Looking at the timestamps on my photos, it was only 36 hours after that pizza in Detroit that I opened the door to my $44/night room in Montreal.

I could have flown back from Windsor, but ever since that initial QMJHL hockey trip in 2011, I've thought about how to get back to Quebec for a winter trip. Booking my return flight out of Montreal instead, I headed to the new Windsor VIA train station to head north.

For only $135, the train would replace 9 hours of driving while also being able to work on my laptop. That was the good news, the bad news was trying to work with someone next to me the entire time. I don't know why the train was so full, but there were only a couple empty seats from Windsor to Toronto and then it got even worse in Toronto, as a full class of students going on March break got into my traincar.

It was one of those things that was so ridiculous that I couldn't get angry. There would be a gathering of teens around one seat, where drama would unfurl, then one teen would run to some other lone teen and intensely break down news while checking and referring to their phones, then the lone teen would run back to the main group. For 6 hours, various groups formed and various teens ran from person to person and group to group to convey whatever news.

Then someone's hotel reservation was cancelled and the teens figured out that half of them had their hotel reservations cancelled; which led to mass panic and teenage overreaction, with various girls just needing time to compose themselves, while others grabbed phones to call the hotel and break down financial and situational details that I'm sure the proprietor longed to hear.

Oh, good times.

The next morning I picked up my rental in downtown Montreal and headed towards the Eastern Townships. The Victoriaville Tigres had a hockey game against the Quebec Remparts tonight and I had a motel reservation in accordance.

After stopping at a bike shop in Drummondville to replace some broken spokes, the next stop was an abandoned asylum near Victoriaville.

Coming up the tree-lined country road, there was actual snow here in roadside piles, with enough white stuff that you couldn't see much vegetation. It would be easy to park and trudge through to this building, except there was nowhere to park without being in the road.

Stopping to assess the situation, a salty, weather-beaten car rolled up and a dude popped his head out, talking French while his wife sat in the passenger seat, her eyes never leaving her book. Establishing that I wasn't going to be understanding anything he was saying in French, he switched over to decent English and told me that he was the building's owner. He was up-front about how he didn't own the road and I was free to park here, but he also made sure to inform me that the cops knew to drive this road periodically to score $323 trespassing fines (he knew the exact amount).

The other option he gave me was to follow him back to his barn, where I could pay $10 to park and not have to worry about the police.

Follow some random guy in an old car back to his "barn" next to an abandoned asylum on some desolate county road? ...I'm in!

I guess I had no problem giving this guy $10 for free reign; plus this would make for one of the stranger building entries I'd ever made.

I was sort of confused at how it could be worthwhile to sit out here in your car all day to make $10 from me and no one else on this wintry weekday. That was neither here nor there though, as I didn't want to hang around outside and grow cold asking questions. I'd much rather be checking out awesome Montreal graffiti while exploring an empty building.

(Apparently this place now has a demolition permit pulled, a giant fence and is all boarded up. This is all after this owner tried to host a 1000-person, 35-performer, huge Halloween bash here. The village of Ste-Clotilde-de-Horton finally had its fill of his shenanigans apparently, haha.)

This building was built in 1939 as a monastery for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. They would use the building until the 1950s, when it was taken over by Des Frères de Instruction Chrétienne (Brothers of Christian Instruction), who converted it into an orphanage and renamed it the Maison Notre-Dame de la Chesnaie.

Sadly, under the Brothers of Christian Instruction, three boys would die after smoking in a closet and accidentally setting an area on fire.

The building was transferred to the government in the 1960s, allowing it to be converted into a government-run asylum for the intellectually disabled. The Ste-Clotilde-de-Horton Asylum as it was then known, was home to 90 residents.

Tragedy would strike once again in 1988, when a patient set fire to the top floor, killing nine other residents.

The building was then sold to the Seventh-day Adventist Church who planned to open a camp here. There are some cabins at the back of the property and I wonder if they were built by the church, but there's no evidence of them doing anything with the main building.

It was sold to the current owners in 2004. They planned to renovate the building into a seniors complex, but couldn't get the funding and found themselves in over their head in terms of a renovation project.

