urban bicycle journeys

Most of New York State is referred to as “upstate” but I was farther north than that, a few miles south of the Canadian border, almost four hundred miles north of New York City and about eighty miles above of Syracuse NY. I was cycling alone on a country road, a road as narrow as a driveway, having just left my friend Lyman in the lakefront town of Sackets Harbor NY. It was a beautiful but cloudy early morning, up here where summer is a precious rare commodity. Everything seemed to be in bloom. I was twenty-five miles from the cross-border ferry landing.

This part of New York State is lovely but I doubt much is happening economically. I passed mobile homes sitting in what seems like the middle of nowhere. Imagine spending a six month winter in one of those trailers!

I was cycling north toward the Canadian border, this time to turn northeast towards Montreal. I would eventually transition from English speaking Ontario to French speaking Quebec. What would this journey be like?

This is the bicycle ride I would take over the coming week.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/sDnjMUoNdSsfJtem8

A ferry would again lead me across the border, a tributary of the St. Lawrence River. The “terminal” in Cape Vincent NY is just an unstaffed dock, and when I arrived no one was around.

The ferry is supposed to run once an hour and the Canadian flagged vessel did indeed show up. For a bicycle with rider, you pay one of the two crew members five dollars in cash, either currency accepted.

On the fifteen minute crossing one other guy and myself were the only passengers.

On the other side I showed my passport to a Canadian customs agent and cycled off. There was no traffic.

At the tiny town of Marysville, Ontario there was a bakery/coffee shop and I could finally get a late morning breakfast.

I biked two miles onward for the much larger ferry that runs from Wolfe Island to downtown Kingston, Ontario. I had intended to cycle further than Kingston that day, but two barriers came up. First, it was raining; second, the downtown bridge across the Great Cataraqui River was under repair, forcing a bicyclist to take a complicated detour. I would save that detour for the next morning and hunkered down again in a hotel in the pleasant city of Kingston. I walked around downtown at cocktail hour. A public event was being set up.

It was an outdoor viewing of the 7:00 PM National Hockey League Stanley Cup finals. The series was tied 2 – 2 and all down to one game; the Edmonton Oilers versus the Florida Panthers. Neither team seemed to have a local connection. Edmonton, Alberta is 2,300 miles west of here; Miami FL is 1,600 miles south. Nevertheless, a crowd was gathering for the chance to celebrate Canadian hockey glory.

The Italian restaurant Casa Domenico faces the square. At the bar while ordering a glass of wine the bartender described that hockey game, looking at me with a stressed humorless face

“Canada needs this,” she said.

Cold water seafood up here seems appropriate. First course was “Salmone Affumicato”. I had never had smoked salmon with a dressing before. Delicious.

Main course was “vongole;” pasta with clams, something I really treasure but rarely make at home.

It had been a great meal. I skipped dessert and luckily was back at the hotel when the Edmonton Oilers and all of Canada lost in the third period, two to one.

I gazed out the hotel window at the Kingston harbor at dusk, a point where Lake Ontario starts and the St. Lawrence River ends.

The next morning I started cycling along the St. Lawrence River towards Montreal, a little over two hundred miles to the northeast. I had to loop around that closed bridge by riding through the Kingston exurbs on its north side.

I eventually found a nicer open highway.

It’s funny how memory works. In about 1968 my parents drove our dog Inkie, my three siblings, and me up from Virginia Beach to this area in our 1966 Rambler Ambassador station wagon, towing an eighteen foot travel trailer of the even then cheap and obscure brand Zipper. My most vivid memories were swimming in the clear and invigorating water around Thousand Islands, visiting the town of Gananoque, Ontario, and at a nearby campground for the first time in my life talking to a girl in a boy/girl way. Her name was Dee Dee. My siblings Jane, Betsy, and Alex seemed to have totally different memories.

I cycled into Gananoque.

Like breweries, and mimicking the trend in America, independent coffee houses populate small town Ontario. At Lavergne’s I sat on the street and drank an oat milk latte with one pack sugar, plus their daily special; roasted vegetable omelet. It was served on a real china plate, with quality French bread. I was reading the memoir by Lucille Lang Day, Married at Fourteen.

Beyond Gananoque, Waterfront Trail was a bike path paralleling a four lane highway alongside the Thousand Island populated St. Lawrence River.

Thousand Islands, which spans the border between the two countries, is somewhere you can build a vacation home on your own private island.

Cycling alone in Canada makes one think. I have previously documented a few differences between Canada and America. Conversely there are things that both countries do alike but likely no other country does.

