Summer in Quebec

As we pulled into our camp spot, we saw our new neighbors outside of their camper fiddling with some fold-out products. I hopped out of the truck to grab the leveler and prepare to unhitch our trailer. “Bonjour”, I said, with my painful accent. “Hi”, said a man, with a hard English accent and zero french charm, looking somewhat annoyed. A slight pang of reality struck me that we were no longer fully nestled in the french speaking territory of Canada. Montreal is still in the province, but more of a linguistic gray zone compared to what we had been living in, and in a few days we’d drive into Vermont and end our beautiful summer in Quebec.

Landing in Shawinigan

My wife is generally from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, if either of us is truly from anywhere at this point. We found a lovely little campground in a town just north called Shawinigan, where we’d end up essentially living for the next couple of months.

It was nice to settle in somewhere after all the wheeling and dealing with trucks and campers. We had a solid Starlink connection, I was able to work in the camper reliably. My wife would take the kids during work days and visit with her mother, they got to have some fun times running around Trois-Rivières together.

The beautiful drive to the stores in Shawinigan was always a nice adventure. You drive along a quiet part of a beautiful river, pass a crumbling array of cement towers with graffiti on them my son called “the temples”, then catch some stomach butterflies over a hill that I got good at maximizing. Every time I accomplished a mundane task, like buying some snacks from the grocery store, I had a story to tell about the varying levels of stupid I looked this time when trying to communicate with native French speakers at checkout.

Downtown Shawinigan is quite captivating. Surrounded by a river, they do such a good job with sensibly dense urban planning in Quebec. Just rows of 3 story apartments all mashed together with little walkable stores sprinkled about. The town is small, not even 50 thousand people including the surrounding area, but with that arrangement, it feels alive. We toured a house listing and imagined buying a very run-down apartment building where we’d turn the top two floors into a larger house (apparently not allowed, which makes sense).

Shawinigan is a contender for sure.

We did things

• Our daughter went to horse camp in French, which had its good and bad days. Our younger son got to take a couple of lessons as well and ride a small brown horse named “Chocolatin”.
• We shopped at little stores and ate little snacks.
• We went fishing just north of Quebec City with some family.
• We flew kites.
• My daughter had a birthday, we went on a daddy/daughter date, and had a little gathering at a sushi restaurant that dazzled everyone with a cat-inspired robot server.
• We went to a beautiful zoo with lots of free-roaming space for mostly grazing animals that loved to run to the fence and accept nibbles of something from the kids.
• We went apple picking and picked way too much.
• I made friends with a tech recruiter who happened to live in Trois-Rivières (such a small world), and we had some great laughs over outstanding beers in a Shawinigan pub.
• Shawinigan has a shockingly modern museum of energy with an observatory tower where you can see the town and countryside in all their beauty.
• On a couple of occasions, I played VR golf with my friend from LA over the Starlink connection, it was amazing, and felt wildly close to hanging out in person, although heavy rain can cause some sudden drops from the world.

Trois-Rivières

A very nice town. The downtown area is gorgeous with brick and stone buildings and nice restaurants, it’s met with a pristine river of course. The affordability of housing is so refreshing, I assume the language barrier protects the housing costs to some degree, although the high taxes also play a part. It was nice to be able to meet up with my wife’s family and see the kids meet some cousins, especially after the two years of Covid 19 lock down.

Saguenay

One of my wife’s cousins lives in the northern town of Saguenay (it’s impossible to pronounce correctly, but something like “sag-nay”). They have kids around the same ages as ours so we moved camp up there for a week. Watching the trees go from big and lush to skinny and struggling brought me back to my Alaskan roots. While we were there and I was getting the tour of the cousin’s property, I noticed myself feeling totally comfortable trudging through any bushes and bramble. In the north, scary things are big and visible from afar, unlike most of the US where I assume poisonous, stinging, slithering things wait for my pail ass behind every leaf.

The kids played like crazy while I got a dizzying walkthrough of my wife’s cousin’s amazing amount of hobbies (from beer brewing to yoyo). There were chickens and bee hives, and by the end of the first day, everyone was exhausted. My family got sick by day 3. Our facemask and hand sanitizer shielded immune systems finally got a dose of country living, and it kicked our butts. I’d like to say it was all worth it, but I didn’t get as sick as everyone else thanks to my wife taking the sneeze bullets from the kids like secret service.

Montreal

On a day trip, we left Oakley with my mother-in-law and drove to Montreal so we could have dinner with a family member. My recruiter friend had spoken very highly of the city and a coworker who lives there mentioned Verdun as a part that was more family friendly.

We had a nice outdoor dinner on a little island in the river between two sides of the city.

