Nordik Express

I'm now on this fabulous, stumpy little Nordik Express boat, surrounded by containers of cargo and happy Québecois.  We are preparing to leave for the three day journey back along the Québec coast, into the heart of Lower Canada.  There really is a thoroughly North American, Francophone culture - it's easy to assume that the Québecois would reject everything North American, as the French pretend to.  Not so, the Québecois ARE North American - they're not interested in football (soccer to them), they eat MacDonalds but of course, THEY have the Canadian Grand Prix - in Montréal this weekend.

Cecil, when he heard me say I was from New Zealand, looked stumped and asked, is that in Canada?  No, it's down near Australia.  Ah, nodding slightly.

In Tête-à-la-Baleine, I laid down out of the wind in the sunshine, on a mixture of white-green moss and stunted, heather-like ground-growth - springier than a good mattress.  Paradise, I thought, lying there embraced by the rocks and earth.

My life is like music playing, one song after another.  The time passes, the music changes, sometimes the spirits soar, sometimes they sink.  Sometimes it's boring.  But the music doesn't stop - the sequence continues, on and on.  People here have built wooden towns on unforgiving rock, surrounded on all sides by the chill blue.  Their music plays for them, without ceasing, until they reach their varied ends.  My music continues, each passing second of it irretrievable, irretrievably lost once it has been uttered.

The land now, seen from the boat, is the same colour as the water; it seems doubtful, a greyed-out mirage, ghosted-out like an unavailable Windows menu option.

In Natashquan I walked into Nicole, bilingual, from Ottawa.  We escaped the driving wind and rain by catching a ride with a local man in a pickup.  He chatted in French with Nicole about the town - one of Québec's most famous sons, the Chanson singer/poet Jean Vignault is from here.  He sings and writes about life here, each township an island of settlement in a vast sea of rock and ice and endlessness.  The man's son had just graduated, from 'igh School and he was very proud.  He wasn't keen about the road that has already reached Natashquan - money would be better spent building a crab processing plant to create jobs.  He was 46, a classic, heavy-featured, moustached Québecois - truly a son of the peasants of the revolution.  And he had never been away from Basse Côte Nord, never even to Québec City or Montréal.  Why should he?  It is nice here, here he has everything he needs.

Québec City was founded in 1608, which means that some of it's inhabitants could trace their family further back than I have and still not know where in France they came from.  The New/Old World divide blurs further.

Throughout Québec there are French-speaking towns that are populated by people of Scots Gaelic descent.  In Gould, they even organise a Gaelic Festival each year, complete with ceilidh, Gaelic poet, music and food.  There are many people in Québec with non-French names who speak only French, for example "Mike Harrison".  In Rimouski a dental practice proudly displayed the name of the senior dentist: Georges MacDuff.  The "Quiet Revolution" began in 1960 and reversed the erosion of the use of French as a community language.  The famous law 101 was eventually passed, prohibiting the displaying of signs in English.  There are 7 million inhabitants in Québec, 85% of which are Francophone.  Earlier, it was possible to grow up in Montréal and speak only English.  No more.  So, Francophone Québec is larger than German-speaking Switzerland, population-wise as well, of course, geographically.  Or Scotland for that matter.  A land, a nation, a culture in its own right.

Words, weaving

For I have lived a thousand lives, the old-young man said,
stoking again the fire.

And any one of them would break your heart.

There are memories, memories, memories, so deep and etched and woven

I dare not speak of them and their loss,

loss more profound than this gathering silence

that waits for all of us at the ends of our varied roads.

The weaving never stops.

Every moment, the sweeping of the loom.

Every encounter, a new thread,

woven in then just as quickly snipped off

and exiled into memories.

Two threads together, twining ever closer.

Or, a man travelling endlessly,

his only companion a mirror, held close to his heart.

A man travelling in a sandied desert,

an endless sandied desert.

He has forgotten what it was he was searching for

in the mirror.

But these are just my words, weaving themselves into silence.

So, where was the quiet revolution for Gaelic?  Historically, it was impossible, it's fortunate that it has happened at all in the Hebrides.

The voyage by sea is over and now the bus carries me towards Québec City.  Mireille and Veronique from the Nordik Express are going home after two weeks along the coast conducting a feasibility study for the planned road.  It is strange to think that this is home territory for them - like me riding a train from Zürich to Bern, or a bus from Apollo Bay to Melbourne or Bristol to Bath.

The end of a journey brings sadness, relief, uncertainty, lightness of heart.  But a new road opens up already - soon the trail continues along the Celtic shores of the Old Continent.  Back, back, to where we came from.


Follow my journey through the Celtic countries of Europe: Air Cladachan Sìorraidh (On Ever-Living Shores)