Two More Provinces

​ONTARIO, QUEBEC
Oops – not sure if any of you noticed I was missing?! I just got into crunch time with a number of deadlines all hitting in March. Being gone the past three weekends didn’t help either. So I will try to double up this week and next week to be back on track with my travels. (I need to learn how to prewrite and have set to auto release on the proper date. Hopefully that will be learned this week, so this doesn’t happen again!)
Ontario – I can’t help favour this province – at least the northern section. It was the province that welcomed us into Canada when I was four, and I spent the next nine years living in here on a farm north of Cochrane – about 500 miles north of Toronto. (The southern Ontario is quite different from the northern Ontario.) I also put in a year 120 miles north of Pickle Lake, and twice lived in Red Lake, so the north is what I know best. This is where the love of winter grew as we sledded down the hills, built snowforts, skated on the lakes, or drove on them in the winter with our winter roads. The polar bear dip is popular in many winter carnivals where humans jump into an ice hole for a minute or two – depending on how brave (or stupid?!) they are! Part of Ontario is in the Canadian Shield, so if you like rocks, driving on the TransCanada in the Kenora area really give you a good view of the Shield. They blasted through rock to create that road. Mind you, if there is an accident, prepare to wait. We had a semi jackknife once, and it was four hours to get the road cleared so the traffic could get by. Naturally needing the restroom became paramount, so I hiked up the rocks to the treeline since there was a lot of traffic sitting around (for our neck of the woods it was a lot.) My sister, with her wretched sense of humour, glanced up as I returned and casually remarked, “Nice blue flowers on your underwear.” I was horrified! She cackled and cackled about it as Mom tried to reassure me that there was no way she could have seen me. When I finally remembered that we bought bulk packages of underwear so of course we wore the same stuff, which is why she’d know what I wore, I was sure there was such a thing as justifiable homicide! But now I can never drive by that section without thinking about that episode.
Summertime is lovely as well. Ontario is known for lots of lakes and fishing. In fact, while teaching in Texas I was allowed to keep my Manitoba plates on my car. One Sunday, I’d left church before anyone else and had just gotten outside the crossroads of our tiny community when a police car swung out behind me and stuck on its lights. I was mortified as I pulled over. He came up to my car and said, “Morning. Did you know you can’t drive over 25 mph until you are past that sign?” He pointed to the 50 speed limit sign just in front of my car’s hood. I sighed. “Was I going too fast?” He grinned. “Yup. You clocked at 26 mph.” I just stared at him in disbelief. We were out in the country and it was seldom a busy road except after church on Sundays. He looked down a bit then grinned again. “But, really, I saw you had Canadian plates – do you fish much? What’s it like?....” We spent the next 15 minutes discussing fishing in Canada (or rather, he discussed while I tried to keep up. I’m not a fisherman at all. I just like to eat them.) He was an avid fisherman and was dying to get up to Ontario to try fishing. I managed to remember that we had walleye and trout and northern pike. I wouldn’t have minded the discussion; however, every single person in our church decided to drive past while I’m standing by my car with a policeman gesturing at me. My students had dropped jaws and bulging eyes as they stared through the windows of their cars while the parents crept by, and I kept blushing and blushing. It was a huge slice of humble pie. Naturally the next day in school all the boys were on my case. “Miss Kauffman, YOU were stopped? What did you DO?” Even to my own ears it sounded lame. “Actually, we were just discussing fishing.” After a moment of dead silence, the boys started whooping. “Yeah, right, funny. Really. What did you do?” (Sigh!) I’m not sure if they ever believed me that he truly did stop me just because he was going to fish in Ontario and wanted any info I could give him.
Ontario, of course has the distinction of being our capital. Toronto is the capital of the province, while Ottawa is the capital of Canada. The Rideau Canal is famous in the winter for skating on. There’s a lot of history both in that area as well as spilling over into Quebec as the St Lawrence River borders the edge of these two provinces meeting spot.
Quebec – I’m sure Quebec is a lovely province; however, in true honesty, it’s a province I dread going to or through. Every time there’s been problems for me. We got lost in Montreal; it was during a time when the French and English were at loggerheads. Dad sent me in to find directions; no one would speak English to me, and I didn’t know French. Finally one French lady in a disdainful tone said, “We don’t help the English. Learn French if you want to travel in our province.” That really put a sour note on my desire to be in Quebec. Another time I went through with my sister-in-law, I was rear-ended by someone at a stoplight. (It was her car, but I was at the wheel at the time. I had stopped for the redlight; they didn’t stop until our bumper stopped them.) Also the traffic is so overwhelming; I’m a northern girl, not a city driver. So for better or worse, that’s a place I tend to avoid.
However, there are some delightful places; Quebec City has some of the quaint places where we can claim historic moments. Quebec is known for maple syrup, and poutine was ‘invented’ in the 1950s in this province.  You also can travel underneath the St. Lawrence Seaway by taking the tunnel from Montreal. When we went underneath the water on our way east, my imagination could hear the gush and glug of the water above us. I was feeling a bit claustrophobic by the time we had transversed the 4,563.6 ft tunnel and could surface. Yet they say 120,000 vehicles pass through that tunnel daily, so it’s evidently safe. I’ve just never wanted to drown, and a tunnel under a river?? Really? Can you imagine all the things that could go wrong? I sure could! (Sigh!)
When it comes to Southern Ontario and Quebec, I tend to lean towards the verse Luke mentions: “And he went through the cities and villages teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem.” (Luke 13:22) I just paraphrase: I go through the cities (when I have to) and villages journeying towards the north! If I had someone to do the driving for me, so I could just sit and enjoy everything, then I’m sure I’d find many interesting things; as a lone driver, often lost and struggling to find my way – I avoid the cities whenever I can. (Now you know one of my many weaknesses!) So then I have to keep quoting the other verse: (Phil 4:13) “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Somehow I’ve always managed to get home again. God is good.

(Ariel views of my Ontario home, and a Quebec lake)