Category: Travel (Page 2 of 3)

I love the sky in Rankin Inlet

A Visit to Rankin Inlet

December 4, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I love the sky in Rankin Inlet

It’s cold in the hamlet of Rankin Inlet but the air is clear and you can see for miles. People come and plan to stay for a few days or weeks or months and wind up staying years. This despite the cold weather and the slow internet and the distinct lack of Costcos.

Or maybe that’s why they stay.

Myself, I was only there for three days. I was a little wary of the cold. The coldest I’d experienced to date was minus twenty-nine one day in Whitby. That day I walked my daughters from the van to their elementary school entrance to make sure they got inside safe thinking damn, this is cold. My first few steps in Rankin Inlet were about that cold and I was thinking pretty much the same thing. It was minus thirty outside and even though I was dressed in four layers I was shivering by the time I made it from the plane to the airport terminal. Maybe because I’d already been cold inside my North Air Boeing 737, sitting in a window seat, where I’d touched my hand to the window and realized that there wasn’t a whole lot separating me from some pretty cold arctic air. I really hoped we didn’t crash. Of course, if we did I’d probably have bigger problems to worry about than the cold.

The Katimavik Suites Hotel sent a truck to pick me up at the airport. It was too cold to wait outside so I waited inside the terminal. It was pretty crowded. I admired the attire of a young mother who was wearing a kind of parka with an enormous hood. But the hood wasn’t for her head, it was for her child, tucked comfortably into the enormous hood, his feet perhaps wrapped around his mother’s waist. This permitted Mom to have both hands free, an arrangement that worked quite well, I imagine, unless she happened to bend over too far to pick up something, such as, say, a fish, in which case her infant might shoot out of the hood over her head. Which actually happened once, somebody told me later. Fortunately the parent in question caught the child, though they lost the fish.

Warm and comfy Katimavik Suites Hotel

A young woman from the hotel clad in furry winter boots stepped into the crowded terminal looking for me. In her truck I spent a couple of minutes trying in vain to locate a seat belt but there was none to be found. “Nobody uses seatbelts up here,” she told me. “We don’t go fast enough.”

This was another one of those communities — like Iqaluit — with a fair amount of vehicles on the road (mostly trucks) but not a whole lot of road to drive them on. There is only one road out of Rankin Inlet, and it only goes for about twelve miles before ending at an Elder’s Lodge.

Beyond that it’s snowmobile country.

It may have been cold outside, but it was warm inside. A bit too warm—in the hotel I had to strip down to a T-shirt to make myself comfortable. In the morning I enjoyed a continental breakfast in Katimavik’s kitchen and chatted with a bunch of guys in town to convert an existing hardware store into a Home Hardware. Myself, I had business at the local CBC Bureau.

To get to the bureau I had four taxi companies to choose from, which seems like a lot for a hamlet of only 2900 people and a finite series of roads. I chose Fluffy’s Taxi because I liked the name but, although friendly, there was nothing fluffy about the guy who came to pick me up. I shared the taxi with two women from Iqaluit who were in town to do some accounting for the local government. Government work being, I understand, Rankin Inlet’s primary industry, though it’s also known for other things such as mining once upon a time, and hosting the only Inuit Fine Art ceramic production facility in the world.

CBC Rankin Inlet

After spending the morning at the CBC a colleague took me to lunch at one of the few restaurants in town, the Captain’s Galley, located adjacent to another hotel, the Siniktarvik Hotel. I ordered a salad, but it turned out they were all out of salad ingredients (this happens a lot in the North, my colleague informed me), so I had what he was having, the Inukshuk Club Sandwich. A fortuitous choice; it turned out to be one of the best club sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. And so huge that I wound up skipping supper that night.

Driving back to the bureau (it was too cold to walk—maybe the reason there are so many taxi companies) I saw lots of big black birds, about half again as big as crows. Ravens, my colleague told me. Nevermore! Ravens are the raccoons of Rankin Inlet, after your garbage. Except, unlike raccoons, they work in broad daylight and disappear during the summer, heading further north, maybe. Or perhaps they’re simply on vacation then.

I saw a lot of dogs, too, some loose, others chained up. Apparently the hamlet has been cracking down on loose dogs since a couple of kids were recently attacked. The dogs all appeared to be of the husky variety. Not a whole lot in the way of Chihuahuas.

Back at the bureau we parked beside the local graveyard, where no grave dates earlier than 1950. Before 1950 those who passed on were buried on the land, usually beneath a pile of rocks. Due to the permafrost, a backhoe is required to dig the graves. The story goes that one year the man in charge of the graveyard, deciding to get a head start on the digging during the summer, pre-dug a bunch of graves. But he dug way too many. So many that everybody thought it would take years to fill them all.

That year they filled every single grave.

They never pre-dug the graves again.

That’s the graveyard, off to the left. No pre-dug holes this year.

On my third and last day in Rankin Inlet the temperature rose to minus 12. “T-shirt weather!” a local joked. Not quite, but it sure felt nice after minus thirty. It was quite comfortable, actually. People who reside in the north have told me that they find minus one in Toronto harder to take than minus thirty in the north. A different kind of cold. Drier, warmer somehow, up north.