We both run a separate transport system for school children, picking up and delivering them in yellow buses. I doubt this is done in Europe, for example.

We both have an overdeveloped real estate sales culture, featuring the salesperson rather than the house, even in French speaking Quebec.

I spent that night in the waterfront town of Brockville, Ontario.

Most Brockville hotels were out by the freeway. One alternative was Noble Suites, about ten rooms in a historic building, run by a white haired guy who looks like “Doc” in “Back To The Future.” My room, an apartment really, was quite nice. He had obsessively made signs which were posted all over the interior and exterior.

1000 Islands Brewing Company is a couple of blocks away. I sat outside until it started raining.

Restaurants were full in Brockville on this Wednesday night. I ultimately found a seat at Buell Street Bistro. I was pleased that the salmon dinner included lots of vegetables. Also, I like rice. I do not know who these people are.

The next day I continued cycling along the St. Lawrence River, still in the Thousand Islands region.

I had chosen to cycle a bit before doing breakfast at Katarina’s in Prescott, ON. I had an oat milk latte, one pack sugar. In both Ontario and Quebec the croissants seemed always fresh and are served on a real plate. At Katarina’s I had asked for the paper cup; it stays hot longer that way. I could have saved plastic by not including a lid.

I did not stop for fish and chips but in Ontario one passes such joints constantly. Both fish and chips, and poutine are something not routinely seen in America. Note that here they say “take out,” just like America, rather than “take away” as they say in Britain.

I cycled under a bridge that crosses to the USA. The Thousand Islands St. Lawrence River looked eminently swimmable.

Lunch was Greek.

The only place to stay anywhere near Iroquois, Ontario was a cabin two or three miles out of town. I would need to cook my own dinner and do the shopping in town. On a bicycle one cannot carry leftovers. I instinctively hate the idea of throwing food away. Nevertheless, I was tired of eating out and the total price of all this food was less than US$15.00, plus the cost of the bottle of wine. For example, a pound of ground pork was only CDN$ 3.16, or US$ 2.40. I had to buy a huge amount of coffee but that was still only about six dollars. There was local asparagus.

Ideas! I could have pasta Bolognese with a side of asparagus! Leftovers and coffee for breakfast!

Outside of town there is a large but somewhat ratty house on a bluff overlooking the St Lawrence. Someone had built a few small cottages in the backyard and called it Doran Bay Resort. It must have seemed a good idea at the time. During this summer high season one other guy and me were the only guests.

Their welcome printout said “feel free to use our lovely gazebo” yet the structure was filled to the roof with their junk.

The inside of my cabin was fine, really, as was the yard. They provided pots and pans but only a single convection burner. The kitchen had signs threatening penalties if you left a mess. At 5:00 PM I started the sauce. I had been carting around salt and butter from a previous cooking session four days earlier. I sautéed in butter one chopped onion and a garlic clove.

I then added about half the can of tomato paste, half the ground pork, and a little water. I cooked this for more than an hour.

At 7:00 PM I filled a pot with salted water and boiled the asparagus for seven minutes, then pulling it out and seasoning it with butter and lemon. I used the same water to boil half the box of curly cue pasta. I drained the pasta and added it to the sauce along with a little of the cooking water. Outdoor dinner on the terrace was peaceful and relaxing.

When cycling alone songs spin through your head. Ray Davies of The Kinks had an extended illness at age 12-13 in the 1950’s. In Waterloo Sunset he describes the view from a London hospital window overlooking the River Thames and the Waterloo subway station. I had carried my cheap ukulele all trip but had not played it much. I enjoyed the intimacy of performing for an iPhone propped onto a tree out near the river at 8:20 AM with no one else around.

My destination the next day was Cornwall, Ontario, the last major town before entering Quebec. I cycled along the highway following Waterfront Trail signs, only sometimes within view the river.

I do not know how popular Trump is up here but he certainly may be an inspiration for these political flags, which I saw nowhere else and were about a half mile apart in the same suburban strip of houses. Note that both houses have creepily perfect lawns and meticulously painted driveways.

Almost next door was another flaq. . What is a dual flag is supposed to mean? Friendship?

Across a series of nearshore islands I continued on an attractive bike path paralleling but usually out of sight of the shoreline.

Cornwall, Ontario (population 46,000) is a working class town which used to have several major factories. Now big employers are distribution centers, including Amazon.

Secondary Canadian cities tend to have more multi-family housing than similar American cities. I like the 1960’s graphic design here.

