The absence of posts
during the past week is not because I had nothing to say, but because I
had far too much to say. As I embark on this, I am not sure whether it
will all be part of one post or two. I will see how it goes.
When Barry and I were married on the first of July in 1973, we talked about honeymooning à Québec (in Quebec City.) I had been an avid étudiante de la langue française (student of French) in junior high and high school, and Barry had studied la langue française for a couple of years. Québec is not terribly far from where we lived in upstate New York (Rochester), so seemed a reasonable drive. The trip was simpler then because passports only began to be required for travel between the US and Canada in 1999. We never had passports until our first trip to Israel in 1980.
In 1974 we got as far
as identifying a hotel, Le
Château Frontenac,
long considered one of the finest in Montréal. But resources simply did not allow
for the trip, and we ended up getting a ride to Toronto for a few days with
some friends later that summer. With
somewhat greater flexibility at this point, the hotel selection was easy, only
the name had changed: twenty years ago Le Château Frontenac became the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac. We booked a
two-room suite, almost a necessity for us now because the oxygen concentrator
is rather noisy, making it difficult to sleep (that does make a nice excuse, n’est pas?)
We had a little
something to eat and collapsed from that long drive, most of it in pouring
rain. The next day was still rather gray but at least the rain was more threat
than reality. Québec is built on a large hill.
There is a vertical train called the Funiculaire that goes up and
down between the top, where the hotel is located, to the bottom, with many
shops and restaurants along the road that snakes down the mountainside.
This turned out to be
a bit trickier than we had imagined, because most of that road consists of large
cobblestones that are quite old and not particularly level. We saw many young
parents struggling with children in strollers, and it is all but impossible to
push an adult in a wheelchair. The scooter did make it, although it was a
challenge that it clearly did not like, occasionally just shutting itself down
entirely (a bit scary since it is still quite new). By the afternoon we found
the best ways to walk to stay away from the cobblestone streets as much as
possible. It must be said, though, that without the need for wheels it really
is quite lovely!
On Tuesday morning we
headed off for one of the main attractions on the lower level of the city, the Musée de
la Civilisation
https://www.mcq.org/en.
Here is an overview from the museum’s web page:
Musée de la civilisation is a government corporation. It was established on
December 19, 1984 under the National Museums Act, which sets out the museum's
major functions as follows:
·
to make known the history and the various cultural elements of our
civilization, particularly the social and material aspects of the cultures of
the occupants of the territory of Québec and the cultures that have contributed
to the enrichment of those cultures;
·
to ensure the preservation and development of the ethnographic collection
and other representative collections of our civilization;
·
to ensure the participation of Québec in the international network of
museological events through acquisitions, exhibitions and other cultural
activities.
A good deal of space
is devoted to pictures and films. It would have been easy to spend an entire
day here. They were screening a series of animated short films, and we watched
quite a few. One in particular that we loved was called “The Danish Poet,”
which won the 2007 Oscar award for Best Animated Short Film. It was only when
we read about it later that we realized why the narrator’s voice was so
familiar: it was narrated by the actress Liv Ullmann who starred in many of the
Bergmann films to which Barry introduced me in the early 1970s.
We also watched a
lengthier film about life in Québec,
and agreed that it portrayed a more even-handed and honest view of the country –
including not only assets but problems - than would normally be seen in a film
at an American museum.
After the day at the
museum, we took off for Montréal.
Wednesday, the 1st
of July, was Canada Day.
Canada Day (Fête du Canada) is the national day of Canada,
a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867,
enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution
Act, 1867), which united three colonies into a single country called Canada within
the British Empire. Originally
called Dominion Day (Le Jour de la
Confédération), the holiday was renamed in 1982, the year the Canada
Act was passed. Canada Day observances take place
throughout Canada as well as among Canadians internationally.
We started the day at
the Musée des
Beaux Arts
(Museum of Fine Arts). A highlight now is an exhibit of Rodin sculptures called
“Metamorphoses: In Rodan’s Studio,” including the two most well-known, The
Thinker and The Kiss. We also explored the “Decorative Arts and Design Section,”
and took a few pictures of some very interesting furniture, if anyone is
looking for ideas.
In the evening, we
had arranged to do something we did once in New York some years ago, going out
on a tour boat to watch the fireworks. Fireworks seem to be enormously popular
in Canada. Many years ago we saw part of an international fireworks competition
in Vancouver, British Columbia. This year, one of the competitive events was on
July 1st in Montréal. It was quite a
display! It seemed that the music was broadcast on a local radio station so
that we were actually listening to the music to which the display was
choreographed, so to speak. It must have gone on for over 30 minutes, and was
simply spectacular. Some videos have been posted to youtube but they simply do
not do it justice.
I have been at this
almost the entire day, between uploading the pictures and selecting those to
keep, writing this narrative, and figuring out how to get the accent marks in
French. Well, I tried to do the latter but could not seem to get it to work, so
resorted to cutting and pasting from web sites in French.
I will work on the
remainder of our trip over the next couple of days, so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, enjoy the
summer that has finally arrived!
Love,
Rebecca
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