Harper dropped me at a gas station a short drive from the farm, wished me good luck and drove off. The gas station was just beside the on-ramp to the Ten, a road running East to West that headed in the general direction of my next stop; a homestead in Portneuf. Before I left the farm, Harper’s dad had dropped by to reminisce about his hitchhiking days and informed me that roads in Canada running East to West were even numbers, whereas the north to south roads were odd. Uncharacteristically for early October, the sun was blazing as I headed out to the roadside with a cardboard sign reading “Trois Rivieres” in thick sharpie. This wasn’t the final destination, but my plan was to hitch a ride there before carrying on; Trois Rivieres was the last major city on the highway to Portneuf. The plan worked, and before long a white van pulled over with a man in a high-vis jacket inside. His name was Jean and he was driving to work on a construction site nearby, after which he was going to Trois Rivieres. If I was comfortable to wait for a couple of hours whilst he worked, he was happy to take me with him in the afternoon. I accepted, dropped my rucksack in the back, and we set off.
Jean didn’t speak much English, but we managed some accented (on his side) and garbled (on my side) French small talk. His backstory was similar to many I’d heard on the road; he was in his late thirties, married with a house, a couple of kids, and various responsibilities, biding his time and saving up to do exactly what I was doing.
It was always tempting to tell people in his situation that there wouldn’t be a better time to go than now. The reasons for not saying this were twofold. For one, it sounded trite despite being almost universally true. And for two, people didn’t like to hear it. It meant facing up to the fact that they were afraid – afraid of leaving behind the tepid shallows of everyday life and taking the plunge into the cold, deep unknown. From speaking to older people I’d learned that reasons not to travel didn’t evaporate over time. Instead they crystallised and sank to the bottom of the soul, weighing heavier and heavier until movement became impossible. Naturally, I didn’t say this to Jean and instead we discussed where I should visit next (he suggested Banff).
After stopping off for a couple of hours at his work we continued on the highway until the exit for Trois Rivieres, where he dropped me off at a Tim Hortons coffee shop. I spent about half an hour at the roadside, during which time I received several apologetic shrugs, before a lady in a battered van full of stuff stopped and waved. This ride was shorter than the first as she was only going three more exits along the highway before dropping me off on the hard shoulder just before the exit ramp. Hitchhiking on Canadian highways is illegal and unlikely to be successful, but the people who pick up hitchhikers tend not to be aware of this. The ideal drop-off is when the driver exits the highway, then immediately rejoins it, pausing on the on-ramp to let the passenger out or, if they’re exiting the highway, letting the hitchhiker out at the bottom of the exit ramp. From there it’s possible to hitch a ride from cars joining the highway in the right direction. However, as a traveller, you take what you’re given so I skirted the barrier over to the on-ramp. Very few cars were passing, and it was getting to late afternoon before one stopped.
The driver was a guy on his phone who had clearly pulled over on impulse in mid-conversation. During the drive he gave me a detailed account of how his marriage had fallen apart because of his alcohol abuse, and how the kid asleep in the back was in his care whilst the mum recovered from drug addiction. Besides this he seemed very cheery, and even offered me money when we pulled up at the gas station in Portneuf. I politely refused and thanked him before he too drove off.
Hitchhiking had been thoroughly successful, so I was in an optimistic mood when my new host arrived. His car beeped merrily as it pulled into the gas station, and out hopped Gary; a short, sun-tanned man with a goatee.
Gary welcomed me with a great deal of enthusiasm, helped pack my bag into the boot of the car and drove us to the homestead. His house, when viewed from the roadside, had a low profile; one story high with a flat roof that sloped upwards. It was built into the side of a valley above a shallow but fast flowing river that eventually joined the Saint Lawrence. A sparse forest occupied the steep terrain between the river and the terraced garden, which was carpeted with fluffy tufts of green wheat. Gary had several apple trees, a Japanese beetle infestation and eight turkeys; two males and six females. He had no intention of eating the turkeys, which also didn’t produce eggs, so they served no obvious purpose despite being funny to watch – the male turkeys would flush bright blue, vibrate audibly and walk threateningly into your shins if you approached.
The garden was surveyed by a balcony that surrounded the house, the entirety of which had been built by the previous owner. In a large, open-plan living space I was introduced to Hugo, who was also working at the house for a short while. Hugo was telling me about his passion for vegan cooking when Gary interrupted to lay out some of the house rules;
- Everyone had to share a single ethernet cable as there was no wifi (Gary was electrosensitive and the vibrations from wifi were unbearable for him).
- Showers could not exceed five minutes.
- The bathroom had a separate bowl for peeing with a tap for flushing. It was essential to leave the tap running long enough to flush away any smells but also imperative not to waste water and cause noise for the AirBnB downstairs.
When we sat down for dinner at the end of the day, I was introduced to another rule; the mealtime tradition of pausing once the food had been served to allow Gary to close his eyes and breathe for an undefined period of time. As he sat in tense contemplation, Hugo stared at his bowl of salad leaves with an absent minded smile, his right eye meandering off in the direction of the window. After ten seconds, Gary breathed out through clenched teeth.
“Bonne appetite” he said, indicating that we were allowed to start eating.
After sorting out some small maintenance tasks around the garden, we got started on a bigger project; installing tyre steps alongside the terrace. This involved taking recycled tyres and arranging them into a stair-like structure. At the base of each one we placed a liner then packed the hole with gravel. To fix the structure in place, we smeared a mix of wet clay and straw to the outside which hardened up in the sun.
Whilst I clayed the topmost tyres, Hugo stood staring at a raspberry plant a few meters away, apparently lost in a childlike sense of wonder. When the steps were completed we split up; Gary and I started a project to prepare the greenhouse for Canadian winter, and Hugo went to cut reeds in the wastewater pond. Winters in Canada are snowy, so outdoor structures need to be suitably reinforced to handle the extra weight. In the case of the greenhouse (a big wooden structure with clear tarp stretched between the joists), this meant applying corrugated plastic sheeting to cover the roof.
There was no way to stand on the greenhouse so we made a temporary workspace by carrying two large wooden panels onto the roof and screwing them to the joists. Iteratively, we moved from right to left across the roof. Gary was afraid of heights though, and became increasingly nervous as we worked, culminating in a high pitched scream when one of the panels jolted underneath him.
At dinner, Hugo baked some bread using a special kind of wheat he had found in the kitchen. When the ‘bonne appetite’ had been issued, I tried the bread and commented that it was nice, but tasted a lot like rice. On further questioning it turned out that Hugo had searched in the draw where wheat usually lived and found rice instead. Believing it to be wheat, he had made bread, somehow not realising his error during the process. When he offered up his homemade gateau for dessert, everyone declined.
I left after a long week to hitchhike to my next stop in Kingston, Ontario (the province to the west of Quebec that houses the country’s capital, Ottawa). Hugo, who was also leaving, gave me a lift back to the on-ramp of the highway where I started flagging down rides. I was at a bend in the road with a new sign reading ‘Ottawa’, standing beside the entrance to a sandy quad-bike track. Ottawa was about five hours drive away but, being the capital city, seemed like a safe bet for finding a ride.
