the cassandra pages

A Plea Against Anxiety

Yesterday morning I sat in the waiting room of the clinic where I have my annual medical exams. Something had changed since my last visit: a huge black television monitor occupied one wall, with the channel tuned to CNN.

It was impossible to ignore; the small waiting room had been turned into a screening room, where even patients who didn't want to watch were forced to listen. In the space of just a few minutes, I heard commentators speculate that this might be the day that North Korea decided to launch a missle. I heard reports of a new, deadly strain of bird flu in China, and an outbreak of meningitis among gay men in Los Angeles.  There was discouraging discussion about the gun control bill, and a story that parents in Japan are starting to refuse to allow their children to come to the U.S. for university study, because of a perception that the country is becoming too dangerous.

A white-coated tecnician came into the room to get a cup of coffee just as the meningitis story was playing; the screen showed large electron-micrographs as the journalist's voice intoned the latest statistics. Oh dear, said the man, turning to me with a dismayed look on his face. He stood for a few minutes, riveted to the screen, and then walked out the door to begin his day.

My doctor came to the door and called my name; I was glad to escape. But during the morning I had to come back to the waiting room several times, between visits to the nurse for blood work, an EKG, and various other appointments. Each time, I watched the behavior of the other people in the room, all of whom would turn to face the TV, shaking their heads at each grim, frightening story. Last year, most of them were absorbed in their cell phones. I looked for a magazine or newspaper; unlike former visits, this time there was only one, an old issue of Vanity Fair; instead I pulled a book out of my pack, but it was very difficult to concentrate on the words.

Finally I turned to one of the other women and said, "I'm American, and really, this is part of what I came to Canada to escape."

As it turned out, she was originally American too, from North Carolina, but we had a pretty different take on things. She was conservative, I more liberal. While I objected to being force-fed anxiety by inflammatory stories in the media, she insisted it was "important to be informed." "I'm really worried when I go to the U.S. now," she said. "If I go to a shopping center across the border I really look around me at the people; it seems like anything could happen. Everyone has guns." Well, yes, I agreed, many people do, and I think that's a big problem. But you have to look at the statistics as well; your chance of being killed in a Wal-Mart in Burlington, Vermont, is not extremely high.

We both finished our appointments and went home, where in the afternoon we learned what had happened in Boston, and the cycle of horror, speculation, analysis, and fear began spinning all over again.

I don't want to add yet another voice to that sad and mostly-well-meant cacophony. I've spent many days of my life in Boston, and my heart goes out to the people of that city. If there is something concrete I can do to help, I will do it.

What I've been thinking about is the television in the waiting room, a Canadian waiting room, that once was a quiet place where people read, or talked to a companion, or even simply sat and looked out the window. Its presence seems to me an ominous symbol of something that has gone very wrong in most western societies: our inability to be with ourselves, to cope with the essential human condition of solitude, especially in situations that cause our anxiety to rise. It concerns me that, in our secular, post-liberal-arts, technological, perpetually-connected society, so little effort goes into teaching children how to be alone, showing them the richness and solace of time spent with nature, with the arts and handcrafts, with books and music, with oneself walking in a city or sitting on a bench: eyes open, ears open, mind and heart awake to the dance of life flowing around us.

When I return to the United States, as I did just last week, I'm always struck by the palpable level of general anxiety, so much greater than it is here in Quebec. But is that anxiety, and the corresponding reactiveness -- even in the wake of tragedies such as have been experienced in the past decade -- justified? In today's New York Times, University of Maryland criminologist Gary LaFree states, “I think people are actually surprised when they learn that there’s been a steady decline in terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 1970.” Speaking of both domestic and foreign plots, he noted that there were approximately 40 percent fewer attacks in America during the ten years after 9/11 than there had been in the previous decade. (LaFree is director of the highly-regarded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which studies terrorism and keep a Global Terrorism Database. He adds a note that nearly half the worldwide attacks, and 1/3 of those in the U.S., have never been solved.)

However, I think the media bears a large responsibility for fanning the flames of American anxiety.  Supposed neutral channels like CNN feed viewers an endless diet of anxiety-producing stories, while the left and right square off in loud, combative talk shows and news hours, each side trying to out-shout the other. Television is a very powerful medium. Is it any wonder that so many people feel under attack, vulnerable, and constantly anxious, worrying about what is going to happen to them or to their loved ones? It it any wonder that they feel like the entire world is taking sides, at war, that it's us-against-them, myself against the potential unknown assalilant, intruder, terrorist, crazy person lurking in every community? Furthermore, we know that violence begets violence, that copycat crimes proliferate, and that what a lot of perpetrators want the most is publicity.

