We again left for Montreal after a long morning and visited the Bank of Montreal Museum where we learned of Canada’s first bank, its founders and history. The bank was founded by nine Montreal businessmen in 1817. The bank rapidly expanded to various other cities and had interests in the US, particularly New York and Chicago.
The Bank of Montreal was also instrumental in unifying Canada’s currency and printed the bank notes for some time.
Since it was a hot day we thought a cool movie would be refreshing and fun. The Science Center has an IMAX theatre and here we saw a 3D movie entitled Super Dogs on the extraordinary skills and talents of dogs used for search and rescue and therapy. Too bad our super dog, Pepsi, couldn’t join us.
After the movie we strolled through Montreal a while and took the shuttle back to our campground.
We had a comfortable lazy morning before taking the river shuttle back to Montreal. We had planned to see a number of museums but ran into a historic skills, trade, food and drink festival right in Old Montreal. Here we saw blacksmiths and wood turners demonstrating their crafts, various traditional foods and drinks to try, and for young people snowshoe racing. If you were so inclined you could get a short lesson on swordsmanship and then try fencing.
There was not much time to visit many museums so we picked an exhibition by Yoko Ono at the Foundation Phi pour l’art contemporain, a fabulous gallery that offers free admission to all their exhibitions. Yoko Ono’s exhibition was interactive and many pieces dealt with abuse and family.
A video showed a performance of her sitting motionless on the stage and having members of the audience cut pieces of clothing off her body. It was entitled Cut Piece and gave the impression of a victim being abused.
It was too late to visit another gallery so we went for an early dinner and then headed back to our campground on the river shuttle and enjoyed the beautiful evening light.
It was an early morning and we took the first shuttle to Montreal to have a second breakfast with our friend Jean of Camtec Photo. He suggested we visit the Jean Talon Farmer’s Market and a short Metro (subway) ride later we were there. The market is huge and has everything from seafood to vegetables to apples and berries. Corn is in season and we each enjoyed two corn on the cobs followed by a couple of cheese curds. A big basket of wild blueberries had to come as well and will provide us with vitamins and anti-oxidants for the next couple of days.
We took the Metro back to Place Des Arts where we returned to the design and fashion show to see a truly amazing dance performance featuring 12 dancers. Lots of “don’t try this at home” stuff.
While we had a short rest in some bean bag seats, an all black group of models put on a flash mob performance.
Tired and hungry we had an early dinner at St. Hubert. The chicken dinners are way bigger than those of Swiss Chalet and the half chicken portions we ordered were pretty filling. Outside, two people where playing chess with pieces the size of small children on a huge board in the pedestrian zone.
On our way out of Quebec City we finally found a place that could fill our propane tank which was getting a little low. Montreal was calling so we took highway 20 without any further sightseeing. We arrived in Longueuil just across the river from Montreal where there is a campground at the marina with a nearby river shuttle to Old Montreal.
The river shuttle runs every hour and takes about 30 minutes with one stop at Jean Drapeau Park. Montreal was full of festivals. An Oriental festival was the first we found, right at the port with music, food, crafts and clothing from various countries. We walked through Old Montreal and up St. Laurent Blvd to Schwartz’s to have an early smoked meat dinner. The line outside wasn’t too long but the small restaurant was buzzing inside.
On our way back, we stopped at a design and fashion festival at Place Des Arts and enjoyed all the displays and activities including a dance competition, fashion show and a performance by a great drummer.
Dead tired we took the shuttle back to our campground and enjoyed the Montreal skyline by night.
We enjoyed breakfast outside at our campground by the St. Lawrence River before heading out to Quebec City. We tried to find a propane filling station but were unsuccessful as one closed at 11am and the other didn’t fill automobile tanks.
We found a great parking lot near the abandoned market hall by the marina and walked through the lower part of the city visiting shops and galleries. The city was alive with tourists, colourful decorations, music, and even a costumed interpreter.
Ruth especially like the Swedish embroidery at a crafts cooperative and Martin liked an arts exhibit entitled “Eternal Snow” featuring the bust of Louis XIV trapped in an eternal snowstorm in a snow globe as a reminder of the rigours of Quebec winters.
We then walked up to the upper city towards the Chateau Frontenac where street performers showed their skills and we had lunch at Starbucks with some of Ruth’s gift cards.
We drove along highway 132 to slowly make our way towards Quebec City, not that we necessarily wanted to reach Quebec City today. We stopped early on to enjoy the view of the St. Lawrence river.
