(Editors Note: Rocky and Bullwinkle are the slippers we have bought Niall Brown and are in the process of delivering to St. John’s NL. Having languished in a souvenir store in Tadoussac, QC, they have decided to take up the story of the journey across the North Coast of Quebec, Labrador and Newfoundland.)

Bullwinkle: Master Niall, it is with great pleasure that I report to you that your great friends and wonderful people have survived the night of the Great Storm.

Rocky: Oh god, if this gets any more cloying I’m going to puke my felt guts out.

Bullwinkle: Shut it Rocky, this is my story, go annoy someone else. I can’t believe the creators chose you to be the right foot. I hope Niall is left-handed, he will understand my pain.

Rocky: BLARGH!

Bullwinlkle: Ignore him oh gracious Niall. So let’s see, the honoured hosts Dups and Mike woke from a rather sleepless night at the Auberge and fled from the scene as fast as was humanly possible into the cold rain-driven Sept-Iles. Of course they insisted on showing us the sights including taking a photo of us at the Sept-Iles-Labrador City Train station…

Rocky: They got my butt wet…

Bullwinkle: Then we headed due east with only a major stop at the Chute Manitou just west of Sept Iles for a quick walk down to the major falls. Time for his holiness Dups to test his boots and his fantasticness Mike to clamber as close to the falls as possible. Of course they didn’t take us with them but we heard about it when they got back.

Rocky: “Holiness?!”, “Fantasticness?!” if you are more obsequious you might rupture that spleen bending over.

Bullwinkle: From there they headed to Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan where we would all be camping on the beach. At no point did the sun shine through. Our campers extraordinaire decided to camp next to the beach and even oriented the tent in a such a way that any driving wind from the ocean would result inthe tent staying up. With the cloudy, miserable and rainy weather they went to Havre St-Pierre to book a cruise around the National Park Reserve of the Islands of the Minganie for next morning and see the town that their friend Genevieve’s family was from.

Rocky: No doubt a female version of these clueless gits.

Bullwinkle: With a cruise booked, they went in search of a can opener. Once they got themselves understood for what they were looking for, they searched Havre-St-Pierre and finally bought the most expensive can-opener ever in their glorious history.

Rocky: HAHAHA and they call themselves campers

Bullwinkle: Hush it. So then they headed back to camp and cooked a fine meal of vegetable rice, fresh scallops and broccoli in mushroom sauce, finished with some chocolate cake.

Rocky: I’ll give them that they can stuff themselves tastefully. All the more to feed the moose in Newfoundland…

Bullwinkle: As the rain started coming and the water hissed on the burning embers of their fire (Rocky: Ooooh look you poet) they decided to go to sleep. In the middle of the night the wind picked up to the most annoying gusts and from a completely unexpected direction whereupon the tent poles folded in upon themselves and fell onto Dups. Dups then proceeded to prop up the tent with his hands while both him and Mike were laughing uproariously. Fortunately and despite the sudden leak that sprang up inside the tent the great and wonderful transporters had a wonderful sleep.

Rocky: OH MY GOD. YOU ARE SUCH A DITZ.

Rocky: Okay, let me introduce myself, I’m the right foot of a pair. Some have called me the brainy one, some have called me the pretty one, in your case just realize that I am *always* right.

Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky, I’m not sure I like being left out in the cold here, without me there would be no you.

Rocky: Oh shut up Bullwinkle. Okay so these pair o doofuses…

Bullwinkle: I’d like to think of them as “saviours” if you will…

Rocky: Yes two bloody great saviours they are, I’m think from the frying pan into the fire. So these two doofuses, Dups and Mike, stole us out of a shop in Tadoussac, Quebec and are taking us to some greater doofus by the name of Niall, in Newfoundland of all bloody places…

Bullwinkle: ROCKY! Shut it, that is our future master you are talking about, be kind… I do not want to be put into a shredder…

Rocky: That great dork better not shred me, I’ll show his right foot what’s coming if he does, anyway so back to the story. So these guys come take us away and then promptly take us camping… CAMPING?! CAMPING?! I am used to much more creature comforts than CAMPING!!! If that Niall fellow takes us camping, why I’ll…

Bullwinkle: Hey they took photos of us at the campsite, come on, Rocky, have a heart.

