Labrador Caravan

June 13, 2007
Quebec City

Lévis where I’d spent a few nights the previous year. Last summer I got on my bike to ride down to the ferry into the city; this year we climbed into Kim’s van to drive down the same narrow streets, parking it at the ferry as we headed into town.

We’d left the considerable heat of Montreal behind and found a powerful wind blowing up the St. Lawrence in Quebec. Whitecaps dotted the river, and my hair was whipped into a tangled frenzy as we sat on the outside deck of the ferry taking photos of the old city and the cliffs of Lévis. All of this was familiar ground; the park on the south shore where I’d roller bladed last summer, the promenade looking down on the river, the fortress high on the bluffs that provided the strategic reason for locating the city here rather than elsewhere on the river.

But visiting it with other people was nothing like last summer. I’m used to traveling alone, doing what I want, indulging my own whims without having to consult with anyone else. I’ve seen the old city of the Quebec, and while it’s a pretty place with some splendid trompe l’oeil piantings, it exists only for the tourists these days. Normal life for the people of Quebec has nothing to do with this pocket of cafes, restaurants, gift shops, and restored houses. My friends wanted to walk down

charming streets, while I wanted to understand what the city is like to live in. On my own I would have wandered into gift shops selling pretty but useless items; afraid of boring them or enduring the male response to women who like to shop, I didn’t so much as think of suggesting it. I might might have enjoyed a bookshop, but my friends don’t read French. It was fun, though, when Kim meandered into a shop selling rocks and jewelry, and we all looked at sparkling stones harvested in the mines of Quebec. And when we walked down the promenade and climbed the stairs up to the fortress, we all enjoyed staring down the river with the wind howling in our faces, stronger and stronger as we got higher and higher.

The next day I wanted to do something I’d missed out on last summer, roller blade around the Plains of Abraham, a battlefield on top of the bluffs that is now a city park. I was astonished, when I passed there last year, to see that it had two separate trails around the huge lawn, each a kilometer or so in length – one for walkers and runners, the other only for roller bladers. This I had to try. But I’d run out of time last summer, and I’d never skated there. For a year I thought about returning to Quebec to skate around that battlefield. As I got more proficient on ice, practicing on the new rink near my house in Virginia, that trail returned to my mind over and over, and I was determined to get my skates out and try it.

Like all things anticipated for so long, it was a bit of a disappointment. The sun was hot, I’m not much of a roller blader, and I was still wheezing a bit from three days visiting my sister and her eight cats on my way to Bus Fusion. Everyone else glided smoothly past me, as I worked to keep going up the slight inclines. But I did cruise past a few them on the equally slight

downhills, and by my second time around I was no longer unsure of my footing on skates. Old couples strolled by and relaxed on park benches, children played soccer and flew kites on the lawn while their mothers lounged in the brilliant sun watching. Energetic men and lycra-clad women pounded around the running path, and all kinds of people rolled around with me on the skate trail. It wasn’t the transcendent experience I’d hoped for, but I was delighted to experience a bit of the Quebec where real people live.

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