Fly is complimented and swatted. Chinese philosophy. Laurentians

The ultimate compliment?

Tripped down the stairs this morning all ready for the day out, and a fellow guest greet me with a barrage of French – indecipherable to the fly at half the rate.  I asked him to speak in English.  His response – ‘I spoke in French because I thought you looked French.  I usually get it right.’   Can flies purr?

The fly is swatted

But then later in the day, when we were in a boat on Lac-des-Sables in the Laurentians, the boatman explained (in French and in English) that it was thus called because there is sand on the bottom of the lake.  When the opportunity came, I asked in my best French, (as I have to practise after all)  if this was the only one of the many lakes in the district with sand on the bottom and if so, why.  He looked at me and said, ‘Can you say it in English’.  Splat went the fly. Anyway, the other lakes do have sand.  Perhaps they just ran out of Saints’ names – all the other lakes, like the towns, have saints’ names.  It became impossible to distinguish between St Adele, St Adolphe, St Agathe. 

Philosophy of a Chinese Bus Driver – Take the money from the right people.

The driver of the pickup bus was Chinese.  He came here from Hong Kong twenty years ago.  Although he speaks three Chinese languages and English, French has defeated him. We had quite a chat, as for a while there were no other passengers. When I commented on the lack of number plates on the front of cars in Quebec province, he advised that it was a misguided attempt by bureaucracy to save money.  But then, he complained, they miss an opportunity to make money by not charging for special or personalised plates.  He opined that wealthy Chinese would pay huge money to get plates with their own “lucky numbers”.  (In Hong Kong apparently, up to $1m). 

The Bixi (see earlier blog) are losing money.  And the town is also losing the money it used to get from bicycle parking posts (there is a pic) many of which were removed when Bixis came in.  People who want to ride have their own bikes.  (They have to have winter tyres too, like the cars – compulsory).

Later, he pointed out to the busload of passengers that the Cathedrale de Notre Dame charges $5 entry fee, which he considered not the right way to take money from people.  It is also the case in the Cathedral that prayer candles are available for $2, $4, $10.  Is one more likely to have prayers answered if one pays $10 for a candle, he wondered.

Something for the to-do list.  There are ice-hotels in Canada. Not just in Norway, a la the Joanna Lumley documentary on her trip to see the Northern Lights.  For the last twelve years, these hotels have been taking guests between January and March each year.  Expensive.  Even the drinks are served in glasses made of ice.

Laurentians

This beautiful area of mountains and lakes is Montreal’s playground.  Summers on the lakes, boating and fishing (bit cool even in summer for swimming) and hiking, winters ski-ing and also on the lakes skating and fishing. The pics in the album will show what some North Americans refer to when then speak of going to their 'cabins' by the lake for their vacations.