QUEBEC - More like another country than another province.

Québec - quel horreur!!  At least, on first impressions.

Québec motor way.  My idea of hell!!

We took the short cut through the United States to miss the outskirts of Toronto, but inadvertently got tangled up for most of a day in the endless wastelands of outer Montreal, frequently missing our turns along a route which was no way as continuous or straightforward as the nice young lady at the border information post had promised.  My vision of hell is something like this.

When we escaped from Montreal, we fell lurid outskirts of the very modern, very urban centre of Sherbrooke.  It  seemed to be one long Parramatta Road - all car sales, massage parlours, service centres and more brands of fried chicken takeaway than I would have thought could possibly have co-existed!!  If there was a nice part of Sherbrooke, we did not find it.  The intial introduction to the Province of Quebec was not promising.

Although rain set in thereafter, however, the French flavour of Québec developed and the province grew on me.  Tim Hortons changed from being "Always Fresh" to "Tourjour Frais" and began to offer brioche.  Altogether it seemed difficult to remember that we were on the American continent.

Unusual & very colourful architecture at the  Benedictine Abbey of St. Benoit, Austin, Québec.

We visited the beautiful Abbey of St. Benoit and sampled their cheeses.  We visited the old city in Quebec, looked at the old walls and I tried the pastries (there was a particularly delicious one with an alcoholic filling called "Le Jesuit").  We drove along the St. Lawrence Seaway and sampled the gastronic delights of many small villages, mostly named after French saints, with large Catholic churches and picturesque houses.

Icebreaker at the Québec Maritime Museum

Along the way we found the Québec Maritime Museum, with a fascinating icebreaker on stilts outside
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Quebec Maritime Museum

In the end, it was hard to say good bye, but pockets of Arcadian French culture kept cropping up in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, and although the French of the Arcadians is not exactly the classic French of France, Alvin still managed to get in a fair bit of linguistic practice.

Distinctive Québec houses

Large Catholic churches in small villages - this one at Islet Sur Mer, on the St. Lawrence Seaway,  dated to the mid 18th century.