Category: travel

This bittersweet ride is almost over. I’ve had the time of my life here—filled with both good and bad experiences. I guess some lessons take a lifetime to learn; I’m definitely still learning.

This morning I was fretting a little because I really wanted to go to the “Parqours Aventure Le Relais” (I think that translate to something like Relay Adventure Park), but I didn’t buy a ticket in advance and I was worried that they would be sold out.

Well as the universe has decided to be on my side lately, I showed up at the University and got the very last spot! Ca va tres bien!

The Parquors Aventure is a series of suspended cables that stretch between the trees (we were told that each one was a separate “game”) and each game is a different level of difficulty. One of the most interesting ones was a kind of snowboard zip line where you jumped onto the board and then zoomed down the line. It’s difficult to explain properly without a photo and since we were doing a lot of climbing, I opted out of bringing my camera with me.

However, some of my friends brought their smaller (more manageable) cameras with them and so I have a few photos of the event (like this one):

Here I look a little wobbly, but it was because I was trying hard to use only my sense of balance and not to grab the “life line” above my head in order to get across. I ended up being able to get across this one without cheating but for most of the others, I would have fallen if it weren’t for grabbing the line (oh and of course the fact that I was strapped in).

At one point I was getting pretty confident about racing across the lines and one of the wood panels under my feet actually broke. Of course, I had the harness to hold me up, but I still got quite the adrenaline rush.

I’m having such a great time here but I’m heading out in only 7 more days! It’s time to really buckle down and get the most of it with regard to learning French!

There’s only a week and a day left in my short journey to Quebec. I knew the days were going to go quickly here, but seriously I can’t believe it’s so close to being over.

For the most part everything has been fantastic. The written exam didn’t go nearly as well as the oral, or phonetics but there will be more tests which will give me ample opportunity to improve. I think my major problem was that since I speak a little more fluently than the others in my class, I felt like I could get by with less studying (well I got by, but it was ugly).

Last night I tried to hook up with some friends, but somehow I forgot where I put the number and I was expecting them to call me anyway. I found out this morning that there WAS a message for me last night – but “we must not have heard the phone ring because we were talking to loudly at dinner”. Ok? That doesn’t seem just a little odd? Anyway it was no big deal, but I did check out the Salsa dancing place, Chez Morrice, just in case. Lot’s of dancing, little (or rather “no”) people that I knew.

Tonight I will be hooking up with the friends though. We are going for a picnic at the Plains of Abraham followed by a FREE jazz concert. Certainly Quebec is more fun than any place I have ever lived before. The festivals just keep coming one after the other!

Each day I’m notice myself becoming better and better at French. At school we are supposed to only speak French and while I’m no where near 100% fluent, I am becoming quite good at basic conversations.

Last night they held a “Casino Soirée” at the University. On my way over there a little old lady on the Street asked me for directions. I explained that I only spoke a little French but nonetheless she asked again, more slowly this time, if I could give her some directions. Amazingly enough, I not only knew the area well enough to explain it to her, I even did it completely in French. I must have gotten some good karma from it, because just moments later the bus arrived and I didn’t have to walk to the other bus stop as per my plan.

The Casino was such a blast! Even though we weren’t playing for money, I had a fantastic time. They had lots of Black Jack tables a roulette wheel and some other games of chance. I found it a little hard going at first, but then I discovered one of the dealers was giving out 20,000$ chips for only 10,000$ (She thought the blue ones were only worth $10,000). One sneaky exchange with her got me back into the game enough that I could feel comfortable that I wouldn’t end up losing all my chips early in the night, but she figured it out almost immediately after I made the change. One lucky guy had been cashing into blue chips all night before he or she knew of the error.

However, the real luck came when I discovered one of the tables where the dealer had NO CLUE WHATSOEVER how to play Black Jack. There was one time that she had 20 points and took another card. I guess she was hoping for an ace. It was pretty much the case that so long as never busted I won every hand. After awhile someone explained to her that as the dealer she only draws more cards until she has 16 or more—still it was fun while it lasted.

We ended the night with a little dancing and partying even though I should have been home a few hours earlier working on my homework. Learning French can be fun but doing activities in French is way more fun!

I can’t say enough how awesome the My Explore bursary program has been. If you are a Canadian student (within the last year) with even the remotest interest in learning French, I highly recommend the program.

I’m counting the days before I head off to Québec City for the five weeks of intensive courses in French as a foreign language. I’m extremely excited and have been hitting the Speak and Read Essential French MP3’s extra hard lately.