If the U.S. wants to worry about drugs and terrorism slipping across its porous northern border, then I am concerned about the insidious infiltration of this kind of secular preaching, these incessant sermons of anxiety and fear originating from the south. And much more than that, I wonder if those of us who have chosen to live our lives differently can perhaps be more vocal and intentional about why, and how. The world has always been dangerous for a vast majority of its citizens, but we in the west have been able to ignore that too long. Living positively, with awareness and joy in each day -- in spite of the possibility of death, which can and does happen anywhere, anytime -- is actually possible, as our brothers and sisters in war-torn, poverty-ravaged societies can teach us. And to look closer to home on this sad day: who knows better the fullness of solitude, or the potential triumph of the human spirit, than the long-distance runner?

Diary: Winter Weekend in the Country

near St-Emelie-de-l’Énergie, Quebec

Late afternoon. The long dark blue shadows that stretched across the snow from the base of each tree, each little shrub, each delicate sapling when I came upstairs to take a nap have disappeared now, an hour later, into a sea of the same dark blue, and through the round window high in the wall to my left, I can see the sun's final flares between tall pines.

We arrived at noon, having delayed the trip from the city by a day because of a snowstorm. After shoveling a path to the door we brought in the luggage, the bags of food and wine, a carton of twelve bottles of Boréale, the cheese we’d bought at Fromagerie du Champ à la Meule on the way. We added my snowshoes to the pile already stacked in the garage, and changed from boots to slippers. G. quickly built a fire in the big stone fireplace, and put out a half-kilo of peanuts for the bluejays, to whom she whistles on arrival (they come in about two minutes, she confided to us, grinning,) while S. set about unpacking the groceries and poured each of us a beer, which we drank with crackers and pickled herring while the fire began to spread its warmth.

Lunch was a salad, with breads and oatcakes, followed by grapes and cheese: a soft, round triple-crème, a firm wax-covered wedge from the fromagerie, and a Sablot de Blanchette  - a sablot is  hoof or a clog – a small, square block of aged goat cheese. While we ate, the birds did too, coming and going from the trees to the feeders just outside the windows that G. keeps full all week: chickadees and blue jays, pine grosbeaks, and a beady-eyed hairy woodpecker.

I love it here; the silence and the presence of nature, the light which streams into the many-paned windows all day, making patterns on the white walls and the woodwork. The house is Shaker: meditative and simple. But conversation has been a strain for me. I’m tired and drained after many days of dealing with people, of listening too much, and I’m tired of feeling entrapped by winter. Maybe I need to be alone, or to get away to someplace warm. Or maybe I just need this.

After we’d cleaned up from lunch G. went into town to do a few errands, and the rest of us fell quickly asleep. When I woke I felt considerably better; how much of my mood is merely fatigue? The others are downstairs; I can hear J. and G. hauling wood into the porch outside, and I know no one will press me to come down before I’m ready. The light in this north-facing room, above the garage, will only last another half hour at best, and then perhaps I’ll sit and meditate, or turn on a lamp and read before dinner. There’s to be Quebec lamb, they said, and probably sherry and west coast smoked salmon, from S.’s mother, before that. For dessert, crab apple jelly with whipped cream. Perhaps I’ll ask if anyone wants to sit with me. Or be sociable instead, and have a cup of tea.

(I went down, and had the tea.)

8:20 am

I woke at 3, after four hours of sound sleep, and rose quietly and went downstairs. The fire had died down to embers. I put the tea kettle on the stove, added a dry log to the fire, and made myself a nest on the sofa in front, under a fleece throw and a Scottish wool plaid blanket. The house was absolutely still. Even without my glasses I could see that the night sky was perfectly clear, and studded with millions of stars. The log caught and blazed, and I shut the door to the firebox, and came back to the sofa with an oatcake and my hot mug of tea -- tilleul, linden – it seems appropriate somehow that I should be drinking tea made from a tree. I was happy sitting there in the darkness, the fire in front of me, the frigid silent woods encircling the house like a mystery, and stayed awake with my thoughts until five or so, when my eyelids finally closed and sleep came again.

