(Post 256 of 263)

There’s a new direct flight between Regina and Montreal on Air Canada that is more expensive than the old Westjet route of going through Toronto. I will pay anything to never go through Toronto again and was grateful Air Canada was in better shape than Westjet. The payment system for food was down,  so it was free food for all!

YUL, like the rest of Montreal, is perpetually under construction so arrivals were complete chaos with long queues to be picked up. I found a door for my mother to pick me up at and after repeated calls, I told her I was staying put and she’d get to me when she could. It wasn’t until we were finally reunited that we both realised we should have met at arrivals instead.

I arrived early evening on the Saturday, so we caught up over beer and pizza from my favourite place, then I called it a night.

Sunday, one of my sisters and my brother showed up with their broods, as did my other sister’s younger boy. It was fantastic to catch up with everyone and meet nieces and nephews for the first time! Of the ones I’d met, some remembered me, most didn’t.

Monday was la St. Jean Baptiste, Quebec’s national holiday, so everything was shut tight. I took a vacation day and lazed around, planning my week ahead.

Tuesday, we headed into Montreal so I could do some shopping of items I can’t get locally in Mexico and which really can’t be ordered online. The first item was rain boots for wide calves. I do have rain boots of the type meant for mucking about in the garden, but they are not comfortable to walk to Pilates and back in. After seven years here of being held hostage when it rains, I was not coming back from Canada without urban rain boots that fit properly! I did considerable research and found a promising model with an adjustable calf that was in stock at Tony Pappas, a well-known Montreal shoe store: the Amanda II Tall by Bogs. I was dropped off near the store and was back out waiting for a lift before my mothers even had a chance to park! Talk about luck. I really did not expect the boots expedition to be that easy.

Next, I needed a specialised bra store because I have the fun situation of needing cups that are very small relative to my band size, so there’s literally nothing in stores for me in Mexico and I’m tired of buying ill-fitting bras online that I can’t return. J.A. Bouré Coursetière got me sorted very quickly. That was a really pricey trip, but at least now I know my size and what to look for when I shop online. This expedition also took no time at all, so I walked the couple of blocks to the Marché Jean Talon to join my mothers for lunch.

This being a bit of a touristy spot, the food options were $$$ and a bit bougie, but I was delighted with the spicy tuna onigiri I found for only $6.50 as it made for not just a delicious but also very filling lunch. While there, I also grabbed some maple syrup and candies for my sitters back home, happy to find the syrup in a miniature traditional rectangular can.

I was then dropped off near Métro Mont-Royal to go book hunting while my mothers headed to La grande bibliothèque. I bought a book a while ago from a French bookstore in CDMX not realising that not only was there a volume two, but also that volume two was out of print! There are several used bookstores on Mont-Royal, so the plan was to spend an hour going from store to store in hope of finding my book. Well, luck struck three times and I found my book in perfect condition at the first store! French books are ludicrously expensive, so even used they are not a bargain. I therefore only got one other tome and called it a day.

La grande bibliothèque is just a few métro stops away from Mont-Royal, at Berry-UQAM, so I was able to see how the Métro has changed since I started taking it in the mid-1990s. As it turns out, you still have to buy single tickets from a real person at a booth, but you can pay with a card, and the tickets are now $3.75. Instead of a little ticket that you promptly hand back to the attendant for the turnstile to open, you now get a card with a bar code to insert into the turnstile. Keep your card! The machines of old that issued “correspondences” are gone.

The station looked exactly as I remembered, but the cars have been updated. Those of you who follow me on Instagram saw the video of  a new Métro car entering Mont-Royal station (swipe or click right to get to the video).

You can access la Grande bibliothèque from inside Berri-UQAM station. The signage is excellent.

We were beyond done by this point because the traffic in Montreal was worse than its usual terrible. They need to figure that out. Mérida is going that way. 😔

Our final stop of the day was St. Jean-sur-Richelieu’s Enterprise branch for me to pick up a rental car.

