Trip photos: Québec and Ontario

We got as far as Québec and spent the night in Ste Foy. I was reminded, driving through Gaspé, how most places seem to be named after really specific saints. In California, for instance, you can guess what day a place was 'discovered' by Spanish explorers. It is always the saint's day (San Francisco, San Jose, San this-and-that). In Québec, most places are Saint somebody of the something something. My favorite, of course, is Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! How can you resist a name with such punctuation? Can you name another place name with not one, but two exclamation points? Plus, he sounds like a hoot (though, apparently the sense of the word Ha! Ha! (yes, word singular) is an "unexpected obstacle or abruptly ending path", and francophones I know never seem to find it the least bit funny). Maybe I just have a silly sense of humour.




The next morning we drove through Montréal to Ottawa and them up to Barry's Bay.
RJH joked that more fire departments should embrace this simple solution to their workloads: ban all fires in town.

We spent a few days with my father and brothers and sister-in-law at the cottage. RJH took Marley out in the kayak. I don't know if you've met any Labs, but that dog is like an extra furry seal with legs. He's happier in, or on the water.

We went for a short drive, to check out an archery supply store in the woods, and happened by these ... I want to call them shoe trees. I don't know why there are dozens of shoes nailed to these trees, but we stopped and took photos. One stray shoe was several metres (dozens of feet) up. It wasn't obvious how it got there.




The cottage, designed by my step-mother's father the architect, is like some sort of wooden space-ship, with moose antlers and plates on the ceiling.