I’ve also been reading up on the 1759 Battle for Québec. I find early Canadian history so rich with action and excitement, I love to read all about it! We’ve got our fair share of stories that would make brilliant blockbuster movies, allow me to share this one and let me know what you think.

The odds were stacked against New France. The British outnumbered the French three to one in ships, four to one in troops, and the Brits had a ten to one advantage in money.

I’ve been checking out Google maps to try and figure out where the attack must have happened. As the story goes, the British sailed down the St. Lawrence with more than 140 ships (one full quarter of the British Navy) and were spread over a distance of 50 miles. James Wolfe, the English General, had also in his command over 13,500 men — 9,000 of whom were from the best units in Britain.

It was the best trained and equipped army North America had seen, supported by the biggest and best fleet.
-popular historian Gordon Donaldson

However, conquering Québec City, “the Gibraltar of the New World” was not an easy task, and Wolfe soon discovered that despite his huge advantage there wasn’t really any way to get beyond the city’s fortified walls. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the French general, was misinformed by native-born Canadien and governor Pierre de Vaudreuil’s engineers that the English cannons did not have the range to reach them over the huge St. Lawrence River, and so didn’t reinforce the southern shore. In this they made a grave mistake.

Determined that he would wear the French down by sheer persistence, Wolfe ordered his cannons to pound the city for months killing civilians and destroying homes by the score. The prolonged destruction served no real military purpose other than to terrorize and demoralize the city’s inhabitants.

Summer turned to autumn and still Wolfe had not taken the fortified city. Time was beginning to run out for Wolfe, and he began to worry how he would explain to England why the attack was taking so long. He decided to try a new strategy.

Earlier, [Wolfe] had spotted a break in the cliffs west of the city, at a cove called l’Anse-au-Foulon. If [he] could somehow land his men undetected and then scale the cliffs, he might be able to put his army on the plains behind the city and draw Montcalm out into the open . . . and so it was, on a moonless night in mid-September, that a flotilla of 30 flat-bottomed boats slipped silently downriver with the tide.

On September 13, 1759, after bluffing their way past a French Sentry, an advance guard climbed the narrow trail and overpowered the French post at the top. The rest of the troops followed soon after pulling themselves onto the Plains of Abraham and by daybreak more than 4,500 English troops assembled on the far side of the City.

The surprise was complete. General Montcalm had been convinced that the final attack, if it came, would be on the other side of the city at the Beauport shore. When an aide suggested that the British might try to climb the cliffs, Montcalm had snorted with derision. “We do not need to imagine that the enemy has wings,” he wrote in his journal, “so that in one night they can cross the river, disembark, and climb the obstructed cliffs.” But now, they had done just that. As he hurried to assemble his troops, Montcalm looked out at the redcoats that were lining up behind the city, and complained, “They have no right to be there.”

Wolfe had managed to drag up only two light cannons. Montcalm decided that time was of the essence and that the British had to be attacked immediately, before they could dig in and strengthen their position. For the first time since the British arrived, Montcalm acted impulsively. He had 3,000 reinforcements somewhere behind the British lines—a message had been sent and they were on their way—but he didn’t wait for them to arrive. Instead, Montcalm gathered the troops he had on hand and threw open the city gates . . .

The battle lasted only 15 minutes. The British had formed a “thin red line,” two men deep, and the French advanced in a ragged charge, the regulars and the Canadiens stumbling over each other. Native snipers were picking off British soldiers from nearby woods, but Wolfe stood his ground. Then, when the French were only 30 paces away, the order was given. The redcoats raised their muskets and fired, one platoon after the next in rolling thunder across the Plains. Smoke filled the battlefield. The British re-loaded and advanced, emerging from the smoke like ghosts. They fired a second volley, and that was all it took. The French broke and ran.

Both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed due to injuries suffered in the battle, Wolfe on the Plains and Montcalm within the city walls. The two sides had each taken roughly the same number of losses, 650 each, and the British hadn’t really won anything of consequence, it was just a field, and in fact not a particularly safe one, but all the same the French were rattled.

The British had won a field. That was it. If anything, they were in a dangerously exposed position. Québec fell not because the British won, but because the French lost their nerve. Vaudreuil panicked and fled with his troops along a side road. Five days later, the city’s bewildered commander (who had been left behind without any clear instructions) surrendered the city. The Canadiens hadn’t been conquered by the British: they had been abandoned by France.