#15 in a series of adventurous reports
Hey, Let’s Spend Canada Day in Ottawa!
We positively sped across Ontario, from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa, across the north shore of Lake Huron, which means we drove about 200 to 250 miles per day. We realized when we got to Ottawa that we were about to spend July 1, Canada Day (equivalent to July 4 in the U.S.), in the country’s capital. Canada Day 2007 in Ottawa was celebrating both the 140th year of Canada’s constitution and the 150th anniversary of Ottawa being chosen as the capital of Canada by the Queen of England. Apparently there was a lot of rivalry between Toronto and Montreal for this honor, and the capital had been located in each of those cities for different periods of time. So to avoid hurt feelings and put an end to the rivalry, the Queen chose Ottawa.
The city of Ottawa is situated in a lovely spot on the Ottawa River. Parliament is located in a grand old sandstone building on a hill overlooking the river, and there are lots of parks and museums. Lucky for us, the museums were free on Canada Day, so we joined thousands upon thousands of Canadians wandering from park to park, enjoying free music, and from museum to museum, enjoying art and history, while waiting for the most spectacular fireworks show we have ever seen.
We ran into a couple of people who had come from Labrador for the celebration. They drove for 32 hours to get there, and 16 of those hours were on dirt roads. And we thought we had a come a long way from California!
Crossing Ontario, we learned a couple of things about how to be real Canadians: Number One – eat French Fries. We’re not talking about McDonald’s either. We’re talking about freshly cut fries sold from a little roadside shack set up expressly for the purpose. The proprietor cuts the potatoes right there in front of you and fries ‘em up. You can put ketchup on them and/or you can put vinegar on them. Poutine was also on the menu. In our ignorance, we asked what it was and were told by the customer in line in front of us: “French fries, covered with lots of melted cheese and gravy – a real heart stopper.” We declined the poutine but shared an order of fries on a park bench at the confluence of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers in the little town of Mattawa – a beautiful spot on the edge of the mountains and forests of Algonquin Provincial Park.
An aside: The truth is, Paul and I both love river confluences, and we do everything in our power to go to them and spend some time there. The most exciting river confluence we’ve been to was in Montana in the summer of 2005, on our way to visiting Chris during his internship as a backcountry ranger at Yellowstone National Park. We just happened upon the town of Three Forks, Montana, and realized that the three forks referred to the Madison, the Gallatin, and the Jefferson rivers, which come together to form the infamous Missouri River. We spent several hours hiking in the heat of the next day, on an unmarked trail through grasses and marshes, to find the EXACT SPOT where Lewis and Clark, with the help of Sacajawea, their Native American woman guide, had to decide which fork to take to reach the Pacific Ocean. That was a beautiful day.
Almost as exciting as the Ottawa and Mattawa river confluence was camping that night on the shore of Lake Nipissing. At the time it was a thrill because we were so close to the water and a dazzling sunset on this beautiful lake. But now, after Paul has read a book my brother Jack loaned him about Samuel De Champlain and his explorations, we know that we camped on the same shore that Champlain explored while looking for that magical passage to the West, about one hundred years before Lewis and Clark!
Arriving in Ottawa, we learned our second lesson in how to be real Canadians: wave a Canadian flag. We were given two little paper Canadian flags early in the day on July 1. We carried them with us all day, and carry them with us still in the cab of the truck as we make our way through Atlantic Canada.
On July 2, we left Ottawa for Montreal, where we spent three days, including the 4th of July. There were no fireworks here, but we arrived in the midst of Montreal’s International Jazz Festival. Confession: we had hotel reservations. We stayed a few blocks walk from McGill University and the Place des Artes, the central site of the jazz festival’s free outdoor music. That night’s free concert just happened to be the biggest draw of the week: Seun Kuti and Egypt’ 80 from South Africa. There must have been between 50,000 and 100,000 people attending this event, all packed into a square in the middle of the city (not a park). The music was intense and electrified the crowd.
But for Paul and me, this was our second night in just a couple of days spent with about a hundred thousand people we didn’t know. We began to realize that although we had been in Canada for a little over a week, we had barely had a conversation with anyone but ourselves, and we had so many questions we wanted to ask somebody. At the same time, we were exhausted and ready for a little quiet time.
So, the next day, in the rain, we wandered down to Old Montreal and the Old Port. We stood alone on the dock looking at the St. Lawrence River, when we were approached by an older man, who looked somewhat bedraggled and had funny spots of color on his face and his hair and his clothes. He asked us, in labored English, if we were tourists and where we were from. When we said California, his eyes lit up. His first language was French, but he was determined to speak with us in English. He started telling us some of the history of Montreal and the French-Canadian culture. We spent the next 4-1/2 hours together, walking the city streets and the tunnels of the underground city. He showed us all of his favorite buildings, old and new, inside and out, and taught us about the architecture, art, and history of the city. In addition, he did his best to answer our many questions. Turned out Gerard is an artist himself, in his retirement, and those were spots of paint coloring his body and his clothes.
He loves his city; he loves the Quebecois culture of Quebec Province; and he loves all of the many creative contributions to the world made by the French settlers of Canada, many of which he told us about. For him, the beauty of Quebecois culture is the marriage of the French joie de vivre with the down-home, salt-of-the-earth friendliness of North America – a combination that can’t be beat. We tend to agree.
Gerard had an impact on Paul’s and my experience of Montreal. He may have been a little over the top in his enthusiasm, but he gave us a different point of view. And he taught us our third lesson in how to be real Canadians: Parlez Francais! He was quite clear that he thought it was no big deal to expect the rest of Canada to speak French, basically out of respect for heritage and respect for all of the contributions made to Canadian culture and economics, both historically and in the present day, by French-speaking Canadians.
Actually, I was amazed at how much French came back to me while in Montreal and later Quebec City and the province. I studied both French and Latin for four years in high school and was pretty good at reading and translating the written word – but speaking and listening, not so good. Over the two weeks we were in Quebec Province, I was told quite a few times what a good accent I had! Even more impressive than my accent, however, was the ease with which so many people we talked to switched between speaking French and English at the drop of a hat. This truly bilingual experience fed both of our desires to speak another language, be it French or Spanish.
I knew that my ancestors on my mother’s side (both her mother and her father) had come from France a long time ago and that they had come to Canada and then eventually moved down to Detroit. And I knew that my family had books about this ancestral heritage on both sides. I had seen the books and even tried to read them in the past, but the places and names were so elusive and so far away, not places I had ever heard of or been to, or thought I ever would go to. When we got to my brother Jack’s house in Vermont a few days later, he pulled out one of the books, and I was able to put together the stories and lineage and get a much clearer picture of where this part of my family came from and what they were doing in the New World back in the 1600s. So not only did we get lessons in how to be Canadian – I got some lessons in my own French-Canadian heritage.
On to Quebec City . . . coming soon.
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