at the world's end in Gaspé

Tales from my family's cross-country road trip

a Supermoon over Gaspé

Our hotel

We arrived in Gaspé in time for the Festival Musique du bout du monde - the music festival at the end of the world. Gaspeg in Micmac means the land's end, or the end of the world, probably because it's at the end of the Gaspesie peninsula, and there is absolutely nothing beyond that point (except Newfoundland, but who cares).  The festival streets were decorated with al these pretty fish, which I called "fin" du monde fishies...Get it? Fin? Fish? End of the world?

For a town of some 15,000, Gaspé had come alive, and the main street was closed off, filled with crowds enjoying the live music, the delicious Quebec beer, the artisan vendors...

washboard man! talk about washboard abs!

We took in the sights, scarfing down chili nachos garnished with cilantros and hot dogs, which thankfully they advertised as "hot dogs" and not "chien chaud" like they do in Gatineau.

I enjoyed the evening excitement, drinking a Quebec microbrewery beer at the bistro bar Brise-Bise, and then headed to bed...

And tried to sleep.  The festival featured a "party de famille" which I had mistakenly translated as a party for the family but it turned out to clearly not be a family event, as it went on well past midnight. But what really kept us up was what sounded like the world' largest djembe jam session outside my hotel window. You know, what irritated me the most about the 3AM drum jam was that it was hippies keeping me awake. HIPPIES.

Gaspé surprsied me with its night life.

Djembe drum jam. HIPPIES.

Gaspé

In the morning, we visited Forillon National Park, and climbed up Mont St. Albans to its summit, with its magnificant view, where I remembered I was afraid of heights.

the beach at the start of the trail...maybe I should have stayed there?

Hiking up

And up....

view of the ocean between the trees

picnic break, eating sandwiches and vegetables from Mom's garden

gorgeous view from the mountain

View from the summit. Uncomfortably high.

After our long hike, we cooled off at Haldimand beach, where I swam in the Atlantic Ocean. I was slightly warmer than the Arctic ocean.

Mom and Dad

In the late afternoon, I went for a run through the town. I discovered the waterfront boardwalk, which was almost hidden from the road, tucked below the cliffs. I saw a young man perche don a cliff, writing poetry in his notebook. Some girls giggled while they waded into the water in their underwear. It was such a peaceful place.

We ate dinner at the whimsical Cafe des Artistes, decorated with a lot of topless mermaids. I ordered a croque monsieur, because you know, French food, followed by an espresso served with vanilla ice cream, which I find to be the perfect representation of a person pretending to be a grown up, but not really.

The djembe drum circle continued for the second night.

kayaking through the ice floes

Before I start talking about my first kayaking trip of the year, allow me one complaint:

Long Point

The sky has been hazy and the air smells like wood burning, which is curious because there are no trees in Nunavut. Although I have not received any confirmation about this from a reliable source, I am pretty sure this is smoke blowing in from the forest fires in the Northwest Territories. It is seriously getting in the way of my plans to get an Arctic suntan.  The weather forecast originally called for sun and cloud; now it calls for sun and cloud and "local smoke".  Local? I don't think so. Even our smoke here is imported from the Northwest Territories. Dear NWT: please stop.  I know it has been a dry season for you.  Let us set up an inter-territorial exchange program and we will send you some of our ice and snow that remains on our Arctic ocean, and you send us some sun rather than this smoke.  Then I will be able to go and kayak some more.

Oh yes, kayaking.

Our first kayaking excursion of the year! I had been waiting some ten months for this glorious day. Some people, when they have had something to drink, become sleepy or affectionate or angry.  Me, if I've had a couple of beers, I start talking about kayaking. I guess paddling is the hidden desire of my soul. All throughout those long cold winter nights, what keeps me going is the promise of kayaking in the summer.

Even though the Arctic ocean is still partly frozen.

This time last year, the ocean had completely thawed and the mosquitoes were in full force.  This year the ice has stuck around for a lot longer, because our first kayaking excursion of the year involved navigating around all of the chunks of ice that remained on the water and trying to forge a clear path between the ice.

 

 

The presence of all the ice in the bay meant that this time we kept our rudders up, because we didn't want to drag them against some of the ice that was hidden under water.  It was more of a challenge than I expected, trying to avoid hitting the ice with the kayaks.  There was a lot of ice under the surface level of the water, so sometimes when you thought you had a clear path between the chunks of ice, you realize that the water is actually quite shallow and you've run aground, stuck on underwater ice.

 

or sometimes you can just hang out on the ice

 

At some points, we had no other way through and had to portage our kayaks over the ice to get to the water on the other side.

 

 

  

 

The ice was still pretty thick, although we had to take care to avoid the dark ice so we wouldn't fall through.