That morning the aforementioned local (he didn’t want me to share his real name, so I shall call him Rupert here) offered to drive me around the hamlet and show me the sights. We drove through every part of town, which is divided into Areas 1 to 5, if I recall correctly (I was hoping we’d see Area 51 but apparently that’s in a different, much warmer part of the world.) He showed me the hamlet’s giant Inukshuk, one of the human-made towers of rocks that my club sandwich had been named after. Inukshuks are used by people of the north for several reasons: to signify a cache of something valuable, or to act as a landmark, or to indicate direction. Rupert also showed me the town dump, a bit of an eye sore, I’m afraid, but one that hamlet authorities appear to be dealing with if the “no dumping” sign at the edge of the dump is any indication.

Fairly typical view within the Hamlet of Rankin Inlet, as seen through a window of the CBC Bureau

Rupert pointed out a long pipe that ran from the coast into town, which is how they get fuel from oil tankers into town. And he told me the legend of Marble Island (though we couldn’t see it as it’s located 32 kilometres east off the coast). Marble Island only looks like it’s made of marble—it actually consists of a type of rock called wacke, laced with quartzite, which just happens to resemble marble. Anyway, according to Rupert, a young girl got swept out to sea and prayed to her Gods to save her. In response to her prayers, the Gods made Marble Island rise from the sea to carry her to safety. Or so the story goes. It didn’t save eighteenth century explorers, though, who got stranded there and perished, starving or succumbing to scurvy when they foolishly refused Inuit offers of help.

We drove past a long, high fence at the edge of town placed there to prevent too much snow from accumulating in town. It’s made of slats with plenty of holes between them and is strategically placed to inhibit prevailing winds. It’s much higher now than when it was originally built because the permafrost is gradually forcing it out of the ground. The permafrost is an issue for housing, too. There are no basements in Rankin Inlet. All houses are elevated and designed in such a way that the houses can be relevelled every couple of years. Also, you have to be careful how you build houses up there. Even a tiny hole can result in massive snow piling up inside your house. A couple of guys from the south came up and built a house with ventilation in the attic. Perfectly sensible idea in the south. Bad idea in the north, unless you like lots of snow in your attic.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see any Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) during my time in Rankin Inlet, but maybe this was a good thing because I like to whistle, and according to Rupert, if you whistle at the Northern Lights they will descend from the heavens and take your breath away. Rupert swore this happened to him one night outside of town. Putting the legend to the test, he whistled at the Northern Lights and sure enough they began to descend from the heavens. Before they could take his breath away he stopped whistling and hightailed it back to town and has never whistled at the Northern Light since.

One curious feature of Rankin Inlet is the local military base, which, although diligently maintained, is completely uninhabited. Once in a while a few soldiers will come up for an inspection or to fix or check on something or conduct a military exercise or two, but nobody ever stays for long.

Aside from that, Rankin Inlet is a bustling hive of activity. A central hub for many smaller communities in Nunavut that you can only get to via snowmobile or airplane. It’s got variety stores, grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, an elementary, middle, and high school, a college, and even a minimum security prison.

“That’s got to be fairly empty, isn’t it?” I asked Rupert.

“Pretty full, actually,” he told me. “Minor infractions, though, like the two guys busted for throwing furniture out a hotel window not long ago.”

Shortly afterward we drove past the hotel in question and sure enough, a large window on the second floor was boarded up.

But what is there to do in Rankin Inlet? Lots, it turns out. Right now they’re building a new sports arena. Rankin Inlet just happens to be the home of Jordin Tootoo, famous Canadian hockey player. If you like hunting and fishing, like Rupert does, you might like Rankin Inlet. Or maybe you like Bingo. Early on in his stay in Rankin, Rupert was invited to a Bingo match. He wasn’t interested. Until they told him it was a ten thousand dollar purse. They take Bingo seriously in Rankin Inlet. He bought cards for himself and his roommate. His roommate won the ten thousand dollar purse. Rupert never played Bingo again.

If you prefer something a little more dramatic, you can spend your time in Rankin Inlet on the lookout for Russians. In the arctic, we have our own version of Texas Rangers, called Canadian Rangers (often mistakenly called Arctic Rangers). Five thousand strong, armed with Lee-Enfield Rifles, our rangers patrol the north, assist with Search and Rescue operations, and help train soldiers in cold weather survival. If I lived in Rankin Inlet, I would want to be a Canadian Ranger.

It’s an expensive place to live, though. You want to be smart how to spend your money. Goods only come in via airplane and barges. You have a choice between spending a fortune shipping something up by plane, or planning wisely and using a barge. Not one you have to build yourself. One you can rent space on. For instance, you want some printing paper? Consider purchasing three years worth via barge rather than $70 a shot by plane.

Rankin Inlet is undeniably frosty, at least in the winter. It gets up to about 10 or 15 degrees in the summer. Rupert told me he couldn’t get warm for the first three years he was there. Until he finally got himself a homemade winter jacket. It’s all about the windproofing, he told me. A friend made it for him. Rupert bought some raccoon fur and sewed it on the hood himself. He was wearing it when I met him. it looks terrific. Honestly, I thought it was store bought. It’s much thinner and warmer than a Canada Goose jacket. Which, according to Rupert, is the sort of coat tourists wear.

It’s a small town, Rankin Inlet. Everybody knows everybody. And, according to Rupert, they like one another. It’s easy to make friends in Rankin Inlet, Rupert told me. That’s why he likes it. For the people.

