Quebec in the Summer is Joy

Quebec in the summer is joy in abundance. It doesn’t ration it out. It hands you the whole thing and says “here, take more than you think you need.”

I’ve been chasing that feeling for years, but this July, I got to chase it with seven other people who felt like they’d always been part of my life, even though some of them I’d only just met. That’s the thing about Passport Required trips. We don’t just go somewhere. We become a family for a week, and then we carry that family home with us, folded into memory like a good map.

Every day was a new reason to fall in love.

We started with rhythm at Taste of the Caribbean in Montreal, where the food didn’t just feed us, it told stories. Jerk and pikliz and plantain and music curling into the summer air, steel pans somewhere behind us, someone’s grandmother’s recipe on every plate. From there we drove out to Mont-Tremblant for the Blues Festival, where the mountains held the music like they’d been waiting for it, and I watched people who’d been strangers on Wednesday slow dance like old friends by Sunday.

We caught Festival International Nuits d’Afrique, a celebration so full of color and drum and joy that I had to remind myself to put my phone down and just be in it. Because Montreal never runs out of magic to hand you, we found ourselves, one day one, under the spells of Montréal Complètement Cirque, necks craned back, mouths open, watching bodies do things bodies aren’t supposed to do, all of us gasping in the same key.

And in between the festivals, the real Montreal.

The smoked meat at Schwartz’s, sliced thick enough to make you close your eyes on the first bite. I love more mustard than should legal and hot peppers. Maple apple bagels from St-Viateur that ruined bagels everywhere else for me, forever, unapologetically. Thank you, Erica and Kim. We walked above the treeline at Sentier des Cimes in the Laurentians, the whole forest breathing beneath our feet. We wandered through The Village with its rainbow flags and its unbothered joy, and we sipped something cold and something sweet in Chinatown while the city moved around us in a language of its own.

But if I’m honest, the festivals weren’t even the best part.

The best part was getting back to where we were staying and becoming, once again, just eight people who liked each other. Cooking together, then a family dinner. Laughter that started about nothing and became about everything. Laughter that hurt from games of Uno. Car rides with the windows down and somebody’s playlist teaching us all a new favorite song. Nights in the hot tub, steam rising into the dark, talking about childhoods and dreams and the strange, winding roads that had brought each of us to that water, together, at the same time.

That’s what travel is supposed to do. It’s supposed to take the walls down. And Quebec, with its festivals and its food and its unbothered, wide-open summer light, is exceptionally good at that.

I’m already ready for the September trip to Destination: Unknown. The world is full of rooms with our names on them. I hope you come, too.

Let’s go find them.