Quebec City and history
Experiences sometimes don't necessarily change you, they illuminate how much change has already occurred within you.
Seven years ago, two friends and I piled into a car and drove for 29 hours to spend 6 weeks in Quebec City. We were there as part of the Canadian government's EXPLORE program, which encourages students in learning the French language at a university in Canada. Up until then, the furthest east I had ever been was the one time I had flown into Toronto for a wedding, so let's just say trying to learn the French language was only a small part of the many new experiences on this trip.
Starting out in Winnipeg, it took us two and a half days to get there. Going through Thunder Bay and then up north through northwestern Ontario, it was different scenery from the many family car trips we would take during the summers we were back in Canada, criss-crossing the flat prairies.
We were a little unprepared for where we would pitch our tent and on the first night we stopped by the side of the road to sleep in our car. It turned out to be a restless night and by 3:30 in the morning we finally gave up and kept driving. The long morning of weaving through the slowly waking landscape remains one of the most vivid memories of the drive.
After finding a campsite during the second night, we arrived early in the morning in Ottawa. Quickly stopping by the houses of Parliament to snap a pic, we all piled back into the car and continued on through the morning calm towards Montreal. I was assigned the driving and with my two other friends napping away, the drive to Ottawa to Montreal was quiet, but gave me a lot of space to think.
Most of my thoughts revolved around the place I was at that moment in time: on route from Ottawa to Montreal. Thoughts raced back to the people that had crossed this land before: Indigenous peoples, French and British, on foot, horses, carriages, and now cars. It was kind of a "if these walls could talk" moment. Having just completed a history degree with focusing my interest over the last two years of it on discovering the history of my local area, it slowly dawned on me that this inquisitiveness wasn't simply isolated to my Winnipeg area.
Driving into Quebec City, I had no previous understanding of its geography or landscape. As we drove in from the south and crossed over one of the bridges that spanned the St. Lawrence, I was taken aback at the incredible topographical variation.
During my first night at my homestay, our host mom gave us a quick tour as we drove through the city. I didn't understand any of it because it was all in French. What I do remember, is that we started out from where we were staying in the western edge of Quebec city and we descended on highway onto the lower shoreline areas, into the old Quebec city, ascended through its cobble stone roads, gradually made our way westwards past more historical buildings, and then finally home again.
Not knowing any French, it was extremely hard throwing myself into conversing with people on the street or people in my homestay. I would constantly get frustrated with the shallowness of all the conversations that I managed to get through. However, as the weeks went by I found myself getting into the swing of things. Getting up early, going to a morning of classes and then exploring around the city afterwards. Biking around everywhere, allowed me to become incredibly knowledgeable about the layout of city.
I decided to regularly attend Sunday mass with my homestay mom, more of as a way to experience some more of Quebecois culture, however it also helped to introduce me to people outside of the Explore program. There was Pacifique, who was from the DRC. We hung out several times making small talk and by the end of my time I was able to converse with him in very basic French. There was also Father Edward, a Russian Catholic priest, who alongside speaking Russian and French, also spoke English fluently and on multiple occasions we would discuss our own lives, matters of faith, and the realities of Quebec culture.
Writing now and reflecting on my experience there, those weeks are very much a blur. One of the things I remember is that it was the first time that I was exploring a new place on my bike and feeling the weight of history in every building and every street that I encountered. I remember grabbing a coffee with my Winnipeg colleague in a square in Old Quebec (pictured above) and thinking "these buildings are a city that has been here for almost 400 years." I couldn't stop from trying to visualize it all, everything that this place has seen. All the conflicts, joys, battles and celebrations that had transpired.
Thinking back on it now it seems so strange that this was a new experience for me. Before this time I had been to places in Europe that were much, much older. I grew up in Macau, which had been a Portuguese outpost for over 450 years, but for whatever reason the weight of it all merely blew over me. It wasn't that I disregarded any of it. I credit much of my interest in history towards growing up in such a historic city. But something about after having intensely focused my gaze into the history of Winnipeg seemed to heighten my historic awareness. Reflecting on it further, I think it was one of the first times I was spending a significant amount of time somewhere else by myself, exploring it mostly all on my bike. But I’ll save my rant about the joys of exploring cities on bikes for another post.
But I think what was most important in that time that I spent in Quebec City, was that I made realizations about the importance of the education that I had just gone through in my undergrad. I learned that before my undergrad, I would take in information regarding a space in an incredibly superficial level. Despite saying that I enjoyed history, all throughout high school and travelling to different places, I saw the history of a region as nice tidbits of information, not really as a pathway to connect deeper to the place that I was currently in.
There are some moments when I think I shouldn't have gotten a history degree. I think to myself "I've always been interested in history and probably always will. Should I have really gotten a history degree?" I think it was really in Quebec city where I found out how a history degree really changed my entire sense of not only taking in historic information but engaging and moving through the world. Removing myself from my Winnipeg context, I realized that the thoughts that I had been thinking over four years weren’t simply an isolated contained exercise, but a genuine true change in myself. Quebec city didn't change me. Instead, it was where I found out how much change had already occurred in myself.
Whether I know you in person or just through the internet, would love to hear about any experiences that brought similarly big realizations about yourself. Shoot me a message, tell me a story, would love to hear from you. Thanks if you have read this far.