Real Snow, Québec City

Juls and I head north to Québec City. We’re staying in the picture-postcard lakeside community of Lac Beauport, where chalets, under layers of “real snow”, look like generously iced ginger bread houses. The snow here has bulk. It has density and mass and feels incredibly labour intensive. Snow that is shoveled in slabs, carved as makeshift steps, ploughed into corrugated hedges; snow that is so damn pretty in a silent and demanding I’ll bury your car and collapse your roof kind of way.

It’s a crisp Friday morning. Juls and I wear our full length International Women of Mystery black coats when we swan into the Chateaux Frotenac for breakfast. The Chateaux, Québec’s most salubrious of hotels, stands with immense dignity on high ground overlooking the Fleuve Saint Laurent like a fairytale castle. Complete with tapering spires in a tasteful aquamarine, it is the unmistakable point of reference and defining landmark of Québec City.

I'm walking around the old city and layers of snow and ice weigh heavily on roofs of the World Heritage Listed buildings. Huge silver icicles hang beneath awnings several storeys high like glass stalactites suspended in time. I watch men work in industrious teams of two’s or three’s. As one leans from a window, maneuvering a long handled broom to break off the ice, a second hovers on the sidewalk with his neck craned skyward, and shoos away tourists in his peripheral vision.

At street level, there are small stop-red signs warning pedestrians of the overhead danger and an occasional loud and unnerving sighing sound betrays the mass movement of shifting snow.

It gets cold. A silent wind slices down rue Sainte-Ursule with a biting urgency, as if gathering speed on the steep iced pavements. I round my shoulders and hide exposed skin, chin into neck, nose into scarf, ears beneath beanie and concentrate on keeping my footing.

The tall wooden doors of Le Petit Coin Latin Cafe are painted red. Through the glass panels, the tiny cafe looks a cosy and immediate refuge. The cafe is empty when I walk in. When the doors swing heavily behind me, I am aware that the silent wind had sound after all. My numb ears are accosted by a sudden stillness and when the man behind the counter greets me, kindly, in French, I think my voice too loud and abrasive, "Oui, je voudrais un menu, s'il vous plait!"

I while away the afternoon here, in hiding, curled up in a window corner reading the delightful 'Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm', by David Mas Masumoto, and listening to the scratchy George Brassens recording. My French is pitiful, but the owner understands sufficient enough to refill my pot of Chamomile tea wordlessly. I grow quietly fond of him.

It's near on 4pm when he approaches my table hesitantly, apologetically, and proceeds to explain with paper scribbles of the big and small hands of the clock that he's closing shortly and will return at 6. I gather he'd grown fond of me too, our lazy afternoon of quiet companionship. Or perhaps he pitied me and my pink nose. Either way he thinks me harmless and says I can stay in, out of the cold, until he returns. Although he must lock the front door. Bless.

It's probably time to move on anyhow. I layer up to meet Juls for a glass of red.