This past weekend (Aug. 15th,16th) I visited my extended family in Drummondville, Canada. let me back up though and draw this out into a longer blog post.

This photo right here is of my cousins taken the weekend prior to the Canada trip. It is my cousin in the red shirt, James Caron, who asked, “would you like to go to Canada next weekend.” At the time I believe I said, “yeah but I’ll have to get back to you later as I have some youtube stuff to work on”. I finished the youtube stuff (AFO… Microsoft Word) Friday night with about 20 minutes to spare as I had to catch the last bus to Nashua (our staging point for Canada). That accounts for why there wasn’t a video thumbnail or annotations. I literally finished posting the video and left within 5 minutes. That being said, I am so happy I made that last bus because little did I know, this trip was going to be bad ass.

To get From Nashua to Drummondville (in Québec) I was going to be driving with My cousin James (who you’ve already met) his wife Rubab and my Uncle Bob. We were going to be driving to Drummondville (about 4:30 hours). The car ride up was rather uneventful. The border crossing was easy enough although the border officer was kind of being a jerk. Apparently he didn’t understand the concept of marriage and how a Pakistani born woman, Rubab, could have family in Canada. On our ride up My cousins decided to learn a little french by listening to a French CD. The CD producer loved the accordion and used it as punctuation… sorta got old… imagine the same little jingle every few minutes. The only things we took from the CD was on “what do you do for work” which the actor on the CD responded with civil servant or fonctionnaire in french. Also the actress asked the actor whether he was married or not, if you are single you are célibataire, french for single. Both these pieces of french came back numerous times on our trip, leaving laughter in their wake. Moving on though.

You may be wondering who we were visiting.  Well we were going to see my 3rd Cousins and their parents, but I’m not really sure what they’d be (3rd aunt/uncle? oh well… that’s what I’m calling them from here on out) I had only met some of this part of my family once or twice so it was going to be quite the adventure. On top of this the Québécois (a native of Québec) speak french as their first language so I wasn’t too sure what to expect. Most of the younger generation speak English quite well as they are taught it in school from a very early age. Luckily they all fit the younger generation criteria and communication wasn’t too difficult. Also Lucky for us we were randomly visiting on the Canadian Caron’s annual Corn cookout (from what I heard it was a get together founded after these relatives decided they had to see each other other than at family funerals). I didn’t know it, but the Canadian side of my family is huge… I’m talking 14 kids each for my grandparents generation. There were so many people at this party that I knew I was related to but had never seen before. I also learned that this side of my family loves to have a good time. They dance and sing like nobody’s business. They also really enjoy just grabbing people and forcing them to dance. That photo is me dancing, trying to dance, with my 3rd aunt Celine (my uncle said it looked like I was going to hurl in this photo… I think I was just trying to understand what she was saying over the music and thick accent). This large get together seemed really bizarre. I was talking with my 3rd cousin, Maxime, and he said he didn’t know many of the people here. This is when I turned to my Cousin James and asked, “is this really happening right now?” He laughed and confirmed that, “yes it was.” Some people at this gathering knew English but the majority did not. It was the first time that I felt like a true foreigner. I talked to some extended family, like Michel who didn’t seem to like English speaking Americans… then again I later learned he is a drill sergeant for the Canadian armed forces. One thing that I found very odd/awesome. was when a relative picked up a guitar and started playing, what I later found out to be Dégénération by Mes Aïeux. In the picture my 3rd cousin, Maxime, joined him with a mike. Suddenly everyone started singing this song, well almost everyone… I don’t speak french and had never heard it before. Apparently the song is relatively new and is sort of a nostalgic look at old Québec while criticizing the quiet revolution (I think). Either way, it was odd, old and young, they all sang it.

That night I stayed with my 3rd Aunt Celine and her husband Guy in Maxime’s old bedroom. Their house is very nice and they were very hospitable. For dinner we had Pizza. I Think it was a combination of the language barrier and the desire to be extremely hospitable, but Celine was feeding me a lot of food. I had to tell he a number of times, “no, I’m all set I’m full”, only to later have to accept another slice of pizza later on. I think she was fattening me up so it’s a good thing I can eat a lot or I would’ve exploded.

The next day we took a trip into Québec city. We stopped at Tim Hotons and this is where I say… Dunkin Donuts sucks… Tim Hortons kicks its ass. We ventured into old Québec city which is such an awesome place. it is a walled in section of the city with the Château Frontenac inside. We took a tour of the Château lead by the lovely Alice Vallée, sort of a costume of the times type tour. the Château is now a hotel, and from what I saw a very nice one. Old Québec city is really clean and quaint, I totally want to go back. On our drive back to Drummondville I saw a sign for this convenient store. I laughed… My French cousins were laughing too because of the way I was pronouncing tard… this made me laugh more because the original joke was totally lost on them.

That night we had Poutine which I had never heard of, but was actually really good. After dinner we set out on our journey home. That car ride was one of the best car rides I have ever been a part of. there was a lot of “you’d just have to have been there” moments. As we were leaving there Rubab forgot the car was still in reverse and almost hit Celine’s care “They’re just happy we came.” I joked about the munchkins we got at Tim Hortons calling them Horton Holes… their actual name isn’t much nicer, Tim Bits. There was the recounting of the fonctionnaire word which oddly we heard so many times on the trip (the CD actually taught us something) and célibataire “no I’m a priest”. We were laughing so hard that we kinda hit a Raccoon (a fur coat for Diane), which made a lot of sense because when we were driving up we passed 3 dead raccoons within a few feet of eachother “it was a massacre”. It made us wonder how The Raccoon population in Canada still exists. It was late and we didn’t even stop so when we got to the Border crossing and the officer was staring at the front of the car, we were hoping there wasn’t fur and blood all over the front.

That’s about it for my trip… Oh well… this story has gone on too long… I hope you found some pleasure in reading it… I guess it’s more of a fun sort of rememberance for me… sorry about that…