Brent warned us to be careful about getting in and out of the kayaks once we parked on the ice.  It was all too easy to tip over. I wasn't afraid of tipping my kayak over because I was wearing a wetsuit, until Brent mentioned that we wanted to avoid slipping under the ice and not finding our way back to the surface. Um, what? THANKS I DIDN'T REALIZE I HAD THIS PHOBIA UNTIL NOW.

But we all made it to the other side safely and paddled over to the Maud shipwreck.

 

The Maud shipwreck was still there.

The Norwegians say they are going to take it away this summer, but they said that last year.

 

We also explored a number of other things as well, such as the question "Is my phone waterproof? Let's test it out by dropping it in the water."

  

I am rather curious to know how the owners of this kamotik are going to get their sleds back on land.

 

It was lovely weather and a great start to the kayaking season. I can't wait to get back on the water again soon.

 

 

how to recover from Friday

When I woke up in the morning, I had the vague sense that I had committed to do something that day that was going to be important to remember. What was it?

 We had stayed up late the night before, talking to folks at the Elks Lodge.  There were all sorts of random folks out that night: a reporter from my favourite magazine, scientists, staff employees of a private super-yacht belonging to the super-rich co-founder of Microsoft (the largest expedition yacht is not something to be sneezed at), a young birthday girl, and a dark-haired guy who claimed to often be mistaken for Jake Doyle back in St. John's. The night had begun with karaoke, and wrapped up with the birthday girl and her cousin performing throat-singing to an unusually hushed audience.  Cambridge Bay in all its glory.  By the time I went to bed, I had friends who were waking up for their early Saturday morning activities.

Now I was squinting into my alarm clock wondering why eleven-thirty had been etched into my brain by Friday Night Gloria as a significant time to be remembered by Saturday Morning Gloria.  I was supposed to be somewhere by 11:30. But where?

Oh crap. I said I'd jump into the Arctic ocean again.

Why did I promise to do that?  Why does Friday Night Gloria make such promises about Saturday Morning Gloria?  Maybe nobody would remember I had said that I would do that.  But then the text messages and online messages reminding me to be at the dock told me otherwise. Everybody remembered.

I think this is how the conversation started. Some science-types guys at the Elks were doing some work, setting up cameras in the waters to track the fish in the ocean. They were diving in wetsuits.  One of the local residents may or may not have teased them that they have not really lived until they felt the chill of the Arctic Ocean directly on their bare skin, and if tonight's your last night in town, why don't you try doing it tomorrow morning at eleven-thirty before your plane leaves? And so they found themselves committing to this crazy deed.

crazy people getting ready to do crazy things

Actually, that doesn't explain at all how I got involved. I don't remember how I got roped into it.  All I knew was I was going to be there, pouring tea into a thermos bottle at the docks, ready for a whole world of pain.

It was 1°C that morning with a wind chill of -4°C. The Arctic Ocean itself was 3°C.  Some readers may remember that I had already done the Polar Bear Dip this summer as part of a fundraiser. But this was under different circumstances.  At that time, it was the warmest day of the year, and there were paramedics waiting at the side of the road in case anything happened, and also there was hot coffee being poured for us after we came out of the water.  Now, it was starting to turn towards winter, since we had already gotten our first snowfall, and there was nobody around except this one Inuk man in his pickup truck, laughing at us.

 

Oh, but we did it anyway.

 

 

And it was cold, and it was painful. We didn't linger very long in the ocean. You couldn't blame us. It was the Arctic Ocean.  We did it on what was basically a drunken dare. But hey, we did it.  Probably won't do it again. This year, anyway.

Jumping into the Arctic Ocean is one way to clear your groggy head after a lively Friday. Another creative solution I tried was going for a brisk run.  I had forgotten that I was planning to do the Northwest Run for Diabetes. Had I remembered that this was scheduled for the same Saturday, I might have eased up a bit the Friday night before and gone to bed earlier.  And heck, I might not have also committed to an Arctic swim hours before.  But I am not a quitter. Groggy head aside, i was going to do the run.

 

Participants warm up for their run. Parka hoods are one great way to warm up

 

Lots of the local kids participated

These runs are different in the North than the marathon races that you see in the South. For one thing, as I mentioned, it was -4°C with the windchill that day, so you have to dress appropriately and consider that you might not be able to run for as long as, say, if you were running in temperature above zero. Also, this run was less about raising money for those living with diabetes, and more about promoting awareness about diabetes to encourage a healthy lifestyle, to target the folks that were primarily at risk of diabetes.  The kids in particular really enjoyed it, and despite all the factors that took away from this run having optimal conditions (the cold weather, the groggy head, the pre-run swim), I was glad I took part.

 

 

Took this obligatory selfie with my participation medal, and then napped for the rest of the afternoon