sledin'

Here are some pics of Chris, Katherine, and I hiking/sleding in the Gatineau Hills, a provincial park boardering Ottawa on the Quebec side of the river. It's been along time.

Watch that rock...



As you can see, it's a dangerous pastime. I went over a precipice once, but I managed to hold on to the edge. We put on quite a show for some of the other walkers.

Those are actually the ruins of Sir John A. Macdonald's (Canada's first Prime Minister) summer home up there.

It was my first time in Quebec, and I can report that everything you've heard is true. People really do speak French there. A flurry of French was directed more than once by passersby, each time leaving me grinning and racking my brain for "Je ne comprends pas" (twice to no avail). Of course, after a couple of seconds of silence, they repeated their questions in English. I've dealt with this in Asia for years, but I have to say it's strange when it happens in your own country (when you've grown up in Alberta anyway). All the more motivation to study French.