Quebec City and the Ghosts of my Parents

story and photos by Rachel Dickinson

Fairmont le Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City.A week before what would have been my parents sixtieth wedding anniversary I found myself heading to Quebec City and the Fairmont le Chateau Frontenac, the very hotel my parents stayed in on their honeymoon. I believed, at the time, that this was strictly coincidental, for I had no desire to recreate the beginning of a failed marriage, but a part of me also strongly suspected that there was no such thing as pure coincidence.

My father was straight off the farm – had never been anywhere or done anything – but he was a young man with the good looks of a B-movie star. My mother led a more sophisticated life as the daughter of a speechwriter for President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. She had grown up in Washington, DC, which she believed was like being at the center of the universe, especially during the war. When my grandfather was sacked by Truman, he retired to his family home in Upstate New York, bringing along his wife and youngest daughter and four house cats. Even though my mother had just graduated from high school, when the school year rolled around she decided to take another senior year at the little rural school near her new home primarily because she didn’t know what else to do. That is how she happened to meet my father.

Sixty years later as I stood in line in Montreal waiting for the train to Quebec City, I stared at the art deco bas relief covering the end wall of Central Station. Stylized stony figures doing the monumental things that needed to be done in order to create a civilization silently encouraged Canadians to take pride in whatever they were doing. My parents could have stared at this same wall, I thought, for the station was completed in 1943. As I looked at that hopeful frieze – and it was hopeful, for what is more forward-looking than a tribute to a country’s settlement and industrialization – I wondered if my parents saw that same hopefulness when they stared at the frieze. Because they were about to embark on their new life together, in some ways, they must have been filled with hope and plans for their shared future.

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Getting Back to Basics in Newfoundland

words + photos by Noella Schink

Most know of Newfoundland only because the Titanic almost made it there and… well, I guess that was the only time I’d heard of the island before I set off for it, backpack bulging. After hearing it was pretty, I decided I would travel there in an effort to unwind after my harrowing senior year. I wanted to rough it, explore new terrain; I was hopeful for a dose of nature’s rejuvenation after the fluorescent lockdown of high school.

My month-long trip started in central Maine. It took 12 hours to drive into Canada, through quaint New Brunswick and rural Nova Scotia, to the furthest tip of Cape Breton Island where “Lick-a-Chick” fried chicken’s neon billboard came out of the misty night as the only sign of life aside from the ferry terminal. It was a six-hour, overnight ferry ride to Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland.

The early morning fog did nothing to hinder my high spirits and I immediately took off on the scenic, albeit lonely, Trans-Canada Highway. I stopped at every brown and yellow Provincial Park sign, giddy for the start of my venture. J.T. Cheeseman gave me a chuckle with its goofy name, but the chilly tidepools and sweeping dunes were gorgeous. Little did I know the Newfie place names would only get quirkier as the scenery turned more dramatic.

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Sister Road Trip

by Vera Marie Badertscher

On our first trip together, we covered only a few blocks in a neighborhood of two-story white wooden houses in Columbus Ohio.  I was pushing my sister Paula's stroller. (Ask her. She would no doubt  say that I was always pushy.) At a few months old, she was oblivious to the great world around us--the bulbous cars parked along the street, the empty lot, dusty in the summer sun, or the brick store buildings up ahead on Cleveland Avenue. I, on the other hand, being ten years older, ten and a half when she was only six months old, I knew about everything.

As I walked, and she patted her chubby hands together, I daydreamed about how she would grow up with fond memories of her loving big sister and be eternally grateful for my attention and care. (Always about me, wasn't it, Paula?)  

These little walks down the block were definitely not the only trips we took as children.  Our parents loved to load up the car and go--most anywhere. Sometimes long car trips, sometimes just a drive down to the Scioto River for a picnic. On Sunday drives in the Ohio countryside, seeing the landscape between our father's salt and pepper crewcut hair and our mother's black bun, we would shout out “Go left” or “Go right” or “Go straight” at each interseciton--a kind of sibling Mapquest. It was a democratic route finding that our dad adventurously accepted.  “Go” was the operative word.

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A Tropical Escape in the Pacific Northwest

words + photos by Don Mankin

My two Teva-clad feet poked above the water, framing the view of the mouth of the cove spilling into the broad channel before us. The silhouettes of several tree-covered islands and mountains overlapped in different shades of pastel and receded in the distance.  I was floating on my back in the waters of coastal British Columbia. Not exactly the Caribbean – no palm trees, no rum drinks with paper umbrellas, and the water temperature was more than a tad or two colder. But the water was warm enough for a late afternoon swim, the scenery was more dramatic, and there was no one else to be seen other than my four sea kayak companions relaxing after a long day of paddling in the warm bright sunshine of the aptly named Sunshine Coast.

The Sunshine Coast is just a relatively short drive and an even shorter flight northwest of Vancouver. It’s easily accessible but still feels somewhat remote -- most of the coast above Powell River, the “urban” center of the region, can only be reached by boat or float plane. Like almost all of British Columbia's coast, it is strikingly beautiful -- islands of all sizes covered in Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar; narrow inlets and fjords indenting the rugged coastline; and jagged snow capped mountains in the distance framing long views across wide sounds. But unlike most of the B.C. coast, the Sunshine Coast is in the rain shadow of the low mountains of Vancouver Island to the west, so the weather is usually sunny, dry and warm, sometimes very warm.

I was here because it was easily accessible and, therefore, relatively inexpensive, not an unimportant concern in this era of bursting economic bubbles and fiscal uncertainty. The trip that lured me here was a seven day “Into the Majestic Mountains” kayaking trip offered by Powell River Sea Kayak Ltd. (www.bcseakayak.com).

The four of us, not including our guide, rotated among two single kayaks and one double throughout the trip. This was a real plus for me. I have taken many sea kayak trips over the years, but have rarely had the chance to paddle the more maneuverable single for any length of time. Most trip operators prefer the more stable doubles, not an unimportant consideration when the waters are rough and cold.  Truth be told, I was more than a little nervous about this, but I did just fine. What better place to confront one’s fears of tipping over than in the relatively warm, protected waters of the Sunshine Coast?

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Newfoundland: Three Lifetimes in Three Days

by Jules Older

I'm a travel writer, which means I'm a hit-and-run artist — New Zealand’s North Island today, the southern Sierra tomorrow. I'm the man who rarely returns.

Except to Newfoundland. I've been five times to Canada's easternmost, poorest and most interesting province. That chunk of rock in the North Atlantic, closer to Ireland than to Vancouver, 1,600 miles east of New York, captured my heart an hour into my first visit.

On the latest visit, I experienced three lifetime thrills in three consecutive days. Where else on earth can you do that?

THRILL ONE: ICEBERGS

It began in the tiny town of Springdale, where we hooked up with ace pilot Rick Adams, owner-operator of Springdale Aviation Ltd.

I flew over and around massive icebergs making their way south from Greenland. Never before had I seen a berg, and now they were scant yards below the Cessna 185's wing.

But if iceberging from a low-flying plane is a thrill, berging from a sea kayak is a life event. Because sea kayaking has a very steep learning curve -- you can be moderately proficient in an hour or so -- and because icebergs have a tendency to get stuck just offshore in the province's protected harbors, the experience is open to the many rather than the fit few.

It's a stunning experience. I drove over a hill and down into an outport, Newfoundland for coastal village. My heart thumped a little louder as I spotted the gleaming white of half a dozen icebergs towering above the dark water like dollops of cream on a chocolate cake. I couldn't wait to haul the kayak off the roof of the van.

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