But that’s not my affair. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I was a guest in the country and revelling in lean smoked meat from a Montreal take-away owned by Céline Dion (“Will she be serving?” “Probably not”), the extraordinary St Joseph’s Oratory up above on Mont Royal, sky-rises astounding to a bloke living in a French village where there’s not much which is taller than he is – and the appeal of the Canadian rail system.
Revelling, too, in the possibilities of limitless space, not least on Lake Ontario – smallest of the Great Lakes but still more than 1,250 times bigger than Lake Windermere. (Canadians claim not to feel claustrophobic in Europe, but do so, certainly, to spare our feelings.)
I – we – revelled a lot, in short, from the Thousand Islands of the St Lawrence via governmental Ottawa and the Museum of Canadian History in Gatineau to small Ontario towns where you just knew the community had cake-and-maple-syrup-based festivities, fine little coffee shops and, in Merickville-Wolford, a book emporium where a highly-charged young fellow introduced me to Canadian author Timothy Findley. I’d never encountered Findley before but, having now read The Wars, I shall be encountering him quite often in the future.
Notable too were the entwined undercurrents of Britishness and Frenchness bursting through the surface. The best examples were in Quebec City where colonial history – French kicked out by the British – had left a citadel, the fullest old fortifications on the continent plus a civilised atmosphere of European and North American parentage: old stones, 18th-century houses, big bars with “Please Wait To Be Seated” on the doors, monumental items (the Château Frontenac Hotel could accommodate the entire population of Quebec, with panache) and a preserved British officers’ mess in the Artillery Park.
This past means the present Quebecois speak French, but it also means they do so as if wrestling a foreign language into submission. They speak English the same way. I found the ambiguity fascinating, though I understand that anglophone Canadians may be less thrilled.
But that’s not my affair either. I liked them all because they all liked me. I especially like the distracted lady who, in Ottawa, bumped into a lamp-post and then turned to apologise. Apologising to lamp-posts is quintessentially Canadian. Canadianness became more precious yet in hindsight, from Charles de Gaulle airport, through which we passed on the way home. A hatchet-faced security woman chucked a perfectly-sized, thus legitimate, little shampoo bottle into the bin, refusing to give an explanation, or even damned well speak.
Have you been to Canada? Do you feel the same way about Canadians as Anthony? Share your experiences in the comments section below
Source link : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/north-america/canada/science-behind-why-canada-friendliest-country-world-quebec/
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Publish date : 2023-10-18 03:00:00
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