… I had one of the best nights’ sleeps that I have ever had. I was out like a light at about 21.30 and had I not had to visit the beichstuhl during the night, I would have slept through until 06:00 without a break.
Much to my surprise it was warm too. 10°C, which is quite a change from the 2°C that we have been having in New Brunswick just recently. No wonder that I was comfortable.
After a quick coffee I was on my way, right into the Quebec City rush hour. And with all of the queues to bypass the roadworks on the two bridges over the St Lawrence (only in Quebec could they close lanes on both the bridges at the same time) I ended up going along the southern shore.
It was here that I had quite a smile to myself over Quebec’s extremist mono-lingual policy. Even they can’t keep it up when it comes to confronting the United States, having written on the road sign MAINE USA (for the United States of America) and not MAINE EU (for Etats-Unis).
I think that this tells us everything that we need to know about the monolingual policy – it’s just there to upset and provoke the rest of Canada and it all falls away when they are confronted by a bully bigger than themselves – just like most bullies in fact.
Here on the south bank of the St Lawrence I encountered what could easily claim to be the world’s biggest pumpkin farm. The place is surrounded by pumpkin fields and the owner quite proudly told me that they had over 100,000 pumpkins this year.
There’s not likely to be a pumpkin shortage this year then – not around here, anyway.
I crossed the St Lawrence on the Pont Laviolette at Trois Rivieres, and then followed the river for a while where I stopped for lunch.
And I was in luck too. Not one, and not two, but three ships went steaming, or dieseling by my. This one is the MSC Don Giovanni on its way out of Montreal with half a load of containers. When you see how loaded these ships are when then arrive, you’ll see immediately why Canada has a huge balance-of-payments deficit on manufactured goods and why it’s only raw materials that keeps the country going.
From here, I went to my storage box in Montreal and, quite ruthlessly, threw away tons of stuff that I’ve accumulated, and emptied the Dodge of everything exxcept what I need for tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll finish off the emptying and then go and have it valeted ready to hand it back.