Rocky: Then early this morning they took us to see the Sand Dunes of Tadoussac. I thought my felt antlers were going to be ripped apart by the hot sand flying in my face, and they insisted on taking pictures of us. Oh my poor face, now now, don’t get defensive Bullwinkle, it’s not like you have a good looking face… I have to protect mine.

Bullwinkle: Sniff.

Rocky: From there after a brief stop in Les Bergeronnes (now there was a Cafe, the Mer et Monde, now that could have been a nice home for me, Niall, my “master” you better make good coffee) and then we drove through to Baie Comeau. Of course they had to have a brief stop near Le Colombier to have lunch and cook lentils of some such. If they had not stopped we could have made it much faster and avoided the rain. Of course they also have to stop off at a “scenic” view only to discover an “art” installation with pink dinosaurs and obelisks. I would rather have drowned.

Bullwinkle: Rocky, I am so going to pull your your antlers off.

Rocky: And I’m going to shove your button eyes into my butt. Okay So they visit some Glacier exposition in Baie Comeau then promptly try to drive around on a gravel road to nowhere, *I* could have told them how stupid that was. All to find some valley of the seashells which the company had the good thought to hideaway from these doofuses. And then they drove to Sept-Iles.

Bullwinkle: Ooh Rocky Rocky, tell them about Dixieland!

Rocky: Oh right. Those bloody doofuses. I’m going to lose track of that word if I keep using it. Well they read the restaurants available in Port Cartier and come upon four. So they take this one called Dixieland. What the fuck were they expecting anyway? It’s basically a Mary Brown knock off. I’m glad that idiot Dups got *something* off the menu before driving us into that heavy rain. Anyway, the two have gone off into this Auberge and left us on the street in the car… Niall you better treat us better or I’m… I’m…

Bullwinkle: Oh master Niall, I will soothe and caress your left foot and make you feel very very happy. And tomorrow, *I* will write to you master, not that ass Rocky!

Before we left Montreal our good friend Rebecca told us that Niall Brown had taken a spill on his mother’s hardwood floors in St. John’s. Rebecca was toying with the idea of mailing him his slippers. Mike and I were aghast at the thought of our dear friend slip sliding his way through the house and vowed to bring him his slippers.

To that end we have purchased Niall a pair of slippers fit for a king.

We have now driven the 3 hours or so to Tadoussac, Quebec, the first trading post in Quebec between the Europeans and the Aboriginals (the Montagnais or the Innu). In a shop we rescued Rocky and Bullwinkle. They were most appreciative of us snatching them away from the clutches of the souvenir store that they were languishing in. Rocky is on the right and Bullwinkle on the left.

Niall, we are bringing Rocky and Bullwinkle to you.

For those that don’t know it, I am now a self-employed individual with no income. And yet, somehow I seem to be eating the most amazing food. If this is what being unemployed and being a vagabond is like, I may never go back to stable employment.

Of course much of this is due to the contents of Anne-Marie and Jerome’s fridge in Quebec City. So let me describe to you the gastronomic delights of Quebec, but first a word on my so-called vegetarianism. I am not a vegetarian. I am however, incredibly against farms and how they treat animals. I am against the chemicals and the asinine, inhumane things we do to our food supply. Hence I eat animals which are not farmed, hunted or otherwise treated as all living things should be. I am not vegetarian.

Friday night I created something that Anne-Marie and Jerome called “Touski”, an expression for all the left-overs in the fridge combined.

