Oh, Canada!

We're back!  In one piece, too, after many travel adventures and a stop in Sacramento on the way home (not really, but close enough) for a wonderful Thanksgiving at my parents' house.  The summative statement?  I love Canada.

To be fair, I'm making that statement on the basis of a very limited visit to a very small part of a very large and diverse country.  But I'm ready to go back again to make sure that I have it right, and I think that's a pretty good sign.  Thanks to everyone who wrote with suggestions - we tried to hit as many as we could realistically, and we enjoyed every one we made it to.  As a side note, the conference presentation (the reason for the trip) went very well (to my delight and relief), as did my presentation to the business meeting of my professional section.  Whew!

If I had to sum up the one thing that so many of our wonderful experiences had in common, I'd say it's either kindness or serendipity.  Serendipitous kindness?  (Not one word, but it works.)  To give just one example among many, we went to Notre Dame de Bonsecours in Montreal, on the excellent recommendation of people like greenmtngirl (I don't have a link - if you have one, send it and I'll attach!)(I'm embarrassed because someone else told me unequivocally to go because the view from the tower of the church is so wonderful, and I can't for the life of me remember who - whoever it was, you were right!).  We climbed and climbed and climbed to the top of the church (263 stairs, if I remember correctly; the docent kindly told us the exact number before we started), to come out onto a breathtaking view of Montreal, laid out before us in the crisp (not to say frigid) evening air.  My camera died right then (I'm convinced it was the cold), but my cell phone came through for me, and I was able to take pictures of the two remaining lifesized angels standing guard on the roof.

 You can see a glimpse of the St. Lawrence river in the top right corner of the skyline there.

Amazing, no?  Then down, down, down we went, through the exhibit on Marguerite de Bourgeoys' life (the founder), back to the entrance of the museum, where we began to rug up for our walk back to our hotel.  As we did, another docent came through the gift store with three people in tow.  He stopped, turned back to us, and said, "Do you want to come down to the archaeological dig under the church?"  Did we!  And off we went.  I still don't know how the tour came about (it isn't the time of year when the dig is usually open to visitors), but we loved it, and things like that just kept happening in both Montreal and Quebec.

I loved the rampant bilingualism of both cities.  It's not something that one sees very often in the U.S.; the use of languages other than English in public places is fraught in so many ways.  And it may be that there were language politics playing out of which I was blissfully unaware as I moved through both cities, but I will say that I felt absolutely that people were more than willing to let me try to make my way along in French, and equally willing to help me out when my French failed me.  It is rare that I get to feel like a participant in code-switching interactions (French not being a very common language around here, and my Spanish being too embarrassingly bad to try to join into any bilingual conversations that I may be lucky enough to be privy to), and I loved every minute of it, as both a linguist and a marginal francophone.

We ate.  We ate like pigs, in fact, and I think the only thing that saved me from rolling home is the fact that we also walked and walked and walked.  Our hotel in the Latin Quarter was a half an hour walk away from the Palais de Congres where the conference was held, and we walked all over the rest of the city - to the McCord Museum (also recommended by greenmtngrl), which had a particularly stellar exhibit on oil (the kind that comes out of the ground) and the cultures that spring up around both its use and the results of its use; to the Cathedral; to the river; and back around again.  We went out to the Botanical Gardens, which were fabulous.  We visited the Insectarium there (where I held a stick bug the size of my hand), and the greenhouses, where we saw flowers that I've tried to grow here, but which seemed much happier there.

And where we were also assaulted by squirrels.  I begin to understand why The Yarn Harlot writes so fearfully of Canadian squirrels, in fact.  I kid you not when I tell you that these squirrels not only approached us when we were standing still (I have seen that before), but they also quite literally chased us when we walked away, coming within inches of our heels without backing off.  As we were alone in that part of the garden at the time, we became rather nervous of being conked on the heads and stashed away in trees like nuts.  However, we escaped, noggins intact.

Quebec was equally wonderful, although even colder.  It didn't once get above -2C when we were there, which I am assured is cold, even for people who aren't from Southern California.  Younger Daughter was extremely grateful for the many handknits I'd schlepped along with us.

She pretty much walked around huddled up like that the whole time.  But look at that sun!  It was like that right up until the morning that we left, when it snowed.  The sun meant that the views of the city were stunningly clear and beautiful.

There's the Chateau Frontenac, which we didn't get to visit on the inside.  That picture is taken from the Citadelle (home of the only francophone military unit in Canada), which we did get to visit.

Doesn't it look French?  The whole city felt like being in France.

And we saw all of the old city - we even circumnavigated the ramparts (I told you we walked a lot).

There was so much to love that I almost hesitate to mention the two flies in the ointment.  The first was small, all things considered - we didn't make it to a single yarn store.  (I know!  How wrong is that?)  The second was something that surprised me, actually, given the many ways in which Canada is a stronger advocate for her First Nations peoples than we are here in the United States.  That said, though, I was surprised by the handling of the many museum exhibits that we saw which dealt with the founding of Montreal and Quebec City, and with the relationships between the settlers and the indigenous people of the area.  In every exhibit we saw, the "good Indian"/"bad Indian" narrative was alive and well.  You know the one (we have it here, most definitely; I see it in exhibits at missions up and down California, and it makes me frothing-at-the-mouth mad every time).  It's the collective narrative that says that the European explorers engaged in fair and friendly encounters with the "good Indians", who immediately converted to Christianity and labored alongside the settlers in an egalitarian society where everyone was equally invested in the long-term success of white Europeans as they settled in their new homes.  And the "bad Indians" kept launching unprovoked attacks on the settlers and their new friends.  I am almost quoting, actually, from one exhibit that we saw (especially the bit about laboring alongside and unprovoked attacks).  Given the otherwise tremendously high quality of the curation of the other exhibits that we saw (including an amazing exhibit on Indian - as in the subcontinent of - culture; the contrast was stark), it was surprising how uncritical the presentation of these founding narratives was.  And, as a person who has spent nearly her entire adult and professional life working with Native Californians and educating college students about the problems with uncritically presented narratives like these, I couldn't help but feel frustrated every time I saw it.  (Younger Daughter heard many an earful, poor kid.)

Still and yet, I'd go back in a heartbeat.  Especially if I could go back when there's more daylight to explore those two cities.  There was so much more I wanted to see, people I wanted to talk to, food I wanted to eat.  I guess that's the best way to leave a place, right?  Wanting to go back.