… around Old Quebec this morning but I only stayed for two minutes. And if you look at the roadway in front of the building you will see why.
There were waves of rainwater cascading down the hill. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen rain like this.
And that’s been the story of the day so far – torrential rain until about two hours ago.
Mind you I headed out for Battlefield Park so that I could scale the Heights up to the Plains of Abraham in the footsteps of Wolfe’s soldiers of 1756 and fall upon the city from the rear despite the atrocious weather, but would you believe this – the park is closed for the season.
Probably the most absurd thing that I have ever seen. I had to content myself with peering through the gloom at the Pont de Quebec instead.
So I went off to Montreal to run a couple of errands. The first one took a while as I expected and then I went off to Mount Royal Military Cemetery (where my great grandfather is buried) to speak to someone in the little museum there.
Regular readers of these pages will recall the map I found at a brocante over a year ago – the cloth map of Belgium dating from about 1910 and marked up as the property of one R W Seath, 11th battalion Canadian Field Artillery and showing the position of the Front Line in Belgium round about Armistice Day – anyway I’ve presented it to the Museum as that’s where it probably ought to belong (and if not, they will find a proper home for it).
Now I’m in a motel here in Montreal. The Howard Johnson Motel at St Leonards has a special offer on – a single room at $59 with breakfast included, and that’s where I’m staying.
Tomorrow morning I’m off to the Canadian Railway Museum just outside Montreal and then off to see Ottawa which, for the benefit of those who don’t know, is the second-coldest capital city in the world, beaten only by Ulan-Bator in Mongolia.