My friends came downstairs, S. first, then G., shortly after I woke at 7. I had rejuvenated the fire already, and S. made coffee. Now G. is preparing scones which she’ll bake over a wood fire in the bread oven, next to the fireplace. On the porch, the little red squirrel is defending his own pile of peanuts from six bluejays, who sit in the nearest tree, their white breasts fluffed and shining in the sunlight. The temperature is minus twenty-eight C.

11:00 am

We’re about to go snowshoeing, after a very leisurely morning. The bright sun has warmed the outside air to -8 C. (about 18 degrees F.) and the animals and birds are busy gorging themselves. During our own breakfast, a glossy black squirrel appeared – look, it’s Balthazar! G. cried, saying they hadn’t seen him for two years. He was quite gorgeous, fit for a nobleman’s hat if there were still French trappers searching for prize pelts. After a brief moment of reticence, he sprang up onto the brick wall and craned his neck to get a good look at the strange inhabitats of the interior, refusing to jump down even when we peered back at him, close to the window. Finally he began burrowing for seeds at the base of the feeder, bringing his head up every now, his black nose covered with fine snow, and eventually bounded away into the far trees, leaving a definitive trail of leaps in the pristine snow.

The shadows shrink as we approach midday. Because I’ve seen both sunrise and sunset in the past 24 hours, I’ve marked out the arc of the sun’s appearance and setting along the ridge of pines; it’s still short, this east-west wedge, and the sun isn’t even halfway to the zenith as it makes its transit.

1:15 pm

Back from a long trek on showshoes, around the new lake that was dug in the fall,  and then breaking a trail through the deep snow into the woods, past the cat cemetery, up the hill and down again to the old sandpit, where we stopped to take some photographs and catch our breath, listening to the silence. Then we retraced our path. A strenuous hour and a quarter, under an absolutely clear sky, the snow and the paper birches brilliant white against the blue. Twice I stopped to scoop up a small handful of fresh snow and eat it, feeling the fine crystals melt on my tongue. How I’ve missed being out in the woods in winter!

Now we’ll have lunch, and then a few hours of quiet before leaving around 4:30. I think the city will feel like a shock.

3:40

A last round; watering the plants, checking the bathrooms and living room for stray clothes, cameras, books. G. has given me shoots of a large, spotted angel-wing begonia, and her lemon pelargonium, which is quickly taking over the upstairs bathroom. Fortunately it’s a warmer day so I’ll be able to get the cuttings back to Montreal without risk.

The sun disappeared during our late lunch, but the northern shrike made her appearance, just as G. had predicted, sitting high in the little aspen and frightening all the other creatures into immobility or disappearance. She's a beautful bird, the first of her species I've ever seen, with a lightly striped white breast, a soft grey head, a strong beak and a slender black mask like an elegant Carnival figure of dubious and possibly alarming intention; everyone steers clear. At length she flew off, the sun came out again, and with it the chickadees, who seem to be the mascots of this house at the edge of the wilderness, always cheerful and hopeful, waiting for the next appearance of the humans.

Poplars at Cap à l'Aigle

I'm desperate for some color, so I'm working on a few rapid views of Quebec in the summer. This is a road in the small village in the Charlevoix where we've stayed twice. What caught my eye was this line of poplars. It's a typical sight in Quebec, and must have been ever since the first French settlers planted trees, since these are certainly not native to the boreal forest! In the countryside, particularly, you'll see tall poplars planted singly or in formal rows near farm houses or in the villages, and sometimes just along the road. The trees are lovely but they struggle a lot in the harsh climate, often growing spindly and thin with age, or even dying off, but I do love seeing them. The're one of the first features of Quebec that I noticed when we began coming up here from Vermont; cross the border, and there they are.



Eventually there will be a print, but right now I'm just studying the shapes and possible compositions, and enjoying working in color. It's therapy; I'm at a bit of a low point dealing with the weather and feeling trapped by winter, with so much of it yet to come!

A Shallow Victory, Followed by Tragedy

Pauline Marois' Parti Quebecois won a narrow victory in yesterday's election, but not enough to form a majority government. At the victory celebration at Montreal's Metropolis theater, a gunman came in through the back after setting a fire and fired a rifle, killing one man and critically wounding another. The gunman was subdued by police and taken away, during which he shouted in French at the TV cameras: "The anglophones are waking up!"