A little further on, in Saint-Andre. we visited an exquisite leather shop with purses of various leathers and furs, gloves, belts, etc. Right next door we found a photography gallery and met the very talented young photographer. Her photography wasn’t only available as prints and postcards, but also encased in acrylic as pendants and earrings.
The next town was Kamouraska, a lovely town with Victorian houses and many shops.
One house had unique figures carved out of the stumps on their front yard.
We started our shopping at a smoked fish shop where bought some incredible smoked salmon, moved on to the grocery store for fresh local blueberries and a dried pork sausage infused with red wine.
You would expect to find a chocolate shop in a town like this and we found one. A truffle and ice cream each made us very happy and the ice cream tasted better than the one from Alibaba yesterday, despite it being significantly cheaper.
We visited several more stores, including one selling beautiful pewter oil lamps made in the Laurentians but we resisted the temptation to buy one. The General Store had freshly baked baguettes which shortly became part of our lunch in conjunction with the smoked salmon and a cheese from yesterday’s cheese factory. Yummy!!!
On our way we made a detour to a wharf near Pointe-des-Orignaux which took a bit longer due to construction. We talked to a couple from Ottawa and enjoyed a strong wind and dark clouds. The wharf had a ladder leading down to the water and a fascinating composting toilet using wood chips whose product will be used to fertilize the town’s flower beds in two years.
It began to rain and our focus turned to finding a campground. After passing though several construction sites, we settled on Camping Guilnette near Beaumont. It is a large campground with many seaonal sites with curious trailer additions and a short walkway down to the St. Lawrence river.
Our campground was not only cute, but had the best, biggest (8’x8’), nicely tiled, individual free shower we’ve had on our trip.
Our goal was to make it to Quebec today but did want to have a stop in the Edmundston area before leaving New Brunswick. The city of Edmunston has a pretty area around city hall with an amphitheater and even a hotel for insects.
Many of the stores and restaurants seem to be struggling. The main employer appears to be the large paper mill in the city.
We visited the former C.P.R. station and learned about the success and decline of the railway lines that came through Edmunston as part of the St. John and North West network.
In keeping with the rail theme, we visited the Du Reel au Miniature Railroad Interpretation Center. Joel, our guide, walked us through a small museum with artifacts of railway construction, signalling, security and life while asking us what we though certain objects were used for.
After watching a short video about the owner and his collection we saw the miniature railway layout of part of New Brunswick.
We skipped the 2km ride on a small train.
We left the railway system but stayed on the transportation theme and after a long and tedious search because of lack of signs, arrived at the Antique Automobile Museum. We took the guided tour and had an outstanding high school student who shared her knowledge of these old cars and their history in the area.
Among the artifacts were old licence plates, including old medallions which were originally used to register cars and simply had the registration number. If you had 26, it meant your car was the 26th registered in the province.
One of the highlights was a 1974 Bricklin which was manufactured in New Brunswick during the short life of the Bricklin company.
The large collection of antique cars were donated by a businessman who lived in the area. Among them is a 1910 Detroit Electric Car, an ancient ancestor of a Tesla. This car had a range of about 40 miles and was often driven by women because it was easy to drive. An interesting curiosity of this car was that it lacked a steering wheel and had tillers instead to control direction.
A 1939 Nash Lafayette Sedan featured seats that could be folded into a bed and suicide doors where the rear doors opened into the wind and were thus hard to close.
We made it to the Quebec border and were soon greeted by a cheese factory where we stocked up on curds. A detour took us to the Alibaba Gelato shop where we had the most expensive ice cream ever. We aren’t sure whether the detour was worth it.
After homemade-from-scratch apple pancakes we made it 150 meters to the fishing dock to photograph the fishing boats and a single kayak that was being launched forever by a woman with tremendous upper arm muscles.
After this hard work, we obviously needed some nourishment. Speaking of apples, the little cafe and gift shop had wonderful fresh still-warm apple tarts available for $6.00. They were the size of small pies and we devoured a quarter each in the pavilion outside and packed the remaining half for later.
Well fed, we were determined to make it to New Brunswick non-stop today. That did not happen. This time it wasn’t apples but strawberries that caught our attention. Strawberries forever. This 5th generation family farm didn’t just have the most amazing strawberries we’ve had in a long time, but also strawberry wine and digestif, jams, pies and double strawberry ice cream. We tasted the wine and digestif and needless to say our van is now well stocked. A pie and two boxes of strawberries were also added to the load. The boxes of strawberries didn’t last very long but the strawberry pie is fighting with the half apple pie in the fridge. Unfortunately, they were out of the double strawberry ice cream!
