QUEBEC, FRANCIS AND THE "BEAVER"

Hello everyone,

Today I`m returning to the tales of our holiday in Canada.  I hope you like this entry because Quebec City was my favourite place.  I just hope I can do it justice here.

 

                                   A Groundhog and a Beaver.

When we arrived in Quebec city we had been travelling for about three hours and we were all very tired.  We were checked into Hotel Le Chantecler, a really nice little hotel not far from the old walled city.  We had just about enough time to get showered and unpacked before we ate and then left for an evening tour of the old city.  It was very beautiful by night and it was very warm so after the guided tour we explored on our own for a couple of hours.  The old city has lots of street entertainers.  The one we were watching, pictured below, was a man on a tall unicycle who was addessing the crowd in both French and English.  We had lots of fun watching all his tricks and laughing at some of his jokes too!

from left to right, starting at the top: A mural of the old city gates, the all year round Christmas shop,  the Chateau Frontenac, the unicyclist and our good selves!

The top picture is, as you can see, a photo of a groundhog and a beaver.  The reason being that while we were on the coach the following morning, being taken round the historic sites.  The woman who was sitting behind us saw a furry creature sitting on the grass on the Plains of Abraham, the site of the battle between the English and the French (we lost!).  I digress,  she saw the creature and called out , " Look, there`s a beaver!"  To which, our local tour guide Francis roared with laughter at that,  saying, " A beaver?   How can it be a beaver, we are on a cliff....beavers live by the water... it`s a groundhog!"   Of course, I know you won`t be able to understand what`s funny it that, but you had to be there as they say.  Something had really got to Francis and he was soon laughing each time he tried to speak....so the more he laughed, we laughed, the more we laughed, well he laughed harder.  And so it went on until we had to make an unscheduled stop so that Francis could calm down with a cup of coffee.  After that we were banned from mentioning beavers for the rest of the day, though Francis himself made sure that the woman, E, would never live it down!  The rest of the morning was spent learning the history of Quebec and for anyone who thinks that history is boring has never met Francis, apart from being very intelligent, funny ,witty and an excellent teacher, he was also drop-dead gorgeous too, with the most wonderful blue eyes.  Hmmm.... If I were much younger and unmarried I would learn French overnight and emigrate to Quebec.....!   He told us all about the Chateau Frontenac. It is a beautiful old hotel, a very expensive one at that, that looks out over the old city.  It looks amazing at night as its lights shine down.  The Chateau was once owned by a man who thought it was looking shabby, so he travelled to Europe to buy new furniture, fixtures and fittings for it.  He travelled to London where he spent a great deal of money.  He then had all of it loaded on a ship and then boarded the vessel to travel back home....The name of the ship was the Titanic!

 from left to right: Outside the old city walls,  the Place Royale, a group of us at dinner in a sugar shack.

During the tour we went to the Place Royale and visited the Notre Dames des Victoires.  There is a statue in the square of the "Sun King" Louis 11V.  At the time Quebec was a truly French place, now though only 5% of the population apeak English, they see themselves as Canadians.  As we found out, school girl French will get you knowhere in Quebec, their accent is very different from the French spoken in France and their dialect, known as Quebecois, almost another language entirely.  Before going to Canada, I was told by some people that French Canadians aren`t very friendly to non-French speakers.  To that I can only say that was not how we found them at all.  They were the nicest people and we made ourselves understood quite easily with pointing and actions!  This is a really wonderful place and one day I would like to go again.

One more thing that I haven`t explained, the sugar shack, photo above, is where we went for dinner on our last night.  The produce maple syrup there and we were shown how this was done.  We had a wonderful Quebecois meal there and agreat deal of fun too. We were entertained by a traditional Quebecois musician and he even taught us how to play the spoons!

We were all very sorry to leave Quebec despite one afternoon of torrential rain, but we were moving on to Tadoussac where we were going whale-watching....and that is another story

PS: Just to let you know that you know that you can post your nominations for the journal awards as from midnight tonight American time.  I will await the outcome of the voting with much interest!