Quebec, Canada

Ashleigh had been to Quebec before, but this was my first time. We left the Jeep and trailer on the south side of the Saint Lawrence River and took a commuter ferry across to Old Town Quebec. Well, we took the ferry to the newish town a couple hundred feet below Old Town, then walked our hot, tired butts up the hill to Old Town, then sat in the shade and tried in vain to cool off in the humid unmoving air.

I was impressed. There was a lot of history in the area. Quebec was built because of its strategic location on the Saint Lawrence, where it widens from the width of a large river to the size of an ocean inlet. The steep hill up to the town was also important for military defense, with mixed success, as we learned. The English and the French were at war in Europe during Canada's early days, and the fighting eventually spilled over to the New World. Quebec was threatened, and bombed, and invaded both unsuccessfully then successfully. There were also a few fires, several rounds of building bigger and thicker defensive walls around the city, and a littany of different mansions built for the various governors over time. That was all pretty interesting. The city also has a fancypants hotel, which we walked through like the unkempt lowlifes that we are. We paid forty dollars for two salads and two nonalcoholic beverages at a nearby cafe while listening to American soft rock songs performed by a scraggly lanky blonde dude (Ashleigh was in heaven!).

Let me pause here to mention one other thing I learned on this trip through Canada, something which might have been obvious if I had thought about it before. When the American revolution happened, there were of course many colonists which supported the English monarchy. I had learned in history class about how the revolutionaries hassled the British loyalists, by making fun of them, boycotting their businesses, giving them half haircuts, and other shenanigans (probably many too lurid for high school history textbooks). So when the revolution turned out to be successful, many of the loyalists got out of Dodge, so to speak, and went to -- you guessed it -- Canada. Up there they have things like the Loyalist Highway, and some Canadian children go to Loyalist High School. (I know, I know: what the hell?) I've harped on this before, but Canada has only been its own country since the 1980s. To this day, the symbol for Ontario (on their road signs) is a crown. The road south from Toronto is the QEW, or Queen Elizabeth's Way. (Again, I know, I know: what the hell?) It is really hard for me as an American to put myself into the mindset of a nation which agreed to be ruled (on paper at least) by the kings and queens of England for the last two hundred years. In fact, it is really hard for me as an American to believe that England still has kings and queens after two hundred years of every other Western nation giving them up. (Yeah, okay, not Sweden, but still.)

Okay back to Quebec. We had a great time. We took some pictures up on the defense wall and wandered through some of the back streets. It looked like a movie set. It looked like the kind of place New York was trying to be before it became a dirty, smelly, bedbug-infested, run-down, three-story heap of crampt little buildings. The streets were mostly cobbled (which is a cute anachronism) and the occasional horse drawn buggy carried excited tourists.

It was a nice place to visit. Eventually we had seen enough; we took the ferry back across the Saint Lawrence River and drove until after dark, getting as far as possible.