The Magic of French Canada

My family just returned from nine days in Canada. This was my idea for this summer’s vacation once I heard tickets to Europe would be $4,500 for a family of four.

Quebec is basically the same as Europe, right? I thought. Maybe Montreal? I had never been. But that was my vague impression. I have to admit I am guilty of the uniquely American habit of basically not thinking about other countries very much. Including Canada, which I don’t even live very far from, but it SEEMS far away because there’s a giant lake in the way.

Anyway, I figured, Quebec was basically a little medieval city like Edinburgh. One of my Schticks on this blog is negging visiting Europe, (probably just because I haven’t been in a while.) Anyway, I probably could have called the whole trip to Europe, with my whole family, a business expense. Since I am writing a book about child-friendly cities and Europe is basically better than anyone at it (at least in the context of too-wealthy-for-their-own-good places that kind of made automatic easy things like children’s play hard and now need a public policy to fix it.)

But anyway, I’m really happy with my decision because it turns out I was basically right. Quebec was EXTREMELY Europe-y. In fact, it could out-Europe a lot of Europe, on the factors that Americans like me like about Europe (walkable places, yummy pastries, a beautiful built environment, a humming public realm.) It was like being in France but cheaper, and different of course, but fully AWESOME. It left nothing to be desired. AND, hopefully I’m not screwing it all up by writing about it, but it didn’t feel real tourist-y and fake.

We started off in Toronto, which we’ve visited a lot before, but we really like. We needed to break up the trip because Montreal is like 11 hours from where we live by minivan and Quebec is like 13. I know there are people that will just like power through that, but I can’t.

This is one of my favorite spots in Toronto. A fake beach right in the middle of the city!

One thing that worried me about this vacation was… Would it be too much driving? It was kind of mind blowing that you can just get in your car in Ohio and drive to a place that is so different. I don’t know if I feel that way about Toronto, but Montreal, to a degree, and Quebec for certain. All the sudden everyone’s speaking French. 🤯

Here’s some shots of Montreal.

The part of Montreal that impressed me most was the old port area. Many of the streets were closed off here and pedestrianized. And they were filled with people. There were all these cute restaurants in these ancient stone buildings.