Today we took a bus tour of Quebec City. We went back to the Church of Notre Dame on Upper Quebec and it was open. This is the church built in 1688. The one picture is inside the church with a ship hanging from the ceiling. This was to bring good luck to the sailors coming up the St. Lawrence from Europe and back. We drove around Quebec for a couple of hrs. looking at various buildings, including the Citadel, which is currently a military base in Quebec. We then drove to the falls of Montmorency (picture). Roy and I walked up to the base of the falls until we started getting pretty wet. We went somewhat close than the picture. We then road across to the Island of New Orleans, a small island that mainly has farmers and rich people with summer homes. We stopped at a Chocolatier (there are lots of these in Quebec). Good thing we don't go into these shops often. Yummmm. We then drove to the Gilles family shop - a family that for over 100 years has been making copper art. This family (father) made the door coverings on the church we were going to visit next. On the way to the church we stopped at another temptation place - homemade bread with maple butter. This area has a lot of maple trees and lots of maple syrup available. Never thought of putting maple syrup into butter, but it's as good as honey butter. Our tour ended at Sainte Anne de Beaupie basilica, a church dedicated to St. Anne, the mother of Mary. This church was extremely beautiful but no pictures on the inside. I found a statue on the outside of Mary very interesting Mary is standing on the serpent (which has an apple in it's mouth). Enjoyed the symbolism there.

Quebec City Number 1

Arrived here in Quebec City, Quebec about 1 p.m. and drove downtown to old town. Quebec is an amazingly old city First established in the 1530s. We drove to old town and visited an old ammunitions factory that was held by the French, then the British. The old city is surrounded by a stone wall. The lower old city is right on the St. Lawrence river which connects to the Atlantic Ocean. You will notice in old city the cobblestone streets are very narrow with lots of little shops along the street of stone buildings - very European. The Catholic church was built in 1688 on the site that Champlain originally built his stockard (an early Canadian explorer). Tomorrow we are taking an all day guided tour. This will be our last Canadian stop. Friday morning we will head to Maine and probably spend the night in southern Maine. In the city 94% speak French so we don't hear much English, although the shop keepers speak some English.

Visits to Montreal

Yesterday afternoon we drove into Montreal and visited St. Joseph's Oratory - a large catholic church. St. Joseph is the patron saint of Canada. This basilica also honors Brother Andre, a healing monk. His heart (real) is on display in the church museum. (We have a picture of it!). We also went downtown to the Cathedral of Montreal, a 1/4 scale church replica of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It had a very unusual canopy of the altar. We drove by McGill University (Canada's Harvard).

Today we headed down to "old" Montreal, a part of the city that was built in the 1800s. The streets are narrow as you can see in the picture and cobblestoned. We walked to various small shops and to another Catholic church called Basilica Notre Dame De Montreal. This was a huge church built in the 1820's and finished in the 1870's. It had an absolutely huge beautiful alter up front. We actually took a tour from one of the parishners, which was really fascinating. Afterward we drove by the 1976 Olympic park. The big stadium (where they now play professional baseball and other sports) is called the Big "O". They didn't even finish the stadium until 1990. It has had to have many repairs, so we were told the locals call it the Big "Owe". It was pretty impressive. The large wing is a tower that you can ride up in for $$.

Please pray for Roy's Sister, Joan. Her cancer has spread and she is doing poorly.

10/4 from Montreal

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while. We have been in fairly unpopulated parts of Canada the last few days with little internet service. Our last blog we were in Thunder Bay. On Sept 29th we drove to Sault (said Sue) Ste. Marie. The fall leaves were incredibly beautiful. It is impossible to describe the colors. I've seen pictures but pictures do not do the scenary credit. There is every shade of green, yellow, orange and red. On Wednesday we went down to the locks between lake Superior and Heron. Canada has no commerical locks (USA has 4 commerical locks between the lakes though). We then went to a Bush pilot museum. These planes were unbelievable. They were and are used to fight forest fires and fly people in to remote areas, landing on lakes. They can actually fly over the surface of the water and pick up water to then deliver to fires. After that , we went to an Italian restaurant with some friends we met in Charlotte last year (at a NASCAR race) - Bob and Carol McDowells. We hit it off last year immediate. The are Christians and Bob is into cars and Carol is a Nurse Practioner AND they are Earnhart fans - so we hit it off. On Friday we rode the Agawa Canyon train up the Canyon for 4 hours (mainly for the scenary) and then back. After we got back, we went to Bob and Carol's for dinner. They are true NASCAR Earnhard fans as their house is fully NASCAR decorated. On Saturday we drove to the little town of Mattawa, Ontario about the size of McCall or smaller. There were only 4 churches so we ended up at a Pentacostal church on Sunday. Today we drove to Montreal and will be here a couple of days. More on Montreal tomorrow.

Thunder Bay

Today we drove to a beautiful waterfalls called Kakabeka Falls, then into Thunder Bay city proper on Lake Superior. The city port is lined with huge grain silos, where grain from western Canada is trained to here to load on ships. We spent some time around the area, then went to Fort William. This is not a military fort, but a reconstruction of the inland headquarters of the NW Company (which later fused with the Hudson Bay Company). It was a huge fort with multiple buildings. We had a "period" tour guide that took us and another couple from Michigan through the fort for about 2 hours. The fort was fully supplied with furs, gardens, and furnishings from the 1800s. Tomorrow we are headed to Sault St. Marie ("Soo" they call it) which is a city between Lake Superior and Lake Heron. We will stay a couple of days there. We have some friends we met at the Charlotte NASCAR campground that we hope to visit with.
Comments on the blog are welcome!!!!

These are pictures from the legislative building in downtown Winnepeg. This building is supposedly worth the most in N. America. The large "golden boy" on top is covered with gold. The building was made of limestone. Inside was a stairway lined with huge bronze bison, a popular wedding picture site. The guard told us 8 wedding parties were scheduled that Saturday. Upstairs, besides the chambers, was an original Magna Carta on display. This particular Magna carta was brought to Canada this summer by the Queen and given to Canada. U.S. also has an orginal copy in Wash. D.C.

Sunday we went to a Nazarene Church that had about 100 people, mostly Asian. We think they were either Korean. Winnepeg (city of about 1 million) has two small Nazarene churches. We enjoyed the service a lot. We came home, watched NASCAR and then watched the replay ob the Oregon vs. BSU game on ESPN. We weren't able to get the original broadcast.

This morning we drove down to the financial district and went to the commodies exchange. There wasn't much to see as its all done on computers. We came back and drove to Thunder Bay, Ontario which is on Lake Superior. We will be here for about 2 days.

Winnepeg

We drove in to Winnepeg today. People compare Winnepeg to Chicago, both in type of city and weather. We went to "The Forks", a fork in the river, where an old railroad terminal has been converted into shops. We also went down to the Legislature building. This building was made of limestone and has a "golden boy" (as they call it) on top covered with 23 1/2 karat gold. (Picture in next post) It is said this is one of the most valuable buildings in North American. We also visited the Ukrainian Museum. Thousands of Ukranians came from E. Europe in the 1900's to post WWII and there are lots of them all over Canada, as well as many Orthodox churches. Tomorrow we plan to go to a Nazarene church, come back and watch NASCAR and then BSU game. We can't get the live BSU game but it is being repeated on ESPN tomorrow.