WARNING: Vegan rant beginning.

So I’ve been essentially vegan for the last year, cutting out dairy and eggs from my long-standing vegetarian diet in a fit of strength (my wife wanted to stop eating cheese for a while and my pizza oven broke). It boggles my mind how many restaurants serve zero vegan options. Not even a salad with a vinaigrette or something, just meat and cow milk on or in absolutely everything, you’d think it wasn’t possible. In grocery stores too, especially in rural areas, meat and dairy dominate the North American diet. This restaurant had a beat salad that I could request without cheese, so I went for it. They forgot and added the cheese on top, a round helping of some soft, seemingly high-quality, white cheese. I wasn’t sure if it was real or not, so I took a little taste. After one year I can officially report that cheese is weird ya’all. It’s sour and slimy. We eat way too much of it, aliens would be so grossed out I swear. Think about it. I put it to the side and forged on with my plate, shooing away attempts by servers to replace it because “it’s no big deal” and I’m trying to represent for the relaxed vegans or something.

Vegan rant concluded.

After dinner, we walked around the island and took some pictures. We decided we would meet up in Old Montreal and walk some more. Driving there we discovered it was packed and hard to find parking, so I asked if we could instead go to Verdun and check it out, the husband of my wife’s family member grew up there so was happy to.

I was smitten.

More of the 3 story brick apartment buildings all mashed together next to a long strip of green park along the river (street view). Cute little shops and cafes sprinkled around. It had it all. The walk along the river was so sunny and nice, I didn’t see a single homeless person as I would expect in any US city park. People were swimming in the river, soaking up the sun. It was an urban paradise like I had never seen, and checking the real estate prices, was not impossible to move to.

My having no pictures of this is testament to how smitten I was.

The Cousin’s Cabin

The same cousin that lived in Saguenay and his brother own a cabin about an hour north of Shawinigan. They invited us out and we decided to take the camper so we could stay for a night, possibly a couple.

We’re gradually getting better at maneuvering the ~32-foot camper that we have yet to name. Inevitably there are moments where I’m pretty sure a smattering of hairs turn gray and my body goes into fight or flight mode despite my seatbelt faithfully strapping me into a seated position. My wife and I are pretty mindful about not turning on each other though, and she glows like an angel in my eyes when I’m trying to back the camper somewhere, she stands outside like a lighthouse in an otherwise hail storm of mirrors, cameras, and nightmarish consequences. Backing the camper into the 50-yard skinny wooded driveway of the cabin, after having crawled along a 5 or so mile-long hilly dirt road, was quite a scene. I imagine I looked like a panicked bucking deer with the makeup of a calm person on.

Watching the kids run around the woods and jump on a trampoline with a gang of cousins and friends warmed my heart. Oakley had some buddies too and ran wild. There were about 5 families there, we had a feast of corn by a fire, the calm lake in the background. We didn’t even get sick this time.

Starting home school and new job

It got really busy there for a while. I had started a job search since it wasn’t clear that my current employer could support us living on the road like this. Eventually, I found that it all came down to how I worded the question. Rather than asking “hey are ya’all cool if I work from a trailer and travel around the US all I want?”, instead asking “is the company comfortable with me occasionally traveling and working outside of my domicile state, within my home country, assuming I stay responsible for all tax obligations?” got me the go-ahead. By that point though, I had gone the distance interviewing with an earlier stage, but very promising company. Weighing the two was exhausting, but I did eventually decide to move on to the younger company, enticed by an interesting problem space and the chance to work on just the sort of stuff I’m into. While all this was happening I was also setting up a homeschool curriculum.

Homeschool comes with a level of responsibility that can be unnerving, especially as we started a new school year. As parents, my wife and I reeeeeally don’t want to think our children are behind or not getting the education they need and deserve. After week one, while the kiddos were rusty, a strong feeling developed that we need to bail on this hippidy dippity idea, get a house, and put these kids in a proper school with homework, grades, and strict rules. We started looking at potential spots to land, a really big decision (all while I was negotiating and deciding on the new job). As the kids got in the groove though, they started taking off with their math and language arts, etc. we’ve been relaxing and realizing we could keep going for a while longer.

We’re back in Montreal for a couple of days, with the camper this time, to sort of shop it as a potential place to move one day. I’m still pretty smitten, but recognize that there are a lot of people here, lots of cars, lots of sounds, it may be a pretty safe city but it’s still big and intimidating for the family. Not to mention that moving to Canada is quite a paperwork headache and the taxes here are fierce.

So many variables to think about, but so much flexibility at the same time. Next, we’re going to explore Vermont a little bit, then head to Charlton, Massachusets to visit my grandparents, sister, and some of my side of the family.