I am holidaying with my children in my hometown of Ste-Foy, a suburb of Quebec; my parents are our tolerant hosts. I took this lifestyle for granted growing up, but am now thoroughly amazed at what’s on offer in the neighbourhood. Here are the WALKING times to some of the amenities:
6 seconds: beauty salon and hairdresser. They’re the nearest neighbours - aren’t I lucky!
1 minute: bus stop that takes you to Old Quebec. The bus passes every 10 minutes and it takes about 15 minutes to find yourself in Place D’YOuville;
4 minutes (in various directions): public library; French high school; outdoor soccer pitch; City Hall;
5 minutes: Sylvie Bernier indoor pool (named after the Quebec Olympic multi-medalist); 2 lots of outdoor tennis courts; permanent fully equipped gymnastics hall (including uneven bars, trampoline, climbing ropes, balance beams, and floor space); outdoor children’s park (climbing frame, swings, etc);
6 minutes: double indoor ice skating arenas, and behind it, the Gaetan Boucher Olympic sized outdoor speed skating ring (named after, you guessed it, the Quebecer medalist…); 25-metre outdoor pool; Roland Beaudoin park, consisting of huge wading pool featuring a row of fountains rocketing upwards and an outdoor amphitheathre;
8 minutes: a vast triple shopping mall on 3 floors, everything from giant Toys R Us to Futureshop to any fashion retailers you can think of, plus offices, gym, restaurants & cafes, etc.
If you get into your car, in 15 minutes you can be at an uber-mall: it’s not worth describing, just visit the Galeries de la Capitale website! Suffice it to say that for C$1 you can ice skate on an Olympic sized rink in the summer.
There is an absolute glut of things to do. For C$200 we’ve equipped ourselves with 4 children’s bikes & 4 new helmets. For another C$ 60 I got a skateboard, all the protective gear, 4 junior tennis rackets & a few tennis balls. We bike to the pool, playing tennis on the way – there’s always an availabe court. On rainy days we head the other way to swim indoors and enjoy the water slide; or go skating. We were too late to sign the kids up for gymnastics this summer (we’re visiting for 6 weeks since we have a free place with my parents), but we gawked for over half an hour at the amazingly equipped gym, and the not surprisingly skilled gymnasts given the ratio of coaches to kids – about 1 to 4!!!! (as opposed to 1 to 15 or so in our Carlow gym!)
And that would be without the Festival D’Ete and the Quebec 400th Anniversary goings on in Old Quebec. On Friday I saw Akon and Wyclef Jean perform – and it was free (ok, actually it costs $30 to get a pass for the whole week, but I was given passes by my brother who was heading off to his cottage by the lake, and my sister whose friends were leaving after the first weekend). All summer there are activities for children. Mine spent a while making Egyptian masks and having their faces painted, for free of course, and when they needed to sit there was a constant stream of shows going on in the park, from the North Shore Celtics to the Armenian troupe, the day we were there.
Today it rained but we had things to do at the shopping centre. Wireless cafes, toys r us, sports shops, clean loos always within reasonable distance, drinking fountains, … weirdly, it’s those details that make the whole thing pleasant, not just striclty the incredible number of shops.
And with all this almost literally on our doorstep, what does my son say? “I miss our house. It’s not the same here. We don’t have as much room to play.” Wha?? I guess that’s the difference between urban and rural. Our home in the bogs of Carlow, with garden, fields, kilometres of river bank, country lanes to cycle around… it’s home sweet home, though I do try to remind my son that pebbled, potholed lanes won’t allow skate boarding. Carpe diem!
As for me, I’m planning a long car journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to visit other siblings. With the price of petrol I ought to sit still, but in Ireland, petrol cost around Euro131.99 and diesel 140.99 when I left a couple of weeks ago. Here the prices are about 25% cheaper.
I’m sure there are disadadvantages to living here, but I can’t think of them right now… wait, it’s coming… oh yeah, -30 all winter with snow from October to May! brrr.
