The Grand Canadian/
American Adventure
Day 14 Quebec to
Montreal
Day 14 was to be a relaxing drive, straight through from
Quebec to Montreal, only a few hours. Thanks to Natasha wanting to make a pit
stop however, it turned into a beautiful sightseeing journey.
We left the main highway looking for a bathroom and ended up
in the town of Sainte Anne De-La- Perade . Now apart from having a beautiful
church, Sainte Anne has another claim to fame. During winter it becomes the
Tommy Cod capitol of the world. The Tommy Cod is a small fish around thirty
centimetres in length and apparently in winter when the river Sainte Anne sits
on the banks of freezes over they are plentiful. So what happens is every year
is; when the ice reaches 30 centimetres in depth and is safe to venture out on,
people push elaborate huts out on to the ice, cut holes and begin to fish. These
ice huts are quite large larger than one s we have seen elsewhere and are well
equipped with benches, chairs, tables and wood stoves. Now apart from the size
of the huts, this is no different to what happens all over North America in
winter. However what makes Sainte Anne special is; that as the ice gets thicker
still, vehicles start to drive onto it then restaurants open as well as shops
and fairground attractions, with this brings streets and street lights etc. Until
eventually a one kilometre stretch of the ice is transformed into a small town.
It must make for quite a sight and people come from all over to see it and to
fish.
Because Saint Anne sits at the convergence of a river with
the St Lawrence Seaway, we then decide to follow the St Lawrence further down
to Montreal and stay off the freeway. The next town we came to was Batiscan.
This place has its own beach on the river banks and the only sand I’ve found so
far that comes anywhere near what we are used to back home. From Batiscan we
then went to Trois Riviere, where we had lunch at the Basilica of Notre Dame Du
cap, another one of those magnificent structures the Catholic Church commissioned
in the 1800’s. I may not be religious but I can certainly appreciate the architecture
of the church.
This diversion from our intended course having filled up
most of the day, then decided us to get back on the freeway and head direct to
Montreal. Whereupon, entering the city we got caught in a traffic jam, this
being 1600 on a Friday afternoon. Montreal after Toronto is the second biggest
city in Canada and a very cosmopolitan and modern city with lots of traffic,
all of it wanting to be somewhere else on a Friday. To make matters worse,
Canada is in the grip of a heat wave, so tempers are a bit frayed. To us back
home in Australia we would just call it summer, but to Canadians unused to a
string of days with the temperature above 30 degrees it is hot. Anyway after
being stuck in traffic for a while we finally arrived at our digs for a good night’s
rest, ready to explore the town the next day.