I liked it too.

Hôtel de Police - Aix en Provence, France

Seven Months in Provence: Part Nine (or Joe’s Brush with the Law)

November 27, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Hôtel de Police – Aix en Provence, France

Back in 1993/94 I spent seven months in Aix-en-Provence, France, drinking red wine, eating les Calissons and attempting to learn some French. When I got home I wrote about the experience. Thought it might be fun to post a few excerpts here. Here’s Part Nine:

Going to skip ahead a bit here and recount one of my more interesting days in France. It was around Christmas time, between Christmas Day and New Years. But a bit of background first.

The room we lived in was on the top floor of a small apartment complex with four floors. It was a long complex, with about three separate sections. You couldn’t get from one section to the next without going outside.

The people living in the unit beneath ours — an old man and a woman and their son — were completely intolerant of noise. The old man and woman were already so old that the word old could also be applied to their son. Their old age didn’t seem to have affected their hearing. In fact their ability to hear seemed to have only improved with age.

So it was that whenever a few of us and our friends gathered in the evening in our apartment we could count on the eventual tap on the floor (their ceiling) and a subsequent phone call. At first I never answered the phone, because these people spoke no English, and in the beginning I spoke no French.

I remember the first time Mark and I had some friends up and the doorbell rang. It was the son, who looked a bit like a Ferengi from Star Trek: The Next Generation in that he had the largest ears of any man I have ever seen. I only ever saw him once or twice, but I still have a strong mental impression of those ears.

I answered the door and the guy started in on me in French. It was pretty obvious that he was going on about the noise. My friends, some of whom spoke French well enough to understand a bit of what the guy was saying, helped me out with the translation. The fellow was a little upset but not too bad this time round. I kept saying, “D’accord, d’accord,” because “okay” was about the only thing I knew how to say in French at that point, and I thought it might help soothe him. My friends laughed over this for months to come, me trying to calm this guy down with my heavily North American accented “d’accord.”

We never really did make a lot of noise. It was rarely more than a group of people speaking, and sometimes when there was no noise at all these people would still complain. One time they rang up to complain when my flatmate Matthew dropped his pencil on the floor. Another time they rang up when we were all playing Axis & Allies (a military boardgame) in Marcus’ room. That time I answered the phone because my French was coming along and it was good practice. I was happy because I got the gist of what the guy was saying. I promised that we would be quieter. We thought that they were crazy but still strove to be respectful. In fact, the problem may have had more to do with the nature of the floor than them. Perhaps we were fortunate not to have had anybody above us.

That’s one piece of background to my interesting day. Here’s the next:

During the year I was fortunate enough to make several French friends. One of these, Francois Esnault, a researcher in the France Department of Forestry, made arrangements to meet me at a cafe called Le Festival, the usual meeting place for all of us. We were to meet at 1:00pm on this particular Friday. Francois was going to drive me to Nantes the following Monday to celebrate New Year’s Eve with other French friends.

I’ve already mentioned in these notes the problem I had with my clock radio (see Part Eight). It ran off time, but I knew how to compensate for it, and in any case I had my watch as a backup. So on this Friday morning, according to my clock radio, I woke up around ten. Because I had stayed up late the night before, and wanted to sleep in, I reset the clock radio using my watch.

I finally got up around 11:30, according to the clock radio, and got ready to go out. I felt quite rested. As I got ready to leave, Marcus told me that we had received a letter from the police saying that we had to go see them that afternoon at five. It had to do with our neighbours complaining about the noise we allegedly made. I found this quite disturbing. I thought it sounded pretty serious, having to go see the police. Apart from sorting out my Carte de Sejour I had never had to see the police before in my entire life, and now here I had to do it in a foreign country! Would they throw us out of the country? That sounded a bit extreme, but I was worried about it.

I was also worried because Marcus planned to move out. He informed me that he wasn’t going to go to the police because it didn’t concern him anymore. Mark was in London for Christmas, so he couldn’t go, and Matthew was nowhere to be seen. It looked like I would have to go to the police on my own, and my French — three months in — was still pretty limited.

With these thoughts on my mind, I left to meet Francois. The day had a strange feel to it. The light outside the apartment complex was weird; off, somehow. Halfway down the hill on my way into the city I met Matthew coming back to the apartment. He asked me if I knew about the letter from the police. I said yes, and he said that he would go with me. The appointment was for four o’clock. I was relieved that he would be there, as his French was pretty good.

He asked me when I planned to be back at the apartment. I told him that I was aiming for three.

He said, how do you expect to do that?

I said, what do you mean?

He said, it’s after three now.

I looked at my watch. It said a quarter to one. The damn thing had stopped. And I had used it to reset the alarm on my clock radio. I cursed and told Matthew that I had been supposed to meet Francois at one. He had a good laugh. I went back up the hill with him, wondering how I would explain this to Francois, and if he would believe my reasons. I felt quite badly about missing my rendezvous with Francois, as he was a really nice guy and I pictured him wasting his lunch hour waiting for me at Le Festival. Also, I knew that it would be difficult for me to explain the situation in my limited French.

Making it all worse was the fact that Francois was to drive me to Nantes the following Monday, a twelve hour drive. I hoped that he would forgive me. If not, it would be an uncomfortable ride, if he still agreed to take me at all.

