Est-ce que les Canadiens nous aiment toujours?"

All twenty-six of us on the Roads Scholar trip to Quebec privately feared we would be treated with distain by the Quebecois due to our president’s comments about appropriating Canada. Our fears were groundless. The people we met couldn’t have been kinder. They blamed our government officials; not us. At the end of our seven-day visit, we expressed our relief at realizing that the entire group was of the same opinion: Notre president est con et nous n’avent pas vote pour lui (Our president is crazy and we didn’t vote for him).

“How sad,” I thought “that these interesting people, many of whom were history or science teachers, should be ashamed of our country and its “blowhard-in-chief!” Our median age was about seventy-two. Dan and I were the only performers, but we were all passionate about the lessons history should be teaching us. I had studied French for seven years, yet having not used it, I could only express myself in short phrases. Only two in our group spoke French.

Quebec City is located high above the St. Lawrence river, 1321 feet above sea level. The upper part of town is fortified with a thick wall that has 41.6 km of ramparts. The streets are incredibly hilly and curving; many are paved in cobblestone. Along each side are old stone or brick houses with pitched metal roofs. Many of the oldest buildings are stuccoed white overtop the stones. As this was a tour with approximately three mile walks each day and several hours of standing in or climbing stairs of museums, I worried that some of our less mobile members wouldn’t be able to keep up. Yet, we were a tenacious group. One person had Parkinson's Disease, yet managed to negotiate every challenge.

We visited an18th c. garrison, the Ursuline Museum, and the Marin Literary Society, which had been a jail in the 1700’s. Visiting required going up and down narrow, wooden stairs, worn by centuries of use. The doorways in the jail were short and just wide enough for my shoulders to fit through. One annoying problem was the weather: drizzling, gusty and in the forties. We all packed spring clothing. Our visit to Montmorency Falls, which is 98.4 feet taller than Niagara Falls required riding to the top of the cliffs in a cable car which passed over the plunge pool. The cliffs were nearly vertical, but there were 487 steps one could walk down which led to observation sites. All of us walked several flights, despite being damp from the spray and chilled by the wind.

Our leader was Chantal Bellon, a tireless mother of four in her mid-sixties with long red hair. Happy, knowledgable and experienced in guiding tours, she shepherded us with the careful efficiency of a a Border Collie. Each morning started off with an excellent buffet breakfast at our hotel, followed by a lecture on what ever we were about to view that day. These talks were given by Chantel’s well-informed and amusing assistant, Marie. 

We managed to keep together, listening to either Chantal or Marie when walking, through the use of earbuds, which allowed us to hear the leader as we walked. Chantal wore a day-glo orange jacket and carried a big rainbow-colored pinwheel which she held up before her, like a septre to stop busses and cars so we could safely cross streets. Lunches and dinners at a variety of wonderful restaurants were part of the tour.

Knowing we would be visiting the site where Benedict Arnold had tried to take Quebec and was wounded and defeated, I had been reading a book about his wife, Peggy Shippen, who was instrumental in encouraging his treason years later. The plains of Abraham, now a park larger than Central Park, was the site of the 1759 Battle of Quebec, where both the British, leader General James Wolfe and the French leader, the Marquis de Montcalm, were killed. France lost the war. Despite trying to re-capture the city, the French eventually ceded most of their North American holdings to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. A good part of Quebec’s architecture reflects the British occupancy. 

When we returned to the hotel on Friday, we were free to get lunch and dinner on our own and explore wherever we chose. Dan and I ate at a wonderful little bistro called, Le Lapin Saute, in the  Lower City. We ordered a sampler of local pate, cheeses, bread and a lovely white wine. Then we walked several miles, going in and out of tourist shops, which, like any city, were over-priced. We did, however, stop at a chocolatier, where we bought a selection of candy for a friend of ours. We had dinner at Aux Anciens Canadiens, a restaurant in a house built in 1675.

Meat pie, meatballs and root vegetables filled our plates. Everything was traditional Quebecois food, right down to the upside-down strawberry cake. We should have had either a smaller lunch or much less dinner. We waddled our ways downhill to our hotel where, to our great relief, we found that I had packed Alka Seltzer!

On Saturday, our last day, we rode a bus to the Hotel-Museum of the Wendake, one of the many 1st Nation tribes that live in Quebec. A tribal member took us through their beautiful modern museum and then to a recreated long house. This was followed by a gourmet dinner at the hotel’s restaurant which featured indigenous ingredients. A knowledgable sommelier advised us on which wines would best accompany our meal choices. 

By the morning of our last breakfast together, everyone had eaten a meal with each other. One woman told us of another trip she had been on to Germany. Lest we think that Roads Scholar trips are primarily taken by liberal folk, she told us that she had been primarily surrounded by Trump supporters on that month-long learning tour. Not one of us on the Quebec tour approved of our President.

My adrenaline level has always been set a few notches higher than others’. This is fine when one is onstage. Spending the majority of my time working alone, writing, painting, practicing my instrument, learning lyrics or writing music, I have a tendency to become over-stimulated when I am around other people, like a wild thing escaping its cage. I have to work very hard to relax, take a breath and not entertain. Luckily for me, everyone had interesting stories of their own to tell, making it easy to listen. At the week’s start, I had trouble curbing my habitual New-York-City stride. Walking slowly has never been my forte. (Indeed, doing anything slowly has always been challenging)! But we all helped each other keep up and manage the steep hills and wet cobblestones without any mishaps. 

No one wanted to say goodbye to each other on Sunday, the last morning. Responsible to the end, Chantal raced up and down the hotel’s stairs, making sure each group got into the right taxi on time. I organized six of us into a kick-line to dance for her as she came upstairs. Hopefully, once Chantel sends all of us the sheet listing everyone’s emails, some of us will keep in touch. Perhaps Dan and I will go on other Roads Scholar tours. Hopefully, if we do, when we are asked where we are from, we can say, proudly, “We’re from the United States of America.”