“THE TRUE NORTH” FROM TORONTO TO MONTREAL

The next morning the bushes and maple trees outside their windows were red, gold and orange, and there was frost on the ground, confirming that fall had arrived in Canada.

Around noon they arrived in Toronto, the biggest and most wealthy city in Canada. They were not leaving for Montreal until later, so they went on a tour of the city. They went up the tall CN Tower and looked across the lake. In the distance, they could see the misty cloud that rose from the great Niagara Falls, which is on the south side of the lake. The water flows into the Niagara River and over the falls on its way to the sea.

They saw the covered stadium, home of several famous basketball teams. As they walked north from the harbour area, Li Daiyu said, “Lin Fei, one of my mother’s old schoolmates,lives here. I should phone her from a telephone booth.”

They met Lin Fei around dusk in downtown Chinatown, one of the three in Toronto. Over dinner at a restaurant called The Pink Pearl, the cousins chatted with Lin Fei, who had moved to Canada many years earlier. “We can get good Cantonese food here,” Lin Fei told them,“because most of the Chinese people here come from South China, especially Hong Kong.It’s too bad you can’t go as far as Ottawa, Canada’s capital. It’s approximately four hundred kilometres northeast of Toronto, so it would take too long.”

The train left late that night and arrived in Montreal at dawn the next morning. At the station, people everywhere were speaking French. There were signs and ads in French, but some of them had English words in smaller letters. “We don’t leave until this evening,” said Liu Qian. “Let’s go downtown. Old Montreal is close to the water.” They spent the afternoon in lovely shops and visiting artists in their workplaces beside the water. As they sat in a buffet restaurant looking over the broad St Lawrence River, a young man sat down with them.

“Hello, my name is Henri. I’m a student at the university nearby,” he said, “and I was wondering where you are from.” The girls told him they were on a train trip across Canada and that they had only one day in Montreal. “That’s too bad,” he said. “Montreal is a city with wonderful restaurants and clubs. Most of us speak both English and French, but the city has French culture and traditions. We love good coffee, good bread and good music.”

That night as the train was speeding along the St Lawrence River toward the Gulf of St Lawrence and down to the distant east coast, the cousins dreamed of French restaurants and red maple leaves.