Those are the facts as we know them right now. Quebec and Canada being what they are - i.e., not America -- few in the media are speculating or laying blame; the police and the media have acted with responsibility, restraint, and professionalism. No one knows exactly what the gunman meant, because we don't yet know who he was. However, it seems most likely that he was an anglophone extremist who didn't like what Pauline Marois stands for and has been saying.

What we can say for certain is that the past six months in the province have been the most tense in many years. As I wrote yesterday, I was upset by Pauline Marois' rhetoric and platform calling for strengthening the language laws and imposing restrictions on religious dress. I'm not upset that she, or other people, have strong feelings about their own culture; that is her right and furthermore, I understand historically why she feels that way. But I am opposed to rhetoric that can be perceived as racist in any form, and particularly to public officials inflaming tensions along any societal divides: cultural, sexual, ethnic, religious. When political leaders, or celebrities, or talk show hosts -- anyone with a public voice -- does this, it runs the risk of inciting people to violence and hate crimes, as well as lesser but very damaging incidents where self-control would normally prevail.

Yesterday a YouTube video went viral on the social networks. It showed a drunken couple on a late-night Montreal street verbally attacking some Asian men for speaking English instead of French in public. Of course, there is no law in Quebec saying that anyone has to speak French in public! But like the video of a London woman berating an immigrant on a bus earlier this year, this couple were out of control, repeatedly demanding of the men if they had been born in Quebec, calling them "fucking British," and screaming at them to speak French.

Today, anyone can turn into a public figure, with an audience. 80,000 people have watched that video so far.

The election concerns all of Quebec, but we also have our own city to consider. The most unique and precious thing about Montreal is not merely its French ambience and European flavor, but its vibrant and peaceful multiculturalism. That is what we all should be trying to recognize and protect.

A society can be full of people who have reasonable, rational, balanced attitudes about difficult issues -- frankly, this election demonstrated that, and in general our daily culture does too. A shooting incident like this is very unusual for Montreal, and shocks us -- it is only the 22nd homicide of the entire year, in a city of over 3 million people, but every senseless human death is a tragedy. It should wake us all up to the fact that there is no room for inflammatory rhetoric in our society. I've lived with so much of this in the United States, and seen where it leads. Surely we can do better here, and demand better from our leaders as well as ourselves.

Election

Political posters in my neighborhood. The man in the photo is our current representative in the National Assembly in Quebec, his name is Amir Khadir. The fact that he could be elected here speaks volumes about why I want to live here - read the link to see why.

Today, a provincial election, and I cannot vote. I'm not pleased about this; it makes me feel helpless. But, as permanent residents but not-yet-citizens, that's the rule. I hope I can vote in the next one.

Many people, myself included, are not entirely pleased with the choices. Yesterday I did an online "how do you stand" survey on the CBC website, which asks for your (completely anonymous) views on the major issues, and then not only shows whcih party you are closest to, but you how you stand on each issue in relation to all of them, and gives you tools for understanding and studying the results. It was the most sophsiticated tool like that I've ever seen; I was impressed and fascinated. The problem is that while my views are closest to the Greens; to Quebec Solidaire, a new party trying to get established; and even to the Parti Quebeçois in some areas, the latter two are separatist, and I don't want that. (I agree with Quebec Solidaire's basic platform; what I'm not sure about is its economic viability. But I remain open to hearing more. Most people agree that Françoise David, Quebec Solidaire's spokesperson along with Amir Khadir, won the recent debate.)

The Liberals, under Jean Charest, have held power for the past nine years. There have been a number of corruption scandals, and I think Charest's recent handling of the student strikes was arrogant, conservative, and wrong-headed. It's time for him to go. But the Liberals are a national party; they want Quebec to stay part of Canada, and on the surface they seem more sympathetic to the anglophone and immigrant minorities. But are they really?

In the end, I am here because I like what Quebec stands for. I like it different drummer, its refusal to go the way of Stephen Harper. I like its pacifism, its socialism, its sense of restorative justice, its stubbornness about putting the welfare of the whole society first and individualism a little bit further down. And I want it to stay that way.

