Quebec Days Six and Seven

Start: St. Apollinaire
End: Quebec City
Mileage/cumulative: 30.26 / 321.53
Elevation Ascended/cumulative: 594’ / 6,506’
Weather: Start – Sunny 53 degrees / Finish – Sunny 55 degrees
Flat tires (entire group) day/cumulative: 1 / 2

Day Six was, thankfully, a short 30-mile day with the wind at our back for all but the first few miles. Our route took us along the St. Lawrence to Levis, where we took a five-minute ferry ride across the river to Quebec City, one of the oldest cities in North America.

The Algonquian people had originally named the area Kébec, meaning “where the river narrows”, because the Saint Lawrence narrows proximate to what is now Quebec City. Samuel de Champlain founded a French settlement here in 1608, and adopted the Algonquin name. The ramparts surrounding Old Quebec are the only fortified city walls remaining in the Americas north of Mexico. The city has a deep history, reflected in the architecture and if you know what you’re looking for, you can tell which buildings were French and which were British (the Brits are more symmetrical).

Quebec City’s skyline is dominated by the Château Frontenac hotel. It was designed as one of a series of “château” style hotels built for the Canadian Pacific Railway company. The hotel opened in 1893 and has been expanded three times since then. It was one of the locations for the First Quebec Conference on August 17-24, 1943, attended by Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister of Canada. Joseph Stalin was invited but did not attend for military reasons. The initial planning for D-Day took place at the hotel and, as one can imagine, security was critical. Nearly 3,000 guests had their bookings cancelled for that week and the staff were told nothing. 

The city has an abundance of art galleries and street performers. When I hear the term “street performer”, I think of the years spent in San Francisco, where anyone can perform anything, anywhere, with or without talent, and where territorial fights often broke out between “performers”. In Quebec City, they are required to hold a permit to perform in only the upper or the lower section of the city. Additionally, to avoid conflict, performers’ locations are changed on a regular basis. These regulations allow legitimate performers to earn a living during the peak season. One of the women we saw singing has been performing outdoors for over twenty years. 

One of the first things we noticed about Quebec City is how clean it is. Granted, we were limited on foot to a small area, but considering the number of visitors in the city, the absence of trash on the streets was remarkable. Quebec City is also recognized as one of the safest cities in the world, with one of the lowest crime rates in North America. Clean and safe? What’s not to like? Oh yeah… winter.

Residents of Quebec province like to say that they have four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and construction. Winter in Quebec City brings eleven feet of snow and icebreaker ships to keep the river’s shipping channel open. A competitive sport is ice canoeing, with teams of four racing through ice and snow on the river. Basically, teams paddle their canoes and when they get stuck, lift the canoe and carry it across snow. This sounds insane but, then again, some people would say that about what we’re doing.

We get back on our bikes for Day Eight, taking the ferry back over the river and continuing north along the eastern shore. It looks  like our cold weather gear is unpacked to stay.