Now we became serious, only looking right and left and didn’t even stop at the honey and honey wine making store. We said goodbye to beautiful Quebec for now and said hello to New Brunswick. Martin was happily entertained by four visitor information agents and came out with a library of brochures and suggestions for a campground and restaurant for the evening.
Highway 134 along the shoreline showed us small towns, some more successful than others. We switched to highway 11 (Trans-Canada) for part of the way, but other than trees on either side of the highway there wasn’t anything to see. We switched back to highway 134 and will continue to follow it because of the scenery and towns.
We found the recommended campground and enjoyed the engaging owner who presented us with a gift of two fresh mackerels which are destined to be lunch or dinner tomorrow.
Our dinner was fish as well. Fresh cod, done two ways at a lovely restaurant with a splendid waterfront, away from the road. The owner/chef of La Fine Grobe was from France and had studied linguistics in France and Saarbrücken, Germany. He came to Canada to teach, bought this property and started a bed-and-breakfast and restaurant.
We returned to the campground just before the rain storm hit, battened the hatches and went to a well deserved sleep.
After a frantic search for Martin’s glasses, which turned out to simply be hiding in the sunglass case, we could leave our campground. We said goodbye to the surprised owners who had hoped we would stay a bit longer, and set out for nearby Perce Rock.
Upon arrival, we bravely walked to the rocky beach that would take us to the land bridge to the Perce Rock itself. The walk along the beach was somewhat dangerous as the cliffs above aren’t entirely stable and are known to slide occasionally. We marched along across pebbles, large rocks and slippery seaweed that had washed ashore. The tide was rising and the land bridge was already knee deep so we decided to take pictures from a safe distance instead of going across.
After seeing the rock from the bottom, we now had to see it from the top. We walked a safer trail up a hill and photographed from the top.
After two hours of hiking, we deserved an ice cream and luckily there was a small artisanal ice cream shop with delicious ice cream and sorbet. Ruth enjoyed Maple Pecan and Dark Chocolate and Martin had Maple Pecan with the most amazing Blueberry sorbet.
Exploring Perce downtown was fun with all its people, shops, cafes, restaurants, motels and traffic but we could not settle on a place to eat so we made our way back to the van, took a last look at the rock in the distance and left just before the rain began.
The drive took us through many small towns and great scenery and we made it to the municipal campground in Saint-Godefroi which is right next to the water and a small fishing harbour.
At breakfast we decided we had to go back to the beautiful beach one more time before leaving. Of course it took longer than expected because a young couple had to say hi to Pepsi. Pepsi was slightly irritated because she wanted to hunt for more seafood shells. The weather was magnificent and we vowed to go swimming in the ocean at some point, but not today.
We packed up and let our adventure begin. Where would we end up? How many kilometres would we drive? As it turned out, we made 88 kilometres because there was so much to see and do.
The next gorgeous sandy beach was not far down the road and we had to stop and devour a Haagen-Daz ice cream. Then we went to the beach and waded through the warm, sunlit, crystal clear ocean water. A school of tiny little fish provided a skin exfoliating spa treatment. Ruth swears they had tiny teeth. A crab was curious enough to crawl up to us to investigate us and then buried itself in the sand.
It was time to say goodbye to the beach and move on to the Gaspe Museum where we learned of the history of the area. A really neat exhibit had two “paintings” talking to each other (each was a computer monitor) and told the story of Jacques Cartier arriving in 1534.
A special exhibition featured Madame Bolduc, a Quebecois singer/songwriter from the Gaspe area. Most interesting was the exhibit itself with its multimedia components projecting information and video clips on the walls, floor and car.
After some grocery shopping we made it to our final destination for today. Ruth was driving around a corner and exclaimed “look at these amazing red rocks” and Martin said, “that is the campground we are looking for.” They had plenty of room for us to stay and the red rocks for us to photograph. A highlight was “Le Tete Indien”, a rock that clearly resembles the head of a person.
The legend of the origin of this head goes as follows:
It is on board a large sailing ship that a European crew came alongside St-Georges-de-Malbaie’s coasts. They dropped anchor in a little cove near Ile Plate.
Eager to find fresh water and wild berries, some of the crew members reached land. Once on dry land, they saw a young Indian princess playing with children. Obviously entranced by this young girl, the white men decided to capture her. They took her on their boat and headed back to their distant continent.
The young Indian girl’s sudden disappearance caused her lover very much grief.. Even today, the pain of the man afflicted by the loss of his loved one can still be perceived. This face inlaid into the cliff is that of a fiance endlessly waiting for his lover to return. With his back turned to the sea, the Indian is sadly waiting for the waters to bring is love back.