Airbnb listed a near-downtown “hotel” with cutesily named rooms and shared bathrooms for less than a hundred dollars.

At 2:55 PM my code would not let me in the front door. I learned that electronically I couldn’t enter until 4:00 PM. It was lightly raining. Where to hang for an hour? I looked around for a coffee house but found none open. I biked across town in the drizzle to a Tim Hortons but in this blue collar area Tim’s was drive-through only. I finally went to a fancy restaurant downtown and ordered a beer at the bar.

A guy in a leather jacket came in and sat two seats down. He seemed uncomfortable. We both fumbled with our phones but did not converse.

The Airbnb with the shared bath was actually nice; I heard one other guest talking in the room across the hall but I never met or talked to anyone at the hotel, everything was done with coded locks. I walked again to downtown for dinner.

The next morning early I was back on the bicycle, heading downriver.

About twenty something miles into the ride I stopped for breakfast at a Tim Hortons out on the highway; coffee and their (better) version of an Egg McMuffin.

The Cornwall ON area sits in a finger shaped extension of Ontario surrounded on two sides by French speaking Quebec. Just in this small area there must be a law requiring every public sign be both in English and French, even the card machine at the Tim’s counter. The Tim Hortons logo supposedly does not have an apostrophe even though the name of the hockey player was singular, because the French language does not have apostrophes. If they are going to use “chez” shouldn’t the Horton should be singular?

Even the street signs.

Ten or fifteen miles past the Tim Hortons I crossed the line and all pretense of dual language ended. I think the law in Quebec is that it is essentially illegal to post signs in English at all. I had thought that inside Quebec near the border it would be kind of duolingo but that did not seem to be the case. I had been watching cars pass me in Canada now for ten days and in Ontario one essentially NEVER sees Quebec or other non-Ontario license plates. Once in Quebec, one almost never sees Ontario plates.

Only five or ten miles into Quebec on a sunny day I stopped at an ice cream place.

It was a complicated menu with all sorts of flavors and types of ice cream and ice cream concoctions but no English language translations whatsoever. I can bastardly speak a small amount of French, but in this case I told the young woman at the window, in English, that I wanted something coffee flavored and she helpfully told me, in accented but otherwise perfect English, all my options. A coffee soft-serve sundae was delicious.

My evening’s destination was the sizable city of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. Quebec’s continuation of Waterfront Trail is called Route Verte no. 5 and it is quite nice, somewhat better organized than Ontario. I cycled along a canal.

Salaberry-de-Valleyfield (population 43,000), is a nicely repurposed former industrial city on a lakefront. I had booked a room in it’s one nice downtown hotel, a former textile mill. The 2016 census reports the city as 95% French speaking. During my stay I did not see anyone who looked like an immigrant.

At cocktail hour I walked from the hotel towards a local brewery called Malteus Microbrasserie. I ordered a porter at the bar and enjoyed listening to the four or five other people speak French. Most were my age or older. Halfway through my beer everyone realized I was not French speaking and the whole bar conversation switched to English. I told them I was from North Carolina. They were all funny and cordial. I remember one asking, sort of in disbelief; what was I doing here?

I needed to go elsewhere for dinner. I walked around a while before choosing Dez Taverne Urbaine.

The tables were all taken on this Friday night but I caught a seat at the bar, in front of a TV playing French language coverage of the hockey NHL draft.

Poke, which is like deconstructed sushi rolls, seems to have taken the world by storm in the past ten years. I even saw it last fall in France. It is generally delicious and healthy. Here at the bar of DEZ it featured uncooked salmon. Having “guacamole” is certainly cross-cultural but what’s not to like? My only complaint was that even after asking they still did not give me enough rice.

The next morning I pondered my situation. I had just under sixty miles to cycle to downtown Montreal, a good day’s ride. My flight home was a firm three days hence. Rain was predicted all that day but it looked good for the following day. I decided to hang back “in my room” in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield another day. Maybe I could do some reading.

Brian Wilson wrote amazing music for The Beach Boys. His cousin and the lead singer Mike Love wrote happy lyrics about the lively outdoor surfing scene. When Brian himself wrote lyrics they were often moody and introspective. In this Canadian town I sang In My (hotel) Room.

I hung out in the hotel room until noon but was told that the hotel was full this Saturday night and I would have to leave. For less money I found an Airbnb less than a mile away. It was described as a room in a person’s home, but when I confirmed the booking the homeowner said she was away, and that I could just let myself in. It was in the bottom level of this up/down duplex.

