Co-President’s Message Learning about Canada in Paris 2 IN THIS COLUMN I am giving a shameless plug for RAPS’ Eastern Canada excursion next September by telling you about a Canadian experience I had a few years ago. It taught me something about Canada that I never knew, but it didn’t happen in Canada. It happened in Paris. My wife and I were in our rented Marais apartment, looking at each other with that thousandyard stare you get after being up 24 hours and crossing nine time zones. We had arrived earlier “S’il vous plaît?” I asked, smiling, knowing that my ear-shattering accent would tip them off that I was American or Norwegian or anything but French. “Oh, I thought you were French!” the guy said. “I was asking if you would suggest a wine.” His English was flawless, but he had a bit of an accent that I couldn’t pinpoint. And he thought I was French. No Frenchman would ever think that. (My daughter’s boyfriend once described me, not to my face, as the “most classically American” person he had ever met.) “Well, I assumed you were French,” I replied, “and I was just going to buy whatever you did.” Then: “I take it you’re not French?” “We’re from Québec,” he answered. And my lesson about Canada began. “So you’re Canadians,” I commented. Oops! “No, Québécois,” his friend piped up. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “My mistake.” But I was dumbfounded. So they were from Québec. Check. Which is in Canada. Check. But they weren’t Canadian? The exchange was quite friendly, and he and I made some small talk about our mutual ignorance of French wines. We both took identical bottles from the shelf and went our ways, offering cordial smiles and goodbyes. I doubt if every resident of Québec would agree with the couple I met in Paris. Still, Québec, a French-speaking island in an English-speaking country, is intriguing. Like many Americans, my knowledge of Canada is woefully casual, formed by a few vacations. If I were pressed, I’d probably blurt out clichés describing Canada as a peaceful country with great scenery and Canadians as unfailingly polite. That sells Canada short, as I discovered that evening in Paris. It’s a massive, diverse country with its own history and its own culture, as you can discover for yourself next September. That’s when RAPS takes off for an eight-day tour of Eastern Canada. And yes, the tour includes Québec, with stops in both Montreal and Québec City. Plus a portion of your fare will support the RAPS Scholarship. Elsewhere in this edition of the RAPS Sheet, you’ll find an ad with more details about the trip. In the meantime, long live Canada and vive le Québec! —Doug Swanson that day on one of our occasional trips to France to visit our daughter. Full of adrenaline—“We’re in Paris!”—we quickly unpacked and ran out to explore the neighborhood. But after a couple of hours the adrenaline lost its battle with exhaustion, and we slogged back to the flat. We made a decision only wise, mature people would make in such circumstances: let’s eat in. I was tasked with getting bread, cold cuts, cheese, and a bottle of wine. Off I went. The bread, cold cuts, and cheese were easy. But French wine has always been a mystery to me. At the small neighborhood grocery store, I stood in front of shelving stocked with wine, all of it French, all of it baffling. So I reached for a bottle of red with a particularly attractive label and a low price tag. Then I decided to pick up a bottle of white, too. That’s when a young, attractive couple walked down the aisle. How could they be anything but French? They were dressed head to toe in black, although he defied convention with a cream-colored scarf thrown casually around his neck, a complement to her sandy-blond hair. They could have jumped off the cover of Vogue They took up station to my left, the guy next to me, and began studying the dozens of bottles. They spoke softly to each other in French. “Aha,” I thought. “They obviously know their stuff. I’ll just buy whatever they buy.” So I stood and waited. And waited. Growing impatient, I glanced sideways at him and, embarrassingly, caught his eye. He said something to me in French. I don’t speak French and can barely ask for a glass of vin rouge at a restaurant.
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