All the polls indicate that a referendum on sovereignty wouldn't pass; it has failed twice already, but the issue doesn't die. The Parti Quebecois seems likely to win, and what distresses me about their rhetoric is that it continues to be informed by the past, and to look inward, from a point of view of insecurity, cultual protectionism, and even paranoia, when Quebec can and should be looking outward, toward the future. Provinicialism serves no one, and it absorbs a huge amount of energy that could be placed elsewhere. French society and language are well protected here, and loved and appreciated even by many - like me - who are not part that culture by birth. It's time for fear of the outside, of the other, to be relegated to the past, and a new attitude of openness and outward-looking to begin to shine. Quebec is unique in North America, not just for its language and its culture, but for its determination to hold to decent and honorable social and democratic values while other so-called democracies are really run by the rich and powerful for their own interests. We can all be proud of that, and champion it strongly.

This is the first election here that I've really cared about, and I thnk that means I really feel this is my home. So even though I won't be casting a vote, I'll wait for the results tonight with interest, and hope that whatever happens, we can raise a new generation of leaders who represent all of Quebec, who are committed to protecting our shared values, and to looking outward, and forward.

At the SAAQ

Yesterday morning I spent quite a while waiting at the SAAQ, the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec, better known in English as the motor vehicle bureau. If you're going to sit and draw for an hour while waiting for your turn, it's nice to be where other people are stuck sitting still too!

I rode my bike over there first thing in the morning, which was probably dumb. This particular office, on rue Molson (yes, named after the brewing family), is where you go if you want a taxi license, and when I arrived there was already a line of many men -- all men, actually -- waiting to take their taxi exam. In Montreal the majority of taxi drivers are from Africa. After I had taken my number  -- A17 -- from the machine I sat down in the waiting area below a big screen displaying the current numbers being served  -- A3 -- and at which window. All the men came and sat in a clump behind me near the door that leads to the exit and the examiners, and all the while I waited they talked to each other in a murmer of languages, some Arabic but mostly African languages I didn't recognize at all. I had the sense that many were accompanied by friends who were already taxi drivers. It was so tempting to draw them, but couldn't without turning around and attracting attention, or perhaps even cause offense. One man was particularly striking, in a long white robe and a beautifully crocheted white skullcap.

Bureaucratic tasks like this made me so nervous when we first came here, but it's gotten a lot easier. When I arrived at the window to renew my own driver's license and health system card, the exchange was all in French; I managed it and the clerk didn't switch, though he was certainly bilingual - my own minor exam success for the day. Because I had waited a while since they sent me the notice of renewal, he handed me back my present license and a provisional new one on a piece of paper, saying to be sure to keep them together because I probably wouldn't receive the card until after my birthday. Then he sent me over to the far window to have my picture taken, and I was amused to see that the person behind the camera was the same young man who had been in front of me on the bike path, an hour earlier. Click!

Charlevoix 3

Sunrise. These are the last of the photos from the Charlevoix.

This is an old house built in the Norman style - the curved edges of the roof are very typical - high above the river; it belongs to a friend of our friend.

Monkshood in the garden.

The view from the lawn of the house, over the little chapel you saw in the previous post.

And an imagined afternoon: rocking chairs on a Charlevoix porch, looking over Le Fleuve.

While we're sitting here, you might like to listen to a few selections from my friend Carole Therrien's CD, Vues du fleuve. Carole owns and runs a major Canadian jazz label, Effendi Records, with her partner, the well-known Montréal bassist Alain Bédard. She's a terrific jazz singer, but I know her best as a classical singing companion -- she's the first soprano soloist in our choir at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, and has a voice that makes time stand still. There are clips from all the cuts on her CD here, and three full selections here. Talking to Carole and listening to this music -- like visiting the Charlevoix -- have helped show me what "The River" really  means to the Quebeçois. On her website she quotes Denys Lelièvre:

Devant le fleuve, l'homme est à la fois nu et comblé.
Il a la certitude d'être en lien avec quelque chose de plus vaste que lui:
<<Je ne suis plus seul maintenant.>>

(loosely translated: "Before the river, man is both naked and fufilled. He has the certainty of being in a place with something bigger than he is: 'I am not alone anymore.'")

Charlevoix 2

The rugosa roses were in full bloom, even in the sandy soils near the river beaches. On Saturday our friend took us to Port-au-Persil, literally "Parsley Port," so named by Samuel Champlain because he thought he saw Scottish parsley growing there. Oddly enough, eventually Port-au-Persil was settled by Scottish families. Now, the little settlement is a mixture of French year-round dwellers and Anglo "summer people."