It was cold enough that I avoided standing still on the floor ice in order to keep my feet warm. Soon enough I made my way up to the roof, savouring that I could casually walk around without any worry of drawing attention.

The building was also tall enough to peer out over a large expanse of the surrounding countryside. There are a few isolated hills that act as ski resorts for Montrealers and New Yorkers, but otherwise this area is incredibly flat.

The roof didn't have any ledge or railing, which made me nervous, but thankfully it wasn't very windy.

Peering off the backside of the building, there was a nice kinked handrail and I pictured showing up with a filmer and paying that caretaker dude $20 to film BMX here. I wondered how many repeat customers he had. If I lived nearby, this would be my bicycling escape for rainy/wintry days and he would know me by name.

The casual nature of my time here also let me explore the random outbuildings that I wouldn't have otherwise bothered with. As I love random, overlooked buildings on campuses like this, I enjoyed checking out the chicken coop, work shed, pool and these cabins.

I'll spare you the interior shots.

Returning to my car, the caretaker popped out of his running vehicle and went into an elaborate conversation about haunted places and ghost stories. While I'm never one for haunted tales, it was interesting to hear about some of the other abandoned places nearby. I even knew one of these abandoned buildings by the stern warning he gave me in regard to its proximity to the America-Canada border - which I found funny because the reason I knew about said building, was because of a previously failed venture involving Steve, Donnie and border-cautioning police.

The last memorable thing was the caretaker saying he had three Asian tour buses arrive one time, all paying their $10 admission, just to walk the tree-lined entry road, snap a quick picture of the asylum exterior, then walk back to the bus and leave.

I was hoping that no one else would show up during my visit, but it would have been hilarious to look out and see 100 Asian tourists on the front lawn.

The freedom to lazily explore the old asylum ate up more of my afternoon than I had planned. Now only 20 minutes from Victoriaville, I raced there and grew angry with all of the traffic lights, before rushing to throw my bike together to hit their indoor skatepark.

That's right, a rural Quebec city with 45000 people has a city/province-sponsored indoor skatepark.

I was so excited that I rushed inside and declared "1 person for 2 hours", asked how much it was, already had my money in hand and asked for a Gatorade as well. After about 5 seconds of silence, I realized I blurted all of this out in English and then tacked on, "Désolé. I'm a, I'm just ahh, très excited."

"No worries dude, $12." the skater replied.

The skatepark was everything I could ask for. It was early in the day, so it wasn't jam-packed and it was clearly a skateboarders' park with plenty of handrails and ledges. If I had to, I would ride some vert riders park of giant quarterpipes to get out of the snow, but Victoriaville's park was so good and so in my wheelhouse, that I pondered future winter trips where I'd just stay and work in Victoriaville for weeks.

Following the skatepark, things were really starting to get tight with time. With AirBNB demanding a scan of my driver's license - and fuck that - I was left reserving a motel and there weren't any motels in downtown Victoriaville. This meant that even though the skatepark was right next to the Tigres arena, I had to drive 3.5k out to the edge of town, where I'd find my motel, the Auberge Hélène.

I didn't appreciate having to call a cab to get to the game, but at least I was getting my beloved rural Quebec motel experience. The Auberge Hélène was a classic one, with its padded door, purple walls, strange hallways and this room about 8ft wide by 30ft long.

I've covered the Colisée Desjardins before, so I won't go into the same amount of detail. One thing different about this time was that I was seeing a game on Friday night instead of Sunday afternoon, something that was quite noticeable from the size and the makeup of the crowd.

And oh yeah, yet again they didn't have any sausage for their sausage poutine.

This year was pretty slim for NHL prospects in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). In addition to seeing a game at an arena I like, this Victoriaville game would also allow me to see Maxime Comtois, who many scouts had in the 20th-pick range as a prospect. At the time, only Comtois and Nico Hischier were QMJHL players projected to go in the first round of the next NHL draft.

Watching the game, you could see the talent was there, but I was also impressed with Comtois' mean streak. The Q is still old school enough that there are some meatheads who don't bring much besides shoving and extracurricular stickwork to the game, and it was surprising to see Comtois mix it up in this way, not fighting, but being involved in scrums, finishing checks and whacking the odd player with a slash.

