Fall in Gatineau Park

After relax­ing by the Meech Lake, we headed to our favorite view­point, atop the Eard­ley Escarp­ment. From the Cham­plain look­out, perched 335 meters above sea level, you get to have offers a bird’s-eye view from the Gatineau Hills over the Ottawa Valley.

Meech Lake

Meech Lake is nested within Gatineau Park, the huge 400 km² park North of Ottawa, in the province of Québec. Many Cana­di­ans asso­ci­ated it with the 1987 Meech Lake Accord, when the then Prime Min­is­ter Brian Mul­roney tried to per­suade the the Province of Que­bec to endorse the 1982 Cana­dian Con­sti­tu­tion (yep, didn’t work). But for a lot of res­i­dents in the National Cap­i­tal Region, Meech Lake is a nice sandy beach and a pop­u­lar swim­ming spot dur­ing these hot and humid sum­mer days.

Rapides-des-Joachims, Québec

After Pem­broke, we headed to Deep River and spent the night there (more on that later). The fol­low­ing day, the weather was a lit­tle bit bet­ter, albeit chilly. We drove to Rapides-Des-Joachims, a small vil­lage located on an island in the mid­dle of the Ottawa River.

Lac Leamy Fireworks

This week is walk­ing down mem­ory lane week. First, I came back to see these amaz­ing sculp­tures on the shore of the Ottawa River, at Remic Rapids, that I dis­cov­ered in August 2009. And then, last Sat­ur­day, we attended the yearly Lac Leamy Fire­works Com­pe­ti­tion, like we did last year

Winterlude in Québec

Ottawa has ice sculp­tures, Québec has giant snow ones. The theme of the national Snow Sculp­ture Com­pe­ti­tion for this year was “win­ter fun”. Each team was given a huge 3.7 m x 4.9 m block of snow and beau­ti­ful win­ter themed art pieces were created.

Fall Colors In Québec

The Gatineau Park in Québec, right across Ottawa, prob­a­bly offers the best Fall scenery in the region. The trees that make up the huge for­est slowly turn yel­low, orange and red. Lakes reflect the Fall col­ors and hun­dreds visit the park to wit­ness the tran­si­tion to the dreaded winter.

Montréal's Jean Talon Market

Lit­tle Italy was our last stop in Mon­tréal. I wanted to go back to the famous marché Jean Talon, a farmer’s mar­ket located in this area.

The open air mar­ket is occu­pied by about 300 ven­dors, sell­ing fruits, veg­eta­bles, cheese, meat etc. There are many other food busi­nesses in the area, includ­ing bak­eries, fish and meat stores and restaurants.

Modern Montréal

Like I was say­ing last time, Mon­tréal is not just the cute European-style city a lot of peo­ple imag­ine. There is the old Mon­tréal… and the mod­ern down­town, which is just like any other Amer­i­can city.