We had a picnic on the beach, where our friend used to come as a child with her grandmother and great-aunts. There were dry salami, Quebec cheeses, smoked mackerel, French bread, a bit of paté, and hard-boiled eggs, which we cracked and ate dipped in salt poured into a crevice in the rocks. "My grandmother liked to come here and have what she called a 'tea picnic,' our friend told us. "We'd make a fire in the rocks, and boil the kettle right there, and have tea with little sandwiches and often hard-boiled eggs." She looked out at the water and smiled. "I've eaten a lot of hard-boiled eggs on this beach!"

After lunch we explored the tide pools, being careful not to slip on the wet mats of seaweed. The pools were teeming with all sizes of a small, green, shrimp-like crustacean, and many many snails.

Then we went clamberng over the rocks, many of which had amazing, almost perfectly straight grey stripes in the pink granite.

This is Labrador tea, growing lushly at the edge of the rocks.

And this is the interior of the tiny seaside chapel shown in the second photo. Services were held here once a month in the summer until recently, when the house nearby changed hands; the present owners allow the chapel to remain open but don't permit public worship there, which is a shame - no one seems to know why. Though probably there were memories of tragedies held between those white walls, the chapel had a lovely, peaceful feeling inside, looking out at the water.

Charlevoix 1

This is Baie-St-Paul, looking back upriver to the west, toward Quebec City. From here we drove north along the coast, up and down the steep cliffs, through the picturesque little villages of Les Eboulaments and St-Irénée, to La Malbaie/Point-au-Pic and our destination, Cap a l"Aigle (Eagle Cape.) Les Eboulements has an interesting geological history which I didn't know about until we got back (quotes below are from various sections of the Wikipedia:)

Les Éboulements is located in the centre of the Charlevoix crater. Mount Éboulements (Mont des Éboulements), in the eastern part of the municipality, is considered the central rebound of the earth's crust following moments after the meteor impact some 350 million years ago.

(In the photo at left, Baie-St-Paul is the bay at the righthand bottom of the semicircle; La Malbaie is the bay at the top. Les Eboulements is at the right center, just next to the river and this paragraph.)

The impact origin of Charlevoix crater was first realized in 1965 after the discovery of many shatter cones in the area...90% of the inhabitants of the Charlevoix now live within the crater.

In February 1663, a strong earthquake shook the Charlevoix region and triggered a large landslide down the slopes that characterize the hills of the area along the Saint Lawrence coast. Among the many eyewitnesses that testified to the significance of the event, priest Lalement wrote: "near the Bay called St. Paul, there was a small mountain alongside the river, a quarter of a league in circumference, which was abyssed, and as if it had not done that dive, it came out of the bottom to change into an islet." Thereafter the area was known as les Éboulements (French for "the landslides")

This region is about two hours northeast of Quebec City, five hours from Montreal. The tide reaches Quebec City- weakly, I think - but by the time you are at La Malbaie the river really feels like ocean. It's a saltwater estuary, full of a fascinating mixture of freshwater and marine life, and very beautiful. Ironically perhaps, considering its dramatic formation, the whole Charlevoix region has a reputation for peaceful charm, freshness and beauty, and for the excellence of its fish, farm products, cheeses, and even wine. It's very sparsely populated, and when you look north toward the mountains, all you see are trees: the boreal forest.

This was the view from the porch of our friend's house:

And here are the little fresh trout we had for dinner, brought to her by another friend that morning. I did the beheading and cooking honors, and it reminded me so much of my own childhood, when we used to go out and catch fish and clean and eat them for dinner.

Yes - those are the same as my own plates - an odd coincidence. Unfortunately, we were also someone's dinner: in spite of insect repellant, hats, turtlenecks, and citronella candles, the vicious black flies drove us inside after we finished our main course, and we spent a good while that evening dousing our painful, itchy bites with Benadryl and calamine lotion.

The house was an un-winterized cottage, quaint and rustic. Here's the view out our bedroom window toward the garden wall and street:

And the dining room, with a bowl of fresh peaches, the first we've had this season (these are from Ontario):

I loved this poster on the dining room wall, appropriate because there were birds everywhere. The house had a very warm feeling; we liked it.

Tomorrow, a trip to the beach at Port-au-Persil.

The Big River

We're just back from 2 days in the gorgeous Charlevoix, along the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. This was drawn quickly on the rocky beach at Port-au-Persil, looking downriver toward the sea, after a big glass of white wine and a picnic...full-color coverage begins tomorrow.