Snow and Sun in Quebec

Sunday, 14th April 2013

Map: Quebec City to Saint-Zotique, Quebec---246 miles

It had snowed again overnight in Quebec City, but since it was a couple of degrees Celsius it was not sticking to the pavement or sidewalks.  West southwest at Montreal it was already partly sunny, so we didn't expect to have problems driving in that direction.  And we didn't---although it was a bit dicey after we got of Autoroute Felix Leclerc and drove into Saint-Augustin on Quebec 138.  It was snowing heavily there, and had been doing so for quite some time, judging by the slushy highway---but Patsy slogged on through without mishap.  The snow soon stopped falling after that, and for a couple of hours thereafter it was merely a dreary winter's morning.  We drove in the opposite direction when Patsy was new some nine years ago, but since that was a late May day and the road was clogged with convertibles and motorcyclists enjoying a warm weekend it was hard to match up anything from that day.  The naked trees and flat gray light made it a different place.

I did recall at Donnacona that last time I had missed the turn for the old alignment through the heart of the city, so I made the point of taking it this time.  It was so dark that some of the street lights were on, and a few people moved about for coffee and donuts before church.  I didn't make it through the most interesting part of town though, as the bridge over the Jacques-Cartier River was closed for renovation.  We had to wander through tacky 1960s-70s residential streets to again connect to Quebec 138.  Donnacona was once a thriving pulp mill down, so these homes reflected the middle-class aspirations of the time with designs more often reserved in America for dentist offices or similar professions.  Think of wood siding on the diagonal and soaring roof lines with clerestory windows, or glittering panels of crushed white offset with pink or aqua siding.

Eglise de Saint-Francois-Xavier at Bastican, Quebec

Gradually the gray lifted over the fallow fields and murky Fleuve St-Laurent, rising higher and higher until the sun burned through from time to time.  I stopped to catch the silver sun shining off the typically silver steeple of the Église de Saint-François-Xavier at Bastican.  By the time we reached La Pointe-du-Lac, there were patches of blue to match a cheerfully purple Quebecois cottage.

Atypical color for a typical Quebecois cottage.

From La Pointe-du-Lac we could see a cold copper peak on the horizon along the St-Laurent, evidently a cathedral with a very broad skirt around it, like a witch's hat.  As we rolled into Cap-de-la-Madeleine we could see it peeking around houses and trees, so it was obviously a worthwhile detour.  Up close Sanctuaire Notre-Dame-du-Cap is a stupendous basilica in the round---and although officially Norman-Gothic in style, it also displays liberal applications of Gothic Moderne and Mid-Century Modern.  It's theatrical to the point of being campy---otherworldly enough to stand in, with appropriate props, as a Siamese temple.  When consecrated in 1964, it must have symbolized the advancement of the Catholic Church into the Brave New World---a world it has since retreated from.  Compared to the latter-day jail-like Our Lady of Angels in Los Angeles, Our Lady of the Cape is an exuberant celebration in trying something new.  Since Sunday mass was in progress, we didn't see the interior---which photographs as properly solemn yet grand.

Would Cecil B. DeMille approve? (Google Image)

It was all an escape from the gluey stench of pulp mills and chock-a-block brick tenements that more or less remain to this day.  We wandered through these, trying to connect to Autoroute Felix Leclec to make some time west through Trois-Rivières.  We continued for forty miles through more fallow fields and naked, stunted forest---all made duller by the lack of something humanly quaint or crappy to focus on.  Studying the motorists passing us by on the left and the sky were the only forms of entertainment---blue billowing gray and white.

We exited at Berthierville onto Quebec 158 and headed south and west across the prairie to Joliette.  Farms and their upturned bathtub shrines for Mary provided interest, as well as my perverse need to drive into the center of cities to see what there is to see.  At Saint-Lin–Laurentides I didn't even have to go astray, as there was no other way to proceed except through the heart of the scrappy old town.  We sat in post-church services traffic, witnessing some very unchristian like behavior.