(Comtois would fall in the final prospect rankings into the 30th or 35th pick range. In the actual draft, two QMJHL guys went before Comtois was taken by the Anaheim Ducks at 50th overall. He went on to have a great 2017-18 and is regarded as being a steal for the Ducks. He should be in the NHL next season.)

Following the game I went for my customary walk downtown, but decided against going in anywhere as they were all jammed with people and/or blaring loud music. The decision not to go in was based on the fact of being intimidated by large, young groups; as well as being in Quebec where there's a language barrier involved when ordering a drink.

So I curved away from downtown in the direction of Auberge Hélène, stumbling on a restaurant called Max Poutine which advertised 100 different poutines. Even though I wasn't very hungry, my hands were sort of tied here, y'know?

I got the medium pepperoni poutine that was enormous and took years off my life. Now I had the bummed feeling of not wanting to go into any bars, plus also being gluttonously full of grease and fat. That being said, the poutine was pretty damn good, haha.

It was nice to warm up in Max Poutine, but soon enough I exited the boisterous atmosphere into the cold night. I bundled my body together by pulling my arms in and continued to plod forward. The only problem was that I was now on a street with industry and car dealerships, and when I had looked up the route in StreetView prior to the trip, I saw that I should have been walking amongst houses by now. Continuing to walk, I finally came to a T-intersection with a line of trees and big factories in each direction. I was pretty sure the motel was to my left, but I was also growing concerned with how cold it was and how much I wanted to get back to my room to thaw out my frozen eyelashes and numb cheekbones.

The next thing I know, I saw the place I planned to visit for breakfast up ahead. This meant I was nearly 5k from my motel, a distance further than I was back at the arena. It was too cold & I was too tired for this. While the breakfast place had closed for the night, I remained out in the -25°C/-13°F night and thankfully my phone had enough battery to call a cab and get back to my motel.

My plan of walking to & from the Tigres game had failed miserably.

I drove downtown the next morning to revisit old haunts, but I wasn't remembering much of anything about this place. Victoriaville seemed like one of those places that even with my exceptional navigation skills, I just couldn't manage to wrap my head around its layout for whatever reason.

It would also have to do with only popping downtown for a New York minute on my last visit. On this trip I'd already driven and walked about 3x the amount of streets, so my knowledge was growing and correcting itself.

The above building is the Grand Union Hotel, built across the street from the train station in 1889. As one of the oldest buildings in Victoriaville and an architectural beauty in a place limited in that regard, this building is loved by the people of Victoriaville and was bought up for renovation in 2016.

I clearly should have visited in 2011 when it was still a seedy bar.

The last time I was here I found that Victoriaville didn't have much great, or rundown, or funky architecture. I talked about how the place seemed nice enough, but it felt like a place to have a pleasant relationship weekend, more than the type of place I would enjoy and carry on about.

It turns out a bit of driving would help with my overall impression. There's still too much weird infill of modern buildings that distract from old beauties, but this little laneway over by the church was home to gorgeous red brick homes that improved my opinion.

I wanted to continue down the street and discover if this was the Victoriaville neighbourhood of hidden gems, but in just the time it took to take 5 pictures, my fingers were already half-numb and stinging from the bitterly cold air. It was as cold as the coldest Detroit abandoned building night, but near the noon hour.

It was time for coffee.

I'm not much of a lengthy, sit down breakfast guy, but that changes when I find a place where they make the cheese in-house and you can see the cheese-making process through a glass wall in the restaurant.

Where I hadn't found Max Poutine in my pre-trip research, Fromagerie Victoria was one of the first things I found and the first must-do. How can you not go to a restaurant where you can see the high-quality cheese being made right before your eyes while you wait?

The only catch was that I wasn't going to get a poutine for breakfast after that unholy pepperoni poutine the night before. No problem though, the breakfast at Fromagerie Victoria comes with a fresh block of cheese! The whole thing wasn't a gimmick either, because in addition to a solid breakfast, the block of cheese was delicious.

I will certainly return to the Auberge Helene, Local Skateparc and definitely Fromagerie Victoria in the future.

Sufficiently full of caloric energy and with my bike already assembled, I returned to the indoor skatepark for another session, before hitting the road towards a new QMJHL arena.

Continue to Part 2...