Later, Matthew and I went to look for the police station, which wasn’t too far away. We discussed how we would defend ourselves. We agreed that Matthew would do most of the talking. We found the police station easily enough and were ushered in by a burly, serious looking officer. It was a small detachment, and it looked like pretty much his show. He asked us to explain our side of the situation. Matthew went on at some length about how crazy these people were, describing the pencil incident and so forth. Afterward the officer said something to the effect of, okay, try to be quiet guys, and don’t get these people too pissed off. Then he asked us how we liked France. We said it was just great. He smiled a big, broad smile and wished us a bon sejour (a good stay). Then an older fellow came into the station, and the officer looked at him with a serious expression and greeted him with a nod and a “jeune homme.” He looked at us and winked, and Matthew and I laughed, myself because I was relieved and also because I had understood the officer’s little joke. I was always quite pleased when I understood any joke in French, even a tiny one like that, because it didn’t happen often.

I phoned Francois that night from a payphone outside the apartment (we couldn’t make calls out from our phone in the apartment, we could only receive calls). I had looked up the words I would need in the dictionary beforehand, such as the word for watch: “montre”. Francois accepted my apology gracefully, and said that, yes, he had waited a bit but that it had been no big deal. I was frustrated that I couldn’t explain in English, sure that I would have come off more sincere.

But Francois still drove me to Nantes, and the drive was lots of fun, and I got a letter from the man three years later when I was back in Canada (“le temps passe vite,” he wrote) so I guess he never held it against me.

And with that we come to the end of the notes I originally made about my time in Aix-en-Provence in 1993/94. I do have some letters I plan to transcribe and a few other interesting memories (well, to me at least) so maybe I’ll get around to posting a few more stories someday. We’ll see.

Back to Seven Months in Provence: Part One

Atelier Cezanne -- although right next door to where I lived in Aix, on rue Cezanne, I never did get around to visiting it

Seven Months in Provence: Part Eight

November 26, 2018 / / 1 Comment
Atelier Cezanne — although right next door to where I lived in Aix, on rue Cezanne, I never did get around to visiting it

Back in 1993/94 I spent seven months in Aix-en-Provence, France, drinking red wine, eating les Calissons and attempting to learn some French. When I got home I wrote about the experience. Thought it might be fun to post a few excerpts here. Here’s Part Eight:

I woke up to the sound of my clock radio. Some classical music station. This was the same clock radio I’d received as a Christmas gift when I was twelve years old. Up until that time, and probably for some time afterward, I considered this the best gift I’d ever received. It was electronic and had cool red digits to tell the time. It had neat buttons that performed various functions. I dreamed of finding an extra button on it one day, perhaps under a secret panel, a button that would perform some extraordinary function, like enable me to fly or travel in time or something.

So over the years I’d brought this clock with me wherever I lived. I bought a special adapter so I could use it in France. Once in France I was pleased to see that the adapter worked perfectly. Although it did seem to get rather hot.

I discovered something unfortunate about the clock radio, though, after one night’s use. Although I had made sure that it was set accurately the night before, when I awoke after eight hours the time on the clock radio no longer matched that of my watch. It was about eighty minutes too fast. When I picked up the clock radio and examined it I noticed that there appeared to be something loose inside. It had probably been knocked around during the trip over to France. The darn thing was busted, at least as far as telling time was concerned. The radio still worked all right, though.

I didn’t like the thought of losing this valued personal possession. I was also ticked because I didn’t want to fork out more dough for a new alarm clock.

So I didn’t throw it out. I suspected that the problem lay with the power and/or the adapter. Perhaps some discrepancy with the current threw the timing mechanism out of kilter. The following night I discovered that the clock remained absolutely consistent, running ten minutes too fast for every hour, gaining eighty minutes over eight hours.

Cheap sentimental bastard that I was, I hung on to the clock for the entire year. Every night I reset it to the correct time, figured out how long I planned to sleep, then factored in the ten minute per hour time differential when I set the alarm. This foolish system only ever let me down once. I kept it up until the day I left Aix. And then I left my valued clock radio in my room in Aix because it was too much to carry home with me.

I’ve missed it ever since.

Anyway, I got up early to pack my bags on my last morning in the Hotel de la Rennaissance. I showered in the “douche” (the one without the shower curtains) and got water all the hell over everywhere. I hailed a cab on rue Gaston de Saporta which carried me to my new home on rue Cezanne. I got there around eight-thirty. I hadn’t been given keys yet. I knocked but no one answered. I had thought that I was supposed to arrive around this time to get the keys and sort out whatever remained to be sorted out, but when no one answered I began to think I was mistaken. There was no sign of Mark.

This had been the last night the Richauds planned to stay in what was to become my room. This place was their summer home, which they rented to students during the winter. They returned during winter months to their true home in the much disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine (which borders Germany, but is in the hands of the French these days; ownership of Alsace-Lorraine goes back and forth depending on the outcome of the latest European war).

The two Americans already occupied their rooms, I knew. I didn’t want to wake anyone if they weren’t already up, so I just sat there, in the stairwell on the landing, and dug out my Robert Jordan book and read for a while.