A few miles before Saint-Lin–Laurentides we passed a syrup house restaurant Des Erablière Aux Rithmes (The Seasons of the Maples), also very popular with the church crowd despite a rather disreputable road house look.  We considered stopping for lunch, but it was so crowded we drove on and eventually settled for a pedestrian meal at Subway in St. Jerome.  My husband said he had a hard time recalling all the names for vegetables for the making of our vegetarian sandwiches---and the slightly slangy, indistinct French spoken by the teenagers was sometimes confusing.  In retrospect, I wish we had braved the crowd and had a more interesting dining experience.

The ProLite Eco twelve foot trailer.

St. Jerome appeared to be still under the affects of a hard winter, as mountains of dirty snow filled vacant corners on the gritty south side of town where we had stopped.  We drove through downtown, which was marginally nicer, and then out to the light industry area just west of the Autoroute des Laurentides to visit the Roulette's Pro-Lite trailer factory.  Their little showroom was packed with folk putting a down payment on springtime---it was not the quiet scene we were expecting.  We waited for the salesman my husband preferred---perhaps he was picking up on some homophobia from the other, but in a crowded room resonating with a different language I was pretty much shut down and just tried to stay out of the way.  We noted the improvements on our favorite 750 pound model over the one we saw last fall in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, mainly sleek frameless windows and LED lighting.  Eventually the preferred salesman was available---very pleasant and smooth, and segueing between French and English effortlessly.  Of course he complimented my husband's French, and without fuss jotted down the prices on their little glossy catalog and gave it to us.  Twelve thousand dollars, minus a couple hundred at the current exchange rate.  We could take five similar month long road trips like the one we were on at that moment for the same price. In spite of all the driving/travel we do, we'd be hard pressed to really get our money's worth out of a new trailer.  If we bought at all, we'd follow the suggestion of the salesman and go for the occasional trade in.

We spent the next hour and a half traversing the autoroutes in and out of Montreal sprawl and out towards Sallyberry-de-Valleyfield---only to hastily exit when we realized the freeway bridge over a section of the St. Laurent had a toll.  We made our way down to the old bridge and crossed directly into suburbia and Canada's greatest tourist attraction: Bulk Barn.  Long a cultural icon in Ontario, it has only recently moved into the Far West (British Columbia) and its closest neighbor, Quebec.  We have found that the stock varies from store to store---here they presumed Quebecois would not be interested in British Wine Gums, that delicious not too sweet confection akin to Gummi Bears.  Oh well, we'd just have to stop at the Bulk Barn in Cornwall, Ontario the next day.  Meanwhile there was quality bulk teas to stock up on, different cocoas---coconut flour, hmm---something interesting to bake with.  The cashier was a teenage girl with an OMG attitude and high-pitched voice my husband could not understand.  Being a new store and new on the job, she sent the store's pretty boy off  a couple of times to find the price code on several items.

We retraced our route, crossing back over the St. Laurent on Boulevard Monseigneur Langlois and then west on Quebec 338 to Saint-Zotique.  Our bargain basement Priceline room for the night was at the riverfront Motel Rive du Lac, a rather shabby looking midcentury modern building of glittering granite blocks.

"How did we get this room for fifty bucks?" I asked my husband as he directed me to drive right up to the water.

I opened the door to our once DeLuxe waterfront apartment and immediately saw why it was only fifty bucks.  The new goldenrod paint did not hide the fact that these were distressed accommodations furnished with thrift shop furniture.  At least it was reasonably clean and the mattress comfortable.  The battered kitchenette was overstocked with garage sale items, the bathroom sink had no mirror over it---one had to turn around to shave in front of a mirror on the opposite wall.  I turned the heat on and found the heater was hidden above the suspended ceiling, so we probably roasted the manager's apartment upstairs before we felt anything.  Best of all were the homemade drapes on homemade flat rods that made it nearly impossible to draw them back.  We tugged and yanked and propped them back with whatever was handy so we could reveal the picture windows and the million dollar view.

One of the views from our once-DeLuxe room at Motel Rive du Lac

There.  Just look outside.  The weather had cleared enough to offer beautiful skies and far views.  The water changed colors as the sun went down, and suddenly the light caught the windmills some fifteen miles across the water and up on the hills to the south.  For a few minutes I watched the long, undulating line of them spinning in the wind, and then the light sank into twilight and then night.  The windmills winked red---sometimes in waves, sometimes in florid disharmony.  We never drew the drapes.