A little bit of French s’il vous plait

Very quickly it seemed we moved from Ontario with its English speaking population and bilingual signage, into French speaking Quebec where the signs are only in French. This feels like a different country; the language seems to represent far more than words, but a style of living that is inherently different. For a start I noticed a greater pride in surroundings. The houses were neater, there was negligible litter and almost no graffiti. Manners were practised more diligently. The coffee was still bad though!
We spent the first night at a very nice motel at Montmagny. It was snowing again and everything looked clean and shapely under the snow’s effect. The next morning we drove along the great and historic St Lawrence Seaway. And the houses were simply stunning: so neat, so stylish…
After a long day on the road we ended up in a place called Campbellton where we stayed in an excellent hotel with a fabulous view of the J. C. Horne bridge. We took a walk along the esplanade after breakfast the next day and then headed off to explore more francophone wonders by driving highway 11 around the Arcadian Peninsula. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia: “Most settlement in the peninsula occurred as a result of the Expulsion of the Acadians during the Gulf of St. Lawrence Campaign (1758), where British personnel forcibly removed them from their homes, mostly in southern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.”
Almost all of the houses on this peninsula are waterfront or have magnificent water views. There are no fences. There is no garbage in evidence, no graffiti, and the houses are each different, with a certain style nevertheless emerging. I wanted to photograph them all and create a book called “The Houses of the Arcadian Peninsula” - original huh? Anyway I have included a couple here just to give a sense of them, a following post with 10 more. White churches also abound in this predominantly Roman Catholic area. At a cafe called the Creek, we had a perfect lunch of soup (chowder for him; beef and barley for me) with fresh white rolls, and a side of excellent frites. Poor coffee the only detractor - you can’t have everything it seems. The French in France would be appalled!
Tonight we are in Moncton. We didn’t mean to drive this far, it just seemed to happen naturally. And we saw our first moose 🫎 on the side of the road. Yay!!! Time for sleep. Be well everyone.Meer informatie