After about twenty minutes the door opened and Monsieur Richaud popped his head out. He was surprised to see me just sitting there. He muttered something utterly incomprehensible, though I do believe I caught the words “foolish boy” in there somewhere. I was slightly offended. I did not consider myself a boy at the age of twenty-eight. I wasn’t particularly inclined to dispute the adjective “foolish,” though.

Monsieur Richaud led me inside the apartment. Madame Richaud appeared. Between the two of them they managed to produce some comprehensible English. They provided a key and told me a little about the Americans students staying there. Apparently the Americans’ French was already pretty good and they made it a practice to speak French all the time in the apartment. I liked this notion but found it intimidating, as at this point I hardly knew any French. I knew also that the Americans would likely be disappointed with me and Mark, considering our almost non-existent levels of French. Obviously, speaking French with us would be useless for at least the first three months of our stay.

One of the Americans, Matthew, was home. The other American, Marcus, had stayed out the night before. The Richauds introduced me to Matt, a young guy of about twenty-one, who looked as American as all get out, to me at least. Dressed in casual, hip clothes, Matt was cocky and confident and said things like, “Hey dude,” a lot. Did I mention he was from California?

Matt breezed around the apartment like a young cat. He fried eggs in the tiny kitchen. He may not have been the entire cat: the Richaud’s behaved like he was the cat’s meow. I thought, yikes. I’m living with Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But I came to really like Matt. Turned out you could count on him in a pinch.

I wondered what Marcus would be like. The Richaud’s told me he was twenty-six and studious. This seemed at odds with him having stayed out all night. I liked the thought of meeting somebody closer to my own age, though.

Checking out my room I saw that the bed had no pillow. I brought this up to Monsieur Richaud who seemed disgruntled that I expected him to provide a pillow. He trekked down to the storage room, though, and retrieved a sickly, white affair with yellow stains that wasn’t going anywhere near my head! I thanked Monsieur Richaud just the same and he seemed pleased to have resolved the matter.

The Richauds didn’t provide any blankets, either, apart from one threadbare sheet. Even though it was still fairly warm in Aix during the day, it cooled off at night. So, with no blankets to speak of, that night I froze my Canadian arse off.

Mark eventually showed up. We each unpacked and settled in. I decided that I liked my room, even though it was small. I didn’t have any food, so Mark invited me to hang out with him once again, and off we went to find Mark’s former hotel roommate’s new place.

Where I met several people I would wind up spending a lot of time with.

Back to Seven Months in Provence: Part One

Mont Sainte Victoire, the view from my apartment in Aix-en-Provence (well, Mark's room, at least)

Seven Months in Provence: Part Seven

November 20, 2018 / / 0 Comments
Mont Sainte Victoire, the view from my apartment in Aix-en-Provence (well, from Mark’s room, at least)

Back in 1993/94 I spent seven months in Aix-en-Provence, France, drinking red wine, eating les Calissons and attempting to learn some French. When I got home I wrote about the experience. Thought it might be fun to post a few excerpts here. Here’s Part Seven:

My room in the hotel had a phone on the wall.

That evening I phoned my girlfriend Lynda back in Canada.

I felt bad because I knew that she would be wondering why I hadn’t called her yet. She would think that it was because I couldn’t be bothered. Of course, this was not the case. I picked up the phone and got the front desk. Front desk made the whole thing simple, getting the international operator for me. Seconds later I was talking to Lynda. She sounded a bit hurt, wondering why I hadn’t called days earlier. I explained the difficulty figuring out the phones in France and she told me that she understood.

The next day I set out for the Institut d’Etudes Françaises pour Etudiants Etrangers. I knew generally what direction it was in. I had this naive notion that I could find my way anywhere. Such is the case in North America where cities and towns are typically laid out in grids, but this is not necessarily so in other countries. I took streets I had not yet taken, turned onto others when I felt it was time, and somehow miraculously found my way to the school. Later I found out how the city is actually laid out and it’s a wonder I made it there at all.

I found out from the Institute’s office that I could not be issued a student card until I paid my tuition fees. However, I could not do this until my bank draft came through, which I didn’t think would happen until the following week.

Without a student card I wouldn’t be able to use the housing registry. This meant I might have to stay in hotels until I ran out of the money I had on hand. I had a credit card but I hadn’t tried to use it yet and wasn’t sure if it would work for me in France. Also I wondered how would I pay it off in France. So I didn’t want to use it.

But the school did let me write a test to see what level I would study at. Everybody had to write the same test. If you got zero you were put in Niveau I, at the bottom, in class AA. Top students who already spoke French quite fluently were placed in one class all together in Niveau III.

We had one hour to write the test. I went through it and understood very little. I didn’t even understand most of the instructions. I guessed at most of it. Frustrated, I eventually just translated a bunch of words I knew and wrote a note saying I was just doing that to prove that I did know something! Then I handed it in.

They placed me in Niveau I, but four classes from the bottom, in class D. So I wasn’t the worst who wrote the test. And it turned out that this was about the best class I could ever have been placed in, based on the quality of the other students. It was just a great collection of people, many of whom became good friends.

I made an appointment to see the housing registrar even though I knew that she probably wouldn’t see me without a student card. Someone had told me that the housing registrar could be rather difficult. The appointment was for the next day around ten. I arrived a few minutes early. I needn’t have worried about being late.