She had left the key in a flower pot by the back door. I walked in through the room she uses as her art studio.

What I assume are her paintings were all over the living and dining room walls.

She said there were two cats there who did not need anything, just to not let them out.

Much later on I walked in drizzle through the city looking for somewhere to eat. Restaurant La Nouvelle Orleans was the town’s most highly rated on several websites. It features mostly spicy dishes, which, of course, is Cajun food from around Lafayette LA, not New Orleans food. I am sure it is still a good restaurant but I kept walking.

I really was going to eat at the other highly rated restaurant Bistro 45 but when I walked in the din was deafening. Noise is a deal killer for me.

I ultimately ate again at DEZ, which I had really enjoyed the night before, and I once again ordered the delicious poke.

The next day I would be cycling to Montreal, sixty miles through a mostly urban area. I made an instant coffee in that woman’s kitchen, then headed out in the early morning light through the city with a mouthful of a name Salaberry-de-Valleyfield.

All over Ontario and Quebec I saw this type of bidirectional bike path, the path placed all on one side of the road. That design is inherently dangerous. Cars coming out of driveways and cross streets do not know to look both directions. Safer would be to have a smaller bike path in each direction on each side of the highway.

Immediately west of Montreal are rapids on the St. Lawrence River, and consequently miles of canals built around those rapids. The first twenty miles of my ride featured attractive bike paths along canals.

UK travelers know the ubiquitous “full English breakfast.” I had seen such breakfasts repeatedly on menus here in Canada but I had not ordered it until now. That menu was still entirely in French. Heinz baked beans!

Montreal is a thirty-five mile long island in the St Lawrence River and I crossed over into its urbanity from the west. Traditionally this west side of Montreal is prosperous and English speaking.

While a very old city founded by the French, Montreal experienced tremendous industrial growth in the nineteenth century in which much of the money and expertise was coming from English speaking immigrants. French speakers remained the largest group but were often seen as working class and sometimes excluded by the elites. French language laws passed in the 1970’s successfully stopped the erosion of French language culture but pissed off a bunch of people. According to Wikipedia 300,000 English speakers left Montreal between 1980 and 1995. Major corporations moved their headquarters from Montreal to Toronto. It must have been one of those who remained that said:

“All the assholes left and all the cool people stayed.”

Montreal’s economy has since recovered. I was here to see if Montreal remains a cool place.

I cycled for miles and miles through west side waterfront neighborhoods, houses with big yards. It could have been, I dunno, Winston-Salem NC or Jacksonville FL.

I passed the elite looking waterfront The Forest Stream Club. Public signs still had to be in French!

In many sections there was a bike path along the riverfront.

It was Sunday. This is an impressive modernist church.

Closer to downtown Montreal, passing through now industrial areas, was a canal hugging bicycle path.

Old Montreal on this summer day was packed with tourists. I bought an ice cream and sat outside in a park. Out of Old Montreal but nearby I found my hotel. Steve’s Magasin de Musique was across the street. (How do they get away with the language police and use an apostrophe?) Steve’s had a wonderful selection of all the top brands of guitars, Gibson, Martin, Taylor, Fender. They encouraged me to try them out.

Other than the language differences my previous ten days in rural Ontario and Quebec had not been “multicultural.” Montreal felt vastly different. Lots of people looked of East Asian or African descent. Walking around that evening I saw several street performers. More than one was from French speaking Africa. A performer named Kenzo Faso had quite the crowd around him. Some of them appeared to know his songs. Facebook says he lives in Oagadougou, Burkina Faso.

I had one more full day in Canada. I would use it to cycle all over Montreal.

In the morning I cycled over to an area called Mount Royal which is indeed a small mountain or large hill just a few miles from downtown. I passed through miles of row house apartment neighborhoods. I saw more bicyclists per capita than anywhere I have seen in North America.

In the Outremont neighborhood around lunchtime I stumbled onto Provisions Bar a Vin. There was a counter for takeout but also had a small bar area and a short list of lunch specials. I took a seat at one end. A couple with British accents talked about their vacation in Montreal.

My pasta Bolognese was really delicious, this and two glasses of red wine.

My flight home was scheduled the next day at 10:45 AM. Two weeks earlier I had sent my bicycle suitcase from Toronto to the Montreal hotel. That last morning at 6:45 AM I stood on the street two blocks from my hotel, waiting for the airport bus. Bicycle in suitcase, trunk bag, helmet, ukulele.

Tootie picked me up at Raleigh/Durham airport that afternoon.