Moosejaw Radio PART 5: Quebec Has Lots of Water

Moosejaw Radio is a lighthearted, sometimes informative, blog about living and traveling in the 21st Century while navigating a progressively digital planet in real time, juxtapositioning contemporary geographies and the myriad histories which enrich them. 

Writer James Kerns has worked as a restaurateur, bicycle messenger, sculptor, commercial fisherman, designer, builder, and consultant, who has traveled the globe by boat, bus, rail, plane, and bicycle.  His passion for people and geography, and the cultures and histories which bind them, provide the foundations from which his stories are drawn.

WATERFALL COTE NORD QUEBEC

• We pick a place called Val d'Or - Because it sounds lovely
• Water Water Everywhere
• What Have You Done for Me Phi-lately?
• Every Stop We Make Smells Like a Fish Market
• So It's Benedict Arnold Then?

We Pick a Place called Val d'Or - Because it Sounds Lovely

On the morning of our departure from Ottawa, we looked at the road map over our crepe breakfast and chose an area we reasoned to be about half-way to the start of the James Bay Road.  The only sizable town on the map anywhere near that point was a place called Val d’Or, Quebec, and although it was off the route by 30 plus kilometers, we penciled it in as our destination for the evening. We envisioned a glowing little town tucked into a sylvan, sun-drenched valley, with background music by Anton Dvorak wafting through the glens – a place where the abundance of crepes on hand made any need to order them superfluous.

High angle view of waterways in Quebec CA

Water, Water, Everywhere

As soon as we exited the Ottawa city limits we found ourselves crossing or passing bodies of water great and small: creeks, ponds, rills, rivers, lakes and streams - water everywhere. The latent angler in me wondered about all the delicious fish slipping through those dark, cool waters, but the marginally more rational me knows what comes with all that water: biting insects.  Apparently the short summer breeding seasons in northern climates accelerate activity and drive among the hordes of critters, creating environments very much like those house music and ouzo inspire at late night discos on Mykonos.  Soon afterwards I was washing the windshield 4-5 times an hour just so I could see the road.  Driving north through southern Quebec into the advancing taiga provides spectacular natural vistas, and the sheer magnitude of the expanding horizon warns visitors of the profound wilderness they are, however briefly, allowed to share.  

   GEORGE V OF ENGLAND 

What Have You Done for Me Phi-lately?

I want to be clear about something: I LOVE CANADA!  I have been to Canada more times than I can recount and in the course of those visits I’ve seen parts of 7 different provinces, stayed in 6 provincial capitals, and gained points of entry into the country by myriad methods including boat, bike, plane, RV, automobile, and on foot.  In fact, I've visited more provinces than most Canadians I know – not that it’s a contest.  So, no part of me has any axe to grind with our cousins to the north – for the most part.  There is the sore point regarding the decision to stay with Britain, and thereby ensuring the maintenance of the visage of a monarch on the stamp and coin of the land.  If Canadians were not on the right side of my history, at least they decided to drive on the right side of the road – and they had the good sense to rename the English classic pudding Spotted Dick: Figgy Duff.  Although both names actually sound like they belong to lesser associates of The Artful Dodger.

Every Stop We Make Smells Like a Fish Market 

Late in the afternoon we made a stop for fuel and snacks in a cute little way station near Le Domaine, and I noticed once again on exiting the car that the general area smells like someone is gutting and filleting fish nearby. Unlike me, my wife understands the difference between intellectual curiosity and mindless blather, so she's already done listening when I bring up the point. While she and the girls go inside to gather more essential items for crowding the dash and floor wells of the Terrain, I swung around the hood and head for the pumps.  Halfway around the front of the car the fishy odor reached eye-sweating heights and I glanced down at the bumper to see a dark layer of insect viscera covering the front of the car like a Sicilian funeral veil thrown over a chrome sofa.  

And that brings us to the next episode of BULLET POINTS:

Five Tips For Driving in Bug-Infested areas:

• DON'T!
• Keep the windows up!
• Move quickly from the safety of the vehicle to interior structures
• Keep your windshield cleaning fluid topped-off
• Remember to clean your headlights!

So It's Benedict Arnold Then?

When Benedict Arnold made his unscheduled (and armed) state visit to Canada in September of 1775 with an invitation for the Canadians to join the American Revolution, he had 1100 men, faulty maps, and great expectations.  The plan was to march overland from northern Massachusetts (now Maine) and link up with General Richard Montgomery, a former British officer cum gentleman farmer from New York, fresh off his victories over the English at Fort St Johns and Montreal.  

THE DEATH OF GENERAL MONTGOMERY by John Trumbull

Montgomery's luck ran out at the gates of Quebec where he joined a growing list of generals who died fighting for the city (French general Louis-Joseph Marquis de Montcalm and British general James Wolfe both died during the Battle of Quebec in 1759).  The Americans (at that time referred to as "Patriots") were ultimately forced to retreat from Canada after an unsuccessful siege.  Five years after the failed expedition an increasingly grumpy Arnold tried to sell West Point to the British.  He was unsuccessful in this endeavor as well, and among free thinking people everywhere, the name Benedict Arnold itself came to describe perfidy and failure.  So much so, that his selfish and wanton act of betrayal quite possibly delayed the invention of one of the best egg dishes ever for another one-hundred years.

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