Despite my commitment to stay away from as much news as possible since last November\u2019s election, I did inadvertently catch a couple of minutes of Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau\u2019s press conference responding to the tariffs. As I listend I thought \u201cWow, wouldn\u2019t it be nice to have a national leader who is calm, clear, direct, professional, younger than seventy years old, who can put several coherent sentences together in a row?\u201d \u201cOh wait,\u201d I remembered\u2013\u201cWe had one of those a few years ago.\u201d This caused me to remember all of the reasons I love Canada. I wrote about this about a year and a half ago\u2013it\u2019s a reminder of why I would be happy if New England, a couple of other northestern states, the Pacific Northwest states, and select states in the northern midwest chose to become new southern provinces of Canada.<\/strong><\/p>\n A number of years ago, during the early years of President Barack Obama\u2019s first term, a debate raged over his proposed \u201cAffordable Care Act\u201d which, once successfully made into law, became the signature achievement of his presidency. I recall a pointed debate the \u201cLetters to the Editor\u201d page of our local newspaper (this was in the days when there were still hardcopy newpapers and printed letters to the editor). One critic of the proposed act wrote \u201cI\u2019m against this! What, do we want to be like Canada?\u201d to which someone responded \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with Canada? Canada is awesome!\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed it is, so awesome that Jeanne and I are already planning our two-week vacation next summer with Canada in mind. Our last big vacation was five years ago in Scotland, which still ranks as the most beautiful place I\u2019ve ever been. When a friend who lives near Toronto heard how much we loved Louise Penny\u2019s Chief Inspector Gamache mystery series has everything a lover of mysteries could want. Fascinating characters developed from book to book, psychological insights into the best and worst of human nature, a bit of humor, a lot of creativity, a quaint setting where nothing ever happens (other than a murder every few months), and plenty of dead bodies. One of the additional selling points of any mystery series is often an exotic and unfamiliar setting, but here Penny\u2019s books are different from the P. D. James, Elizabeth George, Jo Nesb\u00f8, and Kate Atkinson series that I particularly like. Chief Inspector Gamache does his work on territory very familiar to me, only a few dozen miles from where I grew up. Accordingly, I feel that I am returning home every time I open one of Penny\u2019s books. Since we lived only forty miles south of the Canadian border, I saw many Qu\u00e9bec license plates during my youth. \u201cJe me souviens,\u201d each plate said\u2014to my great confusion.I knew no French; my brother, who took two or three years of French in high school, was useless when it came to actually translating something in real time. He struggled reading a menu in French, but at least could translate the word \u201cmeubles\u201d (furniture) on a Qu\u00e9bec billboard. I remember my father\u2019s uproarious laughter as my brother tried to explain how the word was pronounced in French\u2014it sounded like a cow mooing through its nose.<\/p>\n As I got older I was equally useless translating French, since I spent four years in high school learning Latin\u2014I didn\u2019t learn any French until college, and then only French for reading classics in the original. All highly impractical, and all poorly fashioned for translating license plates. Tracing \u201cJe me souviens\u201d back to possible Latin roots (\u201csubvenio\u201d), I thought it might mean \u201cI assist\u201d or even \u201cFollow me.\u201d I knew that the \u201cme\u201d on the license plate made it a self-referential verb, but \u201cI assist myself\u201d or \u201cI follow myself\u201d didn\u2019t make sense. I didn\u2019t know anyone who knew French, never thought of asking the French teacher across the hall from the Latin class, so I left northern New England for college not knowing what the saying on Qu\u00e9bec license plates meant.<\/p>\n Many years later I realized that \u201cJe me souviens\u201d means \u201cI remember,\u201d something that reading Penny\u2019s Chief Inspector Gamache series has reminded me of. I\u2019m not sure what Qu\u00e9bec drivers are remembering\u2014the province has a fascinating and convoluted history, both internally and with the rest of Canada (as well as the U.S.), so it could be just about anything. But \u201cI remember\u201d matches my own thinking about Qu\u00e9bec these days\u2014as I live with the characters in each book (eighteen so far and counting) in their fictional little town of Three Pines (which would be no more than fifty miles from where I grew up if it existed) and as they travel to Montreal and Qu\u00e9bec City, the memories come flooding back.<\/p>\n As long as they are accompanied by an adult, a child could have an adult beverage at any age. I don\u2019t doubt that the law is the same fifty years later. I remember Montreal, the big city of my youth, much closer to our house than Boston to the south. The Chateau Champlain was our downtown hotel of choice; now Marriott, it was a Canadian Pacific hotel when we stayed there\u2013the train station was right under the hotel. My cousins and I used to each take one of the four elevators, ride from the lobby to the thirty-fifth floor, then down to a random floor, jump on another elevator\u2014and see how long it would take until we ran into each other. I watched my mother drink her first alcoholic drink (a Brandy Alexander) at L\u2019Escapade, the circular restaurant and bar on the top floor (she didn\u2019t like it). We always requested a room overlooking Mary Queen of the World Basilica. As a hardcore Protestant kid, I was both attracted to and repelled by St. Joseph\u2019s Oratory, with devoted pilgrims climbing steep stairs on their knees as well as discarded crutches and canes hanging on the walls as mute testimonies to miraculous healings over the decades is imprinted indelibly on my memory more than fifty years later.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2020\/08\/the-united-states-of-canada-300x161.jpg\")
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Scotland, she said \u201cthen you have to go to Newfoundland! It\u2019s the closest thing to Scotland that you\u2019ll find in North America.\u201d So for our first major post-pandemic vacation next summer, we are going to Newfoundland.\u00a0See end of essay for update!<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2023\/10\/license-plate-300x149.jpg\")
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I remember that Sherbrooke, a small city (or so it seemed to a country boy such as I) only a bit over an hour away, was the location of Mee Ho, our favorite Chinese restaurant (actually the\u00a0only <\/strong>Chinese restaurant I ever ate at before I turned twenty). God forbid that we should ever explore our neighboring towns and find out whether Vermont\u2019s Northeast Kingdom had any Chinese restaurants; once my father found something he liked, he never wanted to change. Our trips over the border were so frequent that the border guards at the Newport, VT crossing eventually started waving us through\u2014we just needed to slow down sufficiently for them to realize who it was. Sort of like EZ Pass decades before its time. It was during these monthly excursions to Sherbrooke that I benefitted from Canada\u2019s tolerant laws concerning when human beings are allowed to consume alcohol.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2016\/05\/The-champlain-222x300.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"chateau](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2016\/05\/chateau-champlain-restaurant.jpg\")
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