. I still had to drive some 20 km along the lake before reaching St. Felicien. The hostel took a bit of work to locate. The place was packed with French-Canadian hostellers. Some of them seemed to be with a group. I wasn't too keen to go around introducing myself at this late hour and went to bed without dinner. I felt no hunger because of my fatigue.

Montreal

Early in the morning, I was told how to catch the bus downtown. At the bus terminus I transferred to the metro and travelled to the McGill stop. Montreal public transport is excellent and the subway is very quiet because the carriages have rubber wheels. I had to ask a local for directions to the auditorium, but once I found it, it was easy to remember, as it was on the main street. 

I don't know what it is, but the French have good sartorial tastes and it shows. People here are dressed smarter than in the US.

(Author: At this point I will skip several days past the account of the conference in my travel diary as it isn't relevant to a travel blog.)

To Montreal

A long drive to Montreal, some 800 km away. I'd arranged to stay at the family home of a colleague and said I'd be there in the evening. Highway 17 runs eastwards, north of Toronto, until it meets the Ottawa River. The east bank of the river is Province Quebec, but I would not cross into PQ until I neared Montreal. I saw a Radio Shack store but it was closed for Sunday. The camera batteries had given up the ghost. It figured. Those batteries dated from my previous trip to Nova Scotia, two years before. 

For no reason other than curiosity, I stopped at a roadside flea market. I just wanted to see what kinds of things people threw out. The usual antiques, books, utensils and appliances. 

Ottawa flew by. I remembered it as a pleasant enough capital city but I had no reason to stop this time. 

My colleague's family lived in Dorval, a western suburb of Montreal, where one of Montreal's airports is located. I could hear the planes taking off as I neared it. However there was a pretty lake shore drive with a good view of Lac Saint Louis. The house wasn't too hard to find but nobody was in. So I went looking for dinner. Finally I settled for a Chinese restaurant with a buffet dinner offer. Hot dogs aren't exactly oriental, but the rest of the buffet was reasonable. PQ sales tax is 10%. Petrol prices are also some 20% higher than Ontario. Natives said they were still paying for the roof of the Olympic stadium, started in 1972 and completed at a 500% cost overrun. 

Still nobody at home so I took a nap in the car. Finally, after an hour of waiting, I decided to get the key my colleague had told me about, in the garden shed. It took a bit of effort to find the key in the dark, what with the cobwebs and more trouble finding the door that it fitted, but finally I was in. I rested on the sofa and read. Later another resident came in and showed me my colleague's room. I didn't meet his brother until the next morning.