Wednesday morning, I headed westbound towards Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes region, where I lived nearly 25 years ago. My destination was the lakeside summer home of my friends K&T who winter in Mérida. I really appreciated the new extension of Autoroute 30 that meant I did not have to go through Montreal. The toll is only $3.75 in each direction and worth every single penny.

I really took my time and the long way around, taking Highway 401 all the way to Brockville before heading north and meandering my way through cottage country until I got to Highway 7. It had been so long since I’d driven it that it was completely unfamiliar.

I stopped at the Subway in Sharbot Lake for lunch and was delighted by the creative menu, not expecting to have pork tandoori with habanero cheese and pickled jalapeños in such a tiny bump in the road.

My friends live deep in the woods, so they met me further down Highway 7 to lead me down the scary-in-a-rental-car road to their beautiful property. 🫣

They have a chihuahua who never had any use for me, but he ended up on my lap several times while I was there! 🥰

Like my Haven stop, this brief lakeside interlude was just what I needed from my trip to Canada.

Thursday morning, I followed T into “town” to attend the exercise class that she gives once a week. A lot of it was similar to things I do in Pilates. The stretch was most welcome ahead of the long drive back!

To return to Quebec, I took the more direct route through Ottawa since I had to be back by 5PM to return the car. I only stopped at the Harvey’s in Casselman for lunch. I remember their burgers being fantastic, but that was back when they were the only real option for a veggie burger. The beef burger and onion rings were meh, but I love that you can pick your toppings, which have really expanded to nearly match Subway’s offerings. I went with my usual relish, mustard, and tomato, but added pickled jalapeño. I do not remember pickled jalapeño being so readily available back when I lived in Canada! There are also a lot of habanero offerings, even at Tim Horton’s!

Friday morning brought a surprise. I’d checked the tracking on my box and it wasn’t going to arrive until the day after I left. But Canada Post came through for me!

I took a vacation day again on Friday, but did borrow my mother’s bike to get some grocery items that are difficult to find in Mérida:

-Patak Indian sauces (sadly the IGA did not have all varieties on my list)
-tomato paste in tubes
-packet gravy
-onion soup mix
-Better than Bouillon

Really, that’s all the staples I’m missing at home. There were a lot of other things that caught my eye, of course, but I’m trying to live where I live.

After dropping off the groceries, I got back on the bike again to go have lunch at a traditional pataterie. This was my third time on her bike that week. My hometown is very bikeable, flat with tons of bike paths, a real joy to tour around in. I have a bike in Mérida, but it’s so dangerous and time-consuming to get to the enjoyable biking areas that I hardly do it anymore.

For lunch, I went all out and had both a smoked meat sandwich and a poutine. I cannot believe I only had real fries once on my whole trip! But at least they were the real deal. This was so good and is what “home” tastes like.

Friday night, my cousin met me in the late evening and we went for a walk along the Richelieu River at the site of Fort Chambly, which looked pretty under the lights.

Saturday’s lunch was another item on my food bucket list for the trip, a real bagel from St. Viateur! My mother mixes all the toppings — capers, smoked salmon, dill — into the cream cheese, a superior method than layering everything.

My sitters kept me updated about the goings-on at home and sent me this sweet shot of my girls having accepted the strangers into their home and being able to relax around them:

I don’t remember what I did on Saturday. It was rainy and I probably just took a vacation day. Oh, my younger sister and her new partner came for dinner, so it was great to catch up with her and meet him, as well as see my eldest nephew who had missed the party on Sunday.

Sunday, I headed to the sports store where he works as I needed a pair of hiking shoes. He’s well trained and knowledgeable in the products his store carries, so after having me try on a half dozen pairs, he found the perfect thing, and well under budget. I was so proud of his professionalism!

Monday was Canada Day, so everything was closed. I took a long bike ride and got back to an invitation from my younger sister to have dinner at her house so I could meet her stepkids. They were a delight, and I was thrilled to have a chance to see the home she and her partner are renovating.

It was then time to try to go to bed early for a 5:40 wakeup call to start the long journey home, the part of the trip I was most excited about! All will be revealed soon enough. 😉