When you walked through the school’s arch, took the left up the stairs to the second level, you arrived at a common area around which were spread hallways, offices, and rooms. In this common area sat a curious woman behind a long desk. You had to deal with her before you dealt with anyone else. Somewhere in her fifties, I would guess, she always dressed like she was a lot skinnier and younger than she actually was. She spoke French fluently but with a broad accent. At first I assumed she was French and just happened to speak English well. Later I found out that she was actually British but had lived in France for a quarter century. As the year progressed I eventually was able to tell for myself that her accent was too broad to be truly French.

When I arrived for my appointment I immediately informed her of my presence. She brusquely told me to take a seat and wait. I noticed that a lot of other students were already sitting around waiting. I told her the time of my appointment, thinking that perhaps it meant something. She told me rather harshly that she didn’t give a hoot about that and would I just sit down. I decided that she was a bit of a dragon lady. Subsequent encounters proved me correct, though eventually I discovered that dragon ladies can be people too.

So I sat and waited. Forty-five minutes later I was still waiting when a young man with long black hair approached me. “You speak English,” he said, in a British accent.

I agreed that I did.

He introduced himself as Mark, from England. He was looking for a place to stay as well. It turned out that his appointment was right before mine. He finally got to go in to see the registrar. When he came out he told me that she had told him of a place where two rooms were available. He asked me if I would like to come along. The registrar popped her head out and said that this wouldn’t bother her any if I did. I immediately agreed, knowing that she probably wouldn’t have spoken to me anyway without my student card. Lucky.

Mark was twenty-one and had just finished university in Wales. His father, the CEO of an extermination company, had allowed his older brother to flake out for a year in Spain after university, so Mark insisted that he be allowed to do the same in France before having to find a job. I’m not sure Mark learned much French in Aix, but I do believe he had a good time. Mark turned out to be a good guy and a lot of fun.

The apartment was a twenty minute walk north out of town, up a huge hill. Mark, a smoker, huffed and puffed his way up. He commented a couple of times that he couldn’t believe the hill, which was quite steep in places. You would be hard pressed to bike up it, but at one point it affords a great view of the city.

A man of about sixty, Monsieur Richaud, stood by the road waiting for us. The addresses could be hard to figure out so this was a good thing. He greeted us and took us through the parking lot to the condominium. There were four bedrooms with a central kitchen. Two students were already living there, Americans. At least two of the bedrooms were actually converted living rooms. Madame and Monsieur Richaud were staying in one of the rooms not yet rented out. They barely spoke English. He was French and she was German. As neither Mark nor I spoke either French or German we had to make do with the Richaud’s English.

The apartment was clean and tidy. We snapped it up right away. I was quite relieved to have one major worry resolved. The Richauds wanted money right away, so Mark and I went downtown where I discovered that my credit card worked after all. Mark had already borrowed something like four thousand francs from another student he had just met who later became a good friend of mine, a Scottish girl named Tracey Coleman. We went back and signed the lease, and moved in the next day.

One of the available rooms, the smallest, had a shower. The monthly rent was the least for this room, 1850 francs. (The other rooms all cost more.) The other available room was slightly bigger, faced east, and had a fantastic view of Mount Sainte-Victoire, made famous in a painting by Paul Cézanne, whose workshop turned out to be right next door (I always intended to visit the workshop but never actually got around to it).

I took the smaller room with the shower, a decision I never regretted. The communal shower sucked. Apparently you had to crouch to use it, although I never tried it. Mark was happy with his room because it was bigger and had a little balcony. And there were lots of pieces of furniture upon which he could place his empty beer and wine bottles.

My worries seemed to be dissolving, one by one. I knew my credit card worked, so I had cash for the forseeable future. I now had a roof over my head, or at least I would the next day, after I moved in.

I was starting to feel good.

That night I had supper with Mark, a young Swedish girl still in her teens whose name I don’t recall, and an American girl named Kristin, around twenty, who also became a friend of mine. We were all attending the Institute. We sat outside at a table on the Cours Mirabeau. I was relaxed, extraordinarily happy to be in Aix rather than working back in Canada. Although early October, it was still quite warm in Aix. We talked about who we were and what we were doing there. It was such a great atmosphere. At twenty-eight I was by far the oldest at the table, but I didn’t feel old. Or rather, I didn’t feel bad being old. I felt more experienced than the others, is all.

Although in truth I was probably the least experienced of the bunch, at least when it came to travelling.

Back to Seven Months in Provence: Part One

Credit Lyonnaise (LCL) on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence

Seven Months in Provence: Part Six

November 6, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Credit Lyonnaise (LCL) on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence

Back in 1993/94 I spent seven months in Aix-en-Provence, France, drinking red wine, eating les Calissons and attempting to learn some French. When I got home I wrote about the experience. Thought it might be fun to post a few excerpts here. Here’s Part Six:

The day after figuring out how to call Canada I went to see about getting a Carte de Sejour/student visa. I figured it would take one trip to settle that.

Back in Toronto the French Consulate had told me that I needed a Carte de Sejour if I was going to stay in France more than 3 months. As a student, I would be eligible. Just make sure to report to a police station within eight days of arriving in France, they told me.

There was a police station near my hotel, so I checked in, bringing with me everything that I had been told was required. This meant black and white photos of myself, medical travel insurance, papers indicating that I was a student, an up-to-date birth certificate, my passport, and a statement from my bank in Canada indicating how much money I had.

