by Madeleine Kando
We just returned from Quebec City, my husband and I, and I can honestly say that it is the most beautiful city in north America.
We made a stop over on our way up from Boston, to visit some friends who live in the northern most part of New Hampshire. The North Country is part of the Great North Woods, a vast wooded area stretching across most of the Eastern States. It is the area north of Franconia Notch in the White Mountains, that most tourists find too far and too remote. That is why we like it so much.
The North Country is a mix of pine forest, and mostly non-working dairy farms and, as is often the case when cultivation meets wilderness, the result is a unique landscape of rolling fields covered with yellow dandelions against a background of dark green pine forests.
Our friends live on a 300 acre property, set deep in the forest, away from the small town of Colebrook. Sadly, ATV’s (All Terrain Vehicles) are taking over this northern-most corner of the state. Giving these monstrous vehicles access to the habitat of the remaining wildlife will certainly kill the goose that lays the golden egg, but the locals see it as one of the few sources of income for an area where most residents are on welfare. The local authorities have opted for a shortsighted and temporary solution by allowing their pristine forests to be destroyed. It’s either the deer and local fauna or food on the table.
The day we left, the ATV season opened. There is a hunting season, a snowmobile season and an ATV season. We heard them thundering down the peaceful country lanes, usually in groups, which made the noise deafening. At the local gas station we saw them stack up on six-packs and cigarettes before hopping onto their ‘quads’ and ‘goosing’ them until the air was filled gasoline fumes.
Ten miles up the road, we arrived at the Canadian border. Gone are the good old pre-9/11 days when all you needed to cross was a driver’s license. Now, you need a passport. It is not les Canadiens’ fault. The US won’t let you back in without proof of residency and valid identification. Because I was a political refugee for most of my childhood, I felt the butterflies having a field day in my stomach while we were waiting for the border guard to come back with our documentation.
With a sigh of relief, we drove on. Speed limit signs in kilometers left us guessing at our speed, so we just followed other cars’ lead, hoping that they were are law abiding Canadians.
Quebecois all remember. That’s what it says on their license plate: ‘Je me souviens’. But many Quebecois themselves are wondering what it is exactly that they are supposed to remember. Is it to remind them of their glorious fur trading days, when killing off natives and beavers was part and parcel of their raison d’être? More likely it is to remind them of their lost French heritage. Still, even with all the confusion, Je me souviens sounds a lot more romantic than Idaho’s license plate motto: Famous Potatoes.
We stopped for lunch in the small town of Coaticook and found a small cafe with a sunbaked terrace in the back. The checkered table cloths and metal curly cue chairs looked so French that it hardly surprised us that the waitress did not speak a word of English. She must have forgotten that there is this vast country a few miles down the road with a couple of hundred million potential customers who don’t speak her language. She told us about the specials, but trying to understand what she said was not easy, even though I was raised in Paris. ‘Vous parlez bien le Français’ she told me after we ordered. ‘Vous aussi’, I was tempted to reply, but I didn’t think she would have gotten the joke.
Quebecois is very different from continental French. We were definitely in a French culture, if you muted the sound. But it was refreshing to be in a non-Anglo Saxon environment without having to pay for a cross-Atlantic flight and with the added benefit that Canadians actually like Americans.
After many hours on a long stretch of highway, driving through flat, boring farmland, we entered Quebec city via the Pont Quebec. It is from this stretch, where the Saint Lawrence River narrows to a cliff-lined gap, that the city got its name. It comes from the Algonquin word kébec, which means where the river narrows.
Still the longest cantilever bridge in the world, it collapsed twice during its construction. People blame faulty engineering but I believe it was the mighty Saint Lawrence trying to stop anyone daring to join its two shores after millions of years of separation. We left the spider web of freeways and its accompanying nightmarish congestion behind us, and drove another half hour before we reached the city center.
Quebec City is old, even for European standards. It was founded in 1608 by a French explorer named Samuel de Champlain. In those days navigators/explorers could acquire great status and because kings didn’t have all that much cash to spare, they commissioned privateers to do the exploring for them.
Kings also gave charters to trading companies. Those companies, like the East India Company wielded enormous power. The Hudson Bay Company is the one that ruled and controlled most of the Canadian territory. They held the monopoly on the fur trade and exploited the New World for all its worth. They ruled over a vast territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, land that belonged to the indigenous people. The fur trade was the main reason for the settlers’ presence, initially killing only beaver, but when there weren’t enough left, they went on killing pretty much anything else that had the misfortune of being covered with fur.
The Hudson Bay Company is still thriving as one of the largest Canadian companies. It went on to build a real estate and retail empire and owns Lord and Taylor and Sachs Fifth Avenue. So don’t forget the beavers next time you shop for an expensive dress at your local mall.
Quebec City has two parts which are called Haute-Ville and Basse-Ville: the Upper and Lower Town. The Upper Town is dominated by the Chateau Frontenac. It is a hotel, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), in the style of the chateaus along the Loire river in France. The CPR was the first transcontinental railway, built on the sweat and blood of ‘coolies’ (Chinese laborers) who were assigned the most dangerous and back-breaking jobs, like handling explosives, to clear tunnels through rock. They were so mistreated that Canada issued an apology to its Chinese population in 2006.