Dups Touski de Quebec

Fry red kidney beans, onion and pickled beetroot in some cumin, turmeric and chilli with sticky jasmine rice and homemade thai green chilly.

Later that night Jerome brought home Quebec “Sweet Breads” which are not breads at all but French delights of the animal kingdom, including baby pigeon (squab) and the thymus glands of calves. Quite interesting and quite tasty, and a true “cultural experience”

Day 2 was a day of eating broken up by a quick dip in the Montmerrency on a hot summer day. Mike spent much of his time trying to be Tarzan and jumping into the river from a rope. I enjoyed the soothing cool waters with 10-month old Madeleine.

For supper…

Dups Deer and Beetroot Special de Quebec

Ground deer fried in onion and paprika with home-made roasted red pepper sauce

Fry cut asparagus, with onion and Thai green chili into Chinese noodles (not too soft)

Pickled Beetroot fried into home-made fruit jam with some hot sauce

Yes so far we are eating well.

Report from Day 1

It’s a warm summer night in Quebec City. Alright, truth be told, it is an extremely hot summer night in Quebec City. It’s one of those nights that you wish you could simply sleep outside in the breezy night under a canopy of stars, and heck tonight (if you could see them through the light pollution, it would be a night of falling Perseid stars).

Quebec City is the first stop in my journey along the North Shore of the St. Lawrence and back along the South Shore to Montreal. The itinerary is as follows:

Quebec City, Tadoussac, Sept-Iles, Havre St-Pierre, Natashuquan, Blanc Sablon, Red Bay, St. Anthony, Deer Lake, Corner Brook, Gros Morne National Park, St. John’s, Port-aux-Basques, Halifax, Somewhere in New Brunswick, Montreal.

I’m not doing this completely alone of course, Mike Mannion is joining me until Deer Lake and Chris Smith is joining me from Halifax back to Montreal. You might also notice the lack of Air Canada (thank goodness) in all this, and that is because we are driving the entire distance in my little Suzuki. The only ominous sign so far is that one of the doors has become locked and will only unlock with suitable force, I guess it could be worse.

We escaped Montreal with few bruises. Traffic, while busy, was nothing like the previous trip to Quebec City when it took a full two hours to get off the island of Montreal. Indeed other than observations of rather weird Quebec road planning and construction, the trip was remarkably uneventful. Naturally, that means I must comment

Now, I fully realize that I am not the master road planner of the world. Heck I will even note that I have no engineering degree or courses or perhaps anything remotely resembling the ability to fix roads. I do, however, like to think that I possess a modicum of common sense. Now, many of my friends will disagree on this ‘modicum’ considering my ability to get hospitalized on a regular basis for sheer stupidity or tomfoolery.

I do, however, question the design of having a major two-lane highway be interrupted whereupon all traffic that wishes to continue must exit on one lane and then rejoin the highway less than one kilometre away, again through a single lane. Now my engineering skills, as noted, are quite lacking but I have heard that if you have a wide tube and then narrow the tube you create something called a bottleneck. Now I doubt this masterpiece of engineering that is the Highway 40 split in Trois-Rivieres will ever be fixed but it does make me wonder as to what the great road planners were thinking.

Of course all I have to remember is that at least this is still much more sensible than the feat of remarkable senility that is the Turcot Interchange or the bewildering circuitry of the Dorval rings, or the intricate Celtic knotwork of the Decarie circle. Those who have ever driven in Montreal may recognize these landmarks. I have this sudden urge to start up a new tour service for people who come to Montreal, kind of like architectural tours in other cities but focused instead on the many impressive attempts of creating Escher-like structures in road design. I do not know what the market for “Walking Tours of Architectural Idiocy” is…

From here on in though, our choices up the North Shore are limited when it comes to roads. We can choose route 138 or.. err well, actually there is no other road, we’re pretty much on it for 1400km till the road runs out in Natashuquan. I’m pretty positive that no strange interchanges will be found. Almost positive.