I told the friendly folks at the police station what I wanted. One man who spoke English told me that I couldn’t take care of it there; I had to go to a special location that dealt with that sort of thing. He gave me a map of Aix and circled the area where this special station was. He suggested that it was within walking distance. Slightly dismayed that I couldn’t take care of the Carte de Sejour right away, I left, resolving to take care of it later that week.

I also went to the bank to deposit my bank draft of over eight thousand dollars Canadian and to open up a new account. I walked the length of the Cours Mirabeau to check out all the banks. One called Credit Lyonnais looked the most inviting. I didn’t know at that time that this was in fact France’s largest bank, and also that it was in financial trouble as a result of Bruce McNall’s questionable financial wheelings and dealings involving his sports team, the Kings and the Ticats, and his various other activities. This never affected me in any way; I just found it interesting after I got back from France.

When I got to the bank around noon they were just closing the doors. A security guard shut it all up solid. This was my first encounter with France’s odd habit of closing stores and banks at strange, inconvenient times of the day. I went away for a bit, then came back and found it open after one pm. I went inside and stood in line only to be told when I reached the teller that, as a foreign student looking to open an account, I needed to talk to someone in a completely different area. They showed me where and I waited some more.

While I was waiting in line someone in line behind me said “Hey, Canada!”

I was wearing my CBC radio jacket which has a big old CBC logo on the back, and which said on the top, “Radio Canada.” So when I was wearing that coat I was easily identifiable as a Canadian. It was a major reason why I had bought it along.

I turned to find four young women directly behind me. The woman who had spoken was Holly, I learned, from London, Ontario. The three others were Americans, all from California, although one had been born in Lebanon. They were all very friendly and it turned out that they were all going to the same school as me (Institut d’études françaises pour étudiants étrangers). They offered to show me where it was. This had been a concern of mine, finding the damned place. They set my mind at ease in other ways, too, such as exactly when classes started, and how the school helped people find places to live.

I opened a bank account with the aid of a friendly employee who spoke English quite well. She assured me the bank draft I had was perfect and that it should go through within a week. That was a Monday and in fact it did go through on the Friday, which was much quicker than the Royal Bank in Canada had told me it would. They had pretty much been guessing. I later wrote the Royal Bank asking for help with some other financial matters and while I was at it thanked them for helping me with my France arrangements. An employee named Lee Bakitch wrote me back, impressed that I had taken the time to handwrite a letter of thanks.

I waited as my fellow students finished their banking arrangements, then took them up on their offer to show me where the school was. It had only been a couple of days since I’d had a lengthy chat with someone in English, yet it still felt good to be able to speak English with fellow native speakers.

We set out for the school, walking north (for the most part) from the Cours Mirabeau on a series of narrow streets, all bordered by tiny shops selling the latest in fashionable clothes, or electronic goods, barbershops, hair salons, wine stores, boulangeries, patisseries, book stores, you name it, they were there, all crammed next to one another. Tiny cars shared these little streets with the pedestrians, and dogs and bikes and motorized bikes and scooters and full fledged motorcycles. The dogs, hordes of them running loose, left behind a notable legacy—the streets were filled with “crotte de chien.” You had to watch where you were going constantly. I was told that the French considered it good luck if you accidentally stepped in crotte de chien. One way to rationalize it. Every day the streets were hosed down, as near as I could figure mainly to wash this stuff away. I couldn’t imagine the carnage if it were left to accumulate.

Whenever a car passed we all had to get out of the street and walk single file along the side of the road. Some streets were off limits to automobiles during certain times; there were thick black iron poles, about three feet high, which would rise from the road to block their passage. A Canadian friend by the name of Doug told me how he figured out that the poles went up and down. One day he noticed that one pole had a neat little pile of “crotte de chien” atop it. He wondered how the heck the dog had got it there. Must have been some neat manoeuvring involved with that, he had thought, before making the connection that, oh yeah, the poles must go down from time to time to let the cars through, and that’s when the dog must have done its business! Unless there had been a particularly acrobat dog about that day.

There was a distinctive arch on Rue Gaston de Saporta. Holly suggested that I use it as a landmark. Sure enough, moments after spotting the arch we came upon the school. Which turned out to be somewhat different than I had expected.

I had envisioned a campus with lots of grass and many noble ancient buildings and students leaning up against trees. L’Institute Pour Les Etudiants Etrangers turned out to be mainly one old concrete building, although it shared classrooms with the building next door, which was largely for actual French students studying economics and business. You entered our building through a big arch with huge wooden doors. Beyond the arch you passed through a door and then took a right to climb stairs to classrooms and offices on the second and third floors. Left inside the arch you found more offices. Straight through the arch to the other side you entered a quadrangle, where there actually was some sparse grass and maybe a single tree. From the quad you could access more classrooms, including a couple of sound laboratories and an auditorium. To my delight I later found a piano in the auditorium.

With the girls I hung the right and climbed the stairs to the second story. Here you could inquire about registration and housing. On that day I just checked the place out. I had lucked out, meeting people who were able to show me where it was. I would be lucky like this in many ways in the days to come.

I hung out with the girls a bit more that beautiful sunny day, exploring a bit of the inner city. My main memory is discussing with one girl the fact that she was from Lebanon. I never spoke to her again that year. Of the other girls, I did speak with Holly several more times that year. I had the impression that she was not particularly happy to be there in France. I suspected she was lonely. It would have been easy to be. I was lonely a lot, despite being fortunate enough to make many excellent friends.