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| Chateau Frontenac |
From the Chateau Frontenac, you can walk down a giant boardwalk called la Promenade des Gouverneurs, running the length of the cliff going down to the Boulevard Champlain.* There are a lot of stairs to climb, but the view of the Saint Lawrence is magnificent.
The local proprietors like to give their establishments odd names. On our first night, we had dinner at Le cochon Dingue (the crazy pig) in the Basse Ville. We went down the escalier casse-cou (breakneck steps) to reach it. It was nice enough, but making our ascent back up the steps on a full stomach was a real challenge. We tried Les sales gosses (the dirty kids) the next day, to avoid having to huff and puff our way back up, but it was closed. Yes, Quebec City is a physical reminder of what it means to be ‘lower class’ and ‘upper class’.
The next evening, we walked down to the Rue Saint Jean, just around the corner from our hotel. We already had breakfast there that morning, in a restaurant called le Hobbit. The place was packed, so we sat at the bar where we soon struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to us. She had purple hair and was sipping a cocktail, throwing brief comments at the bartender, who was too busy to interact with her. By then, I had gotten used to the Canadian accent. She was a true Quebecoise, it turned out and couldn’t have enough praise for her city. Obviously it was the center of her universe.
If you think language does not play a major role in a country’s history, just look at how many wars the English and French fought on this continent. They weren’t fighting about language of course, but with the outcome of wars comes the inevitable suppression, sometimes complete removal of the culture of the vanquished. In Canada’s case, after the British defeated the French, it was only thanks to the tolerant policies of King George III, that Quebec was able to retain its language, religion and legal code. The strong urge to keep and defend its Francophone identity is what typifies Quebec to this day. Quebec is more French than France, more royal than the king, so to speak.
The basilica’s interior is stunning. A hundred meters high ceiling and 240 stained glass windows whose glass, according to one of the attendants, was crushed before it was assembled, to allow the light to reflect in different directions.
Several people were kneeling around a pillar with a large golden statue of Saint Anne positioned on top. They were reading from open texts, heads bent down, hands clasped together. The altar was a mix of gold and white marble, flowers and candles seemed to fill every bit of empty space.
We were impressed by the sheer size and opulence of the basilica and went down some steps to find an exit, only to discover another chapel on the lower floor. It was almost as elaborately decorated, with mosaics representing birds, flowers and butterflies. A large organ stood behind the altar. You can say a lot of things about the Catholic Church, but they sure know how to pay homage to their deity.The Catholic Church’s heritage is visible everywhere in this area. It is rare to see a town name without the Saint- prefix and every town, big or small, is peppered with churches and statues of saints. Until as recently as 1960, when the Quiet Revolution ** took place, Quebec’s education and health care systems were entirely controlled by the church. But within the past half century, Quebec made a complete about-face. It feels religious because of all the visual reminders, but it has become a very secular province.
We didn’t have time to visit the Parliament building, the musea, the parks and all the other must-see attractions that Quebec city has to offer. But coming back to the States on the first rainy day of our trip, I realized how little I know about our northern neighbor. Isn’t Canada a natural extension of the US? Same language, same culture, same values... Our visit proved me wrong. Not only is it different linguistically, but its values are closer to the two countries that founded it. A true-blue American would say that Canada has sold out to its Master, Great Britain and that it should have joined the American Revolution. But then, there wouldn’t be a Canada to visit. There wouldn’t be this vast, almost empty country, with a small population that is less obsessed with freedom for the individual and more committed to equality and improving the quality of it citizens’ life.
I didn’t learn that from our 3-day visit to this beautiful city of course, but there were hints: In front of the Parliament building, there is a vegetable garden with lush tomatoes and peppers happily growing, without fear of being trashed or vandalized. The homeless people are either on vacation or retired and the graffiti is non-existent. Other than policemen on duty around construction sites, we saw no police presence at all.
In his now much criticized article: We Could Have Been Canada: Was the American Revolution such a good idea?, Adam Gopnik dares to suggest that maybe the American Revolution was a mistake and that most British colonies achieved independence without bloodshed, including Canada. Whether you agree or not with this premise, the article is worth a read.
But with ‘ifs’ you can squeeze Paris in a bottle, as the French like to say. (Avec des si, on mettrait Paris en bouteille). All intellectual gobbledygook aside, I am glad we are not Canada. We could be a little more like Canada, health care wise for instance. But how would we make fun of each other if we were just one country, eh?
* Twice, there was a rockslide that caused dozens of ‘Basse Ville’ residents to be killed and their houses to be crushed. These are the cliffs that an advance party of British soldiers scaled, dragging two six-pounder cannon behind them during the famous Battle of Quebec in 1979.
** A brief but intense period in which Québec became the leader in secularizing and liberalizing Canada. Education and healthcare were now run by the Government, not the Church. The electric companies were nationalized, resulting in the creation of the giant Hydro-Quebec and so were the companies overseeing Canada’s natural resources, such as iron and steel, mining and forestry. This turned out to be an extremely profitable move for Canada.
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