It was getting late in November and deciding against fooling around with the Newfoundland ferry for my birthday, Isy and I instead took advantage of the fact that it's only a short haul Aeroplan flight (15,000 miles) from Deer Lake to Halifax to Montreal.

Landing at Montreal-Trudeau around 8pm, I booked us a hotel in the city since we weren't in any rush right away & Montreal has cheap and decent hotel options. For $57 taxes in we were back at the Hotel Celebrities, where my only complaint was that this time they gave us a room where the bathroom door was instead a shower curtain.

Looking up nearby dining options, we ended up at one of those dimly lit Montreal brewpubs where they have a slightly-elevated menu. I ordered something with 2 pepper logos to indicate mild-to-medium spiciness, and then soon after, Isy laughed as I looked like I'd just walked through a tropical jungle with all the moisture on my face.

The next morning we took better advantage of the Montreal cultural mixing pot. Going for Venezuelan breakfast, there were these cachitos made up of a golden brown and soft crust exterior, with fillings such as ricotta & spinach, ham & cheese, smoked turkey & cream cheese, etc.

I would recommend.

Isy had to go back to the hotel for a bit, so I decided to take a look inside the Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, which I recognized from the funeral service of famed Montreal Canadiens centreman Jean Beliveau.

Picking up our rental car soon after, I was finally in the area of Quebec where they have small, wooden towers for navigation on the St. Lawrence River. Russ Rowlett's The Lighthouse Directory says that at one time Quebec had more than 275 lighthouses, but that number is now closer to around 80.

A big part of decreasing that number came from the quiet, uncelebrated removal of lighthouses just like Route de Contrecoeur, above. In fact, the lighthouse here at Contrecoeur is only the front lighthouse of the two range lights, with the rear light possibly being demolished.

I say possibly, because I wasn't sure what was up with this wooden base nearby. It sure looked like the bottom of an old lighthouse.

These lights were right on someone's property & while it was great that they weren't home so I could walk a few steps onto their land, it would have also been fortuitous if they came out and Isy could have asked them the score about this base structure, en francais.

Just up the road, we came upon a town dominated by industry and smelters, and coupled with the grey day, it felt like we were pulling into some Russian outpost.

This was Sorel-Tracy, Quebec.

The only thing I knew about Sorel-Tracy was that they have a fantastic old arena, but now that I've felt this Soviet atmosphere, properly visiting the home of Marc-Andre Fleury has moved up the to-do list. Preferably in November again to really harvest that Magnitogorsk atmosphere.

We had to keep moving today though, as we only found ourselves in Sorel-Tracy since I thought taking the ferry across the St. Lawrence would be fun & Isy would appreciate it.

While it seemed like she had previously been on one of these seaway ferries and it wasn't very exciting, I got out of the car to take pictures and breathe it all in. Not surprisingly, amongst the 30 cars I was the only one to get out in the chilly afternoon, haha.

While I enjoyed floating across the St. Lawrence, it also put us behind in getting to our destination of Shawinigan. Where I wanted to catch the golden hour and go for a meandering walkabout in 1 of my 4 remaining new QMJHL towns, we were now arriving at the hotel just as the sun lit up the last sliver of sky.

We postponed checking in and walked across the street, where Shawinigan's Hydro Quebec Observation Tower dominated the scene above waters that spilled towards the falls, or cataractes, of Shawinigan. This observation tower is part of La Cité de l'énergie, which is a theme park based on Shawinigan's industrial history.

An industrial history theme park? Now I'd certainly want to go to that more than say Six Flags or Disneyland, but sadly La Cité de l'énergie isn't open in November.

Our hotel was the Auberge Gouverneur Shawinigan which I got for the amazingly low price of $71. This wasn't some gutter dump either, it was actually just as good as your average La Quinta or Holiday Inn Express - so while I don't usually recommend accommodations because people like a little more comfort than me (i.e. they're soft), I don't understand why the Auberge Gouverneur charges so little and you should certainly take advantage if you need a place in Shawinigan. I really wanted to stay in the local old school motel, but it would have cost us $40 more and we would have had to take a cab from said motel out in the Grand-Mére section of Shawinigan.

The Auberge Gouverneur was also basically right across the street from the local well-renowned brewery's brew pub: Le Trou du diable. And while I just criticized brewpubs in the Montreal part, Le Trou du diable was in an old brick building, with us seated in a basement with low ceilings, lots of stone, and lots of choices.

Isy wouldn't stop raving about this place later in the trip, which also doesn't hurt in terms of being happy with my choice for pregame drinks and snacks.

We had about a 20 minute walk to get over to the Centre Gervais Auto - and since Isy doesn't like to power walk like me, we also stopped at a dépanneur along the way to grab some Molson Export tallboys.

I was pretty much in heaven, brown-bagging and exploring a new QMJHL Quebec town on a grey November night where it was chilly, but not so cold that it was unpleasant. For the majority of the walk, there were still businesses and houses beside us to check out, so there was a Shawinigan feel throughout the whole thing & not the typical experience of many modern rinks, where you navigate parking lots in an industrial district.

Built in 2008, there is a sea of parking around the Centre Gervais Auto, but we didn't really cut through these