After I parted ways with the girls, I stopped at a hotel that appeared slightly more upscale than the one I was staying at. I was curious what their rates were. Turned out it was only thirty or forty more francs than the Hotel Vendome, and much nicer. This was the Hotel de la Renaissance. It just occurs to me just now, writing this, how significant that was. Renaissance. To be born again. I don’t mean in the religious sense.

I often felt, as the year progressed, that I was living my life over again, in a way.

The previous year, when I knew for sure that I would be going to France the following October, we had a Christmas party at work. It was a fun party, the last Christmas party ever held in CBC Radio’s Jarvis street facilities (these parties were legendary). At the time we were in the process of moving to the new Broadcast Centre on Front Street. Late in the evening a bunch of us crossed the street to the Red Lion bar for a few more drinks. My friend Wayne Richards was seeing a woman by the name of Stacey at the time. The first time I’d ever met Stacey we felt like we’d known one another for years. I don’t just mean that we’d hit it off; the first time I looked into her eyes I experienced a visceral sensation like an electrical shock. I never mentioned this to her at the time. Much later she mentioned it to me. “We have a connection, Joe. Don’t deny it. I know you felt it too when we first met.”

As a scientific rationalist, I don’t generally believe in that sort of thing. And yet…

Anyway, Stacey came with us that night. She was very into New Age stuff and brought her Runes with her. She wanted to read my Runes. They’re little wooden blocks like Scrabble letters, only with esoteric designs on them instead of letters. You put them all into a little pouch and then pull them out, one by one, and someone like Stacey reads them for you. So this is what she did.

I pulled out the death rune.

As I mentioned, I don’t really believe in this sort of thing. Still, I was a bit alarmed. Did this mean I would be hit by a bus in France, or my plane would crash? Stacey was quick to reassure me: Joe, it just represents change, as opposed to actual death.

That certainly fit. My life was about to change big-time with France.

That summer, the summer before France, I lived alone in an apartment on the York University campus where another curious thing happened.

I was coming home from work on a Sunday, and had just rounded the corner of the building where I was living, when I heard a big “splat!” It sounded like a bag of wet concrete slapping the ground from a great height. I rushed back around the corner where I saw a black object flailing wildly. It was disturbing. I didn’t know what it was so I went closer and saw that it was a young black cat, less than a year old. Obviously it had fallen from an open window high up. It was in the throes of a tremendous spasm that lasted several minutes. It broke my heart. A young woman happened along just after me.

“Do something!” she pleaded.

But there was nothing I could do.

If I’d had the heart I might have found some way to put the cat out of its misery. I suspected it was quite busted up inside. Finally, it stopped spasming and just lay there, breathing heavily, rapidly. The young woman implored me to call a veterinarian, so I agreed to go inside and call a cab and try to find a veterinarian.

Inside my apartment I scanned the yellow pages trying to find a veterinarian open on a Sunday. It took me forever to find one. I called a cab and went back outside. The girl and the cat had disappeared. I didn’t really blame the girl; despite trying to hurry, I had taken a long time. The cab came; I gave him five bucks and sent him away. But I wanted to find out what happened to the girl and the cat, so I went back upstairs and made a sign asking her to call me.

When I went to paste the sign to the front door of the building, I noticed another sign from the same young woman asking the owner of the black cat to call her. I took down the number and called her. I apologized for having taken so long. She said that it was all right. The cat had died shortly after I left. She thanked me for trying.

All right, I admit it. I’m a bit superstitious. I wondered what it meant, a black cat falling from out of the sky practically right in front of me and dying. That and the death rune some months earlier. I related everything to France at this point.

To spell it out, shortly after arriving in France, I began to feel very much like I was starting life over again there. I had gotten rid of many of my possessions before leaving. I had reduced my belongings to the essential me. I drew the death rune. I witnessed the death of a black cat. I went to France where I was unable to speak. I knew no one. I was like a newborn child. I stayed at the “re-birth” hotel. As the year progressed, I gradually grew up again. I learned to speak again.

I know this all sounds foolish. But it was always at the back of my mind during my time in France.

Anyway, I moved to the Hotel de la Renaissance, going from a one star hotel to a two star hotel. Returning to the Hotel Vendome to get my bags, I felt guilty when I told the swarthy manager that I would be leaving, it being already late in the day, but he didn’t seem to care.

At the Renaissance I asked the woman at the desk if she spoke English. She said, rather apologetically, that she did not. No matter: I had studied how to ask for one room with a shower. Quite self-consciously, I trotted out the French: “Une chambre avec une douche, s’il vous plait.”

No problem. Soon I found myself on the top floor of the Hotel de la Renaissance with a view of Cours Sextius. The room was small but pleasant. It had a charming ceiling, with timber laid in like you might expect to find in a log cabin. It had normal pillows and normal washroom facilities, with one exception: there were no curtains on the shower, which again was one of those hand held jobbies.

I couldn’t believe the lack of shower curtains. Was this normal? The entire room might end up soaked. The following morning I used the shower anyway, taking as much care as I could not to wet the room.

It got wet anyway.

Back to Seven Months in Provence: Part One

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