Monday, 10/6/08
A New Province
We’re off this morning to break new ground for us. It is pretty easy leaving the old walled city spinning around the Parliament back onto Grand Allee heading southwest. This will just take us back to our entry point into the city and then we will take the motorway bridge across the St. Lawrence and about face to the northeast heading down river. The St. Lawrence really spreads out at this point on its way to the Atlantic and while there are ferries to the east, we think this is the last bridge.
This is a driving day so it is only about windshield time. It is a couple hours up to Trois Rivieres where we whip a right and head down 185 toward New Brunswick. At our last stop in French speaking Canada we grab lunch in Cabano which is right next to the city of St. Louis du Ha! Ha! No kidding, even with the exclamation points. Mary orders the pea soup, and John, with his newly perfected French skills, orders the 2-piece fried chicken with fries and iced tea. Mary gets bean soup, and John gets a chicken noodle soup with a piece of bread and iced tea. At least the iced tea thing worked OK. While virtually everyone is Quebec is bi-lingual, our last stop reminds us that there are pockets that are not
We travel into New Brunswick sliding down the northeast border of Maine. The country has changed to very hilly and wooded with spectacular river and color views and it reminds us of, well, Maine. New Brunswick along with Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and way up north Newfoundland are the Maritime Provinces, or just referred to as the Maritimes. The Province of New Brunswick has about 700,000 folks and we are staying tonight in the capital of Fredericton, about a hundred miles east of the Maine border.
Our motel is easy to find and without many attractions we have dedicated this stop as laundry night. The motel has a guest laundry so we crank out a couple loads and while the last one dries, John runs out for a pizza and 6-pack. We made an earlier mistake when we thought we were in our last time zone because we have now found a new one. We are on Atlantic time which we have only flown over before. The only affect on us is that prime time television is from 9:00 – midnight and the Vikings game comes on tonight at 9:30. Fat chance of getting through that.
While we had hoped to escape political ads during our time in Canada, we found that the Canadian elections are next week. There are four or five serious parties with the Conservative party of Prime Minister Harper currently in power and favored to win the government again. All the other parties are one form of liberal or another (Liberal, Greens, Democrats, Quebec Bloc) so they tend to split the vote while the conservatives will cruise into power with about 40% of the vote. The debates remind us of the early U.S. Democrat primary debates when everyone hog-piled Hillary, and gosh it worked for one of them. The economic news is not helping Harper but the consensus is that he will probably hang on.
This is just like working. We hate Monday because the stock markets re-open and we love Fridays because they will be closed for two days. As one of the headlines said, “Nest egg or Goose egg?”
A New Province
We’re off this morning to break new ground for us. It is pretty easy leaving the old walled city spinning around the Parliament back onto Grand Allee heading southwest. This will just take us back to our entry point into the city and then we will take the motorway bridge across the St. Lawrence and about face to the northeast heading down river. The St. Lawrence really spreads out at this point on its way to the Atlantic and while there are ferries to the east, we think this is the last bridge.
This is a driving day so it is only about windshield time. It is a couple hours up to Trois Rivieres where we whip a right and head down 185 toward New Brunswick. At our last stop in French speaking Canada we grab lunch in Cabano which is right next to the city of St. Louis du Ha! Ha! No kidding, even with the exclamation points. Mary orders the pea soup, and John, with his newly perfected French skills, orders the 2-piece fried chicken with fries and iced tea. Mary gets bean soup, and John gets a chicken noodle soup with a piece of bread and iced tea. At least the iced tea thing worked OK. While virtually everyone is Quebec is bi-lingual, our last stop reminds us that there are pockets that are not
We travel into New Brunswick sliding down the northeast border of Maine. The country has changed to very hilly and wooded with spectacular river and color views and it reminds us of, well, Maine. New Brunswick along with Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and way up north Newfoundland are the Maritime Provinces, or just referred to as the Maritimes. The Province of New Brunswick has about 700,000 folks and we are staying tonight in the capital of Fredericton, about a hundred miles east of the Maine border.
Our motel is easy to find and without many attractions we have dedicated this stop as laundry night. The motel has a guest laundry so we crank out a couple loads and while the last one dries, John runs out for a pizza and 6-pack. We made an earlier mistake when we thought we were in our last time zone because we have now found a new one. We are on Atlantic time which we have only flown over before. The only affect on us is that prime time television is from 9:00 – midnight and the Vikings game comes on tonight at 9:30. Fat chance of getting through that.
While we had hoped to escape political ads during our time in Canada, we found that the Canadian elections are next week. There are four or five serious parties with the Conservative party of Prime Minister Harper currently in power and favored to win the government again. All the other parties are one form of liberal or another (Liberal, Greens, Democrats, Quebec Bloc) so they tend to split the vote while the conservatives will cruise into power with about 40% of the vote. The debates remind us of the early U.S. Democrat primary debates when everyone hog-piled Hillary, and gosh it worked for one of them. The economic news is not helping Harper but the consensus is that he will probably hang on.
This is just like working. We hate Monday because the stock markets re-open and we love Fridays because they will be closed for two days. As one of the headlines said, “Nest egg or Goose egg?”
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