French Canada Trip Day Four: Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal

Tread back to Day Three of my Canadian journey here.

A foggy morning in downtown Toronto. I enjoy a fantastic breakfast of cinnamon oatmeal and a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich in the hotel restaurant. Then it's off to retrieve the Lexus from an underground parking deck, a feature that creates a nice little green space between the hotel and a row of town homes behind it.

A last glimpse at downtown Toronto. Tomorrow, I'll be in a city different in almost every way.

Most of the morning rush hour had burned off by the time I hit the highway, and soon I was back on the open plains of rural Ontario. My first destination for the day was Ottawa, Canada's provincial capital and home to a little over one million people.

Quickly, I hit a milestone. My odometer patiently flipped over from 229999 to 230000 miles. This, with more than half of the trip left to go. Still I was impressed with the old girl. I bought this car almost five years ago, already with 150000 miles and between three and four previous owners. By all counts it should have been in its golden years... years ago. But here it was, already in a foreign country, and inching ever closer to a province where nearly 95% of the people speak French.

The misty weather hung around throughout the morning, and I was glad I'd splurged on the $15 a piece wipers instead of my usual $7 ones. This didn't seem to dampen the beauty of this region's fall colors, which peak between mid-September and mid-October.

225 miles east of Toronto, I finally turned onto highway 416 north towards Ottawa. It's hard to imagine this nearly desolate highway leading to the capital city of Canada. Ottawa was declared capital of Canada in 1857 by Queen Victoria. This was long before the western provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and not to mention the Northern Territories were part of Canada. Thus Ottawa was chosen for it's location, nestled conveniently between Toronto and Montreal, the two biggest cities in Canada, and in the center of the Canadian territory.

It was also chosen because of distance from the United States border. Remember, this wasn't too long after the Louisiana Purchase, and California had only entered the Union 7 years earlier. So you can't fault Canadian officials for playing it safe.

Driving up highway 416 definitely played in isolationism's favor. In the 55 miles from the highway's origin near the St. Lawrence River to Ottawa, there are no incorporated towns, only the township of Kemptville, 35 miles from Ottawa and the rural community of Spencerville, which retains many structures that were built around its founding in the early 1800s.

A few miles outside of Ottawa, I left the main highway to take a scenic route, though I think the definition of scenic got stretched a bit. Really, it was a shortcut through the outer suburbs and into the city itself. Here I felt like a real outsider. In America, if you had a license plate from Arizona and were living in, say, Illinois or Tennessee, people would just assume you were in the military, or had recently moved, or maybe you were there for school. Here, a United States license plate basically meant one thing: tourist. And tourists venturing outside of the designated "tourist areas" were immediately suspect, or at least given a second look.

The two most common stateside plates I saw on this trip? New York and Vermont. The only other southern state plate I remember seeing was Alabama, in Toronto.

For a city of over 800,000, downtown Ottawa is incredibly compact. All of the main attractions here sit in the same three-block radius, starting from the riverside jogging and biking trail and extending southward on a grid.

The shining centerpiece of Ottawa is Parliament Hill, a collection of three buildings that still house day-to-day activities of Canadian government. In the center, the senate and house of commons (similar to our house of representatives), hold meetings in their respective chambers. Directly behind is the Library of Parliament, which houses some 600,000 items in its repository.

Flanking the center Parliament buildings are the East and West Blocks, which both contain offices of Canadian senators and ministers, along with meeting rooms and other administrative spaces.

All three of these Gothic Revival style buildings opened in 1866. The highly ornate style was chosen through a contest of sorts; many ideas were submitted to the department of public works, and eventually the decision was narrowed down to two styles: Gothic Revival and Neoclassical.

The United States Department of Agriculture building in Washington, D.C. is a shining example of Neoclassical architecture, the standard for most government buildings in the United States.

This represents an interesting decision point. The choice of which style to go with presented two polar opposites. Neoclassical: grand scale, simple shapes, and the liberal use of columns; Gothic Revival: Ornate, decorative shapes and patterns, and lancet windows. At the time, Neoclassical style was still seen as radical, where Gothic Revival, or Victorian style, was seen as more traditional and conservative.

While Gothic Revival style was chosen for government buildings in Canada, it still found its way to America via Christian institutions for higher learning. Both Sewanee University of the South (above) and Georgetown University began as private, Christian colleges, and both were built around the same time, in the late 19th century.

Now, also keep in mind that Canada was very much still a British colony at this time. Over in Britain, the reconstructed Palace of Westminster had nearly reached completion, and the answer was clear. The public works commissioners and Sir Edmund Walker Head, governor of what was then called British North America, chose the Gothic Revival style because it was thought to best represent parliamentary democracy.

Thus began the stark architectural contrast between Canada's capital city and ours, Washington, D.C.

It took me about two hours to walk around the buildings of Parliamentary Hill, down to the riverside trails overlooking Gatineau, Quebec, and back up to the canals of Ottawa.

By the time I'd finished walking around, it was late in the afternoon, and the sun was already starting to get low on the horizon. I grabbed my car from the parking deck and set off towards Montreal. I quickly got caught up in early rush hour, and after the frustration of trying to find a highway on ramp that wasn't closed for construction, I blasted on, unaware that I'd missed a crucial exit.

Soon, I realized my mistake when the road turned from a controlled-access interstate to a four lane highway with traffic lights. Instead of heading southwest, I'd continued straight and was now on the outskirts of the Capital Region. But a quick check of the map told me I'd face a minimal time delay if I stayed on this road, versus a giant one if I tried to go down to the highway I'd missed. And it was lucky I did miss that highway.

In the last hour of daylight, I was treated to the beautiful rural shoreside country of the Ottawa river valley.

Halfway between Ottawa and Montreal, I stopped in Hawkesbury and got my first taste of French Canada at a McDonalds. I listened to the chatter behind the counter, between the blonde high-school cashier and the half dozen cooks. It was the first time I'd heard everyone in an establishment speaking French, and it got me worried.

I can measure my French vocabulary on one hand, so it relieved me a bit to hear the person in front of me order in English. The population of Hawkesbury, once a booming saw mill town, is still about 70% bilingual, making it the third most bilingual city in Ontario. This was the first place I saw signs and primarily heard French being spoken.

The border crossing between Ontario and Quebec was undramatic, except for the fact that all road signs immediately switched to French-only, whereas in Ontario signs were in English and French. But we'll get into the separatist thing in the next post.

I arrived in Old City Montreal around 9:00P.M., and discovered the Lex had finally pooled enough oil in its plastic undercoating that it started dripping from the loose end at the back. I tried to put that anxiety into the back of my head, but I bedded down that night, worried. I've now got a profoundly leaky seal somewhere in a country whose native language I don't know. C'est la vie.

Head here to read about my first day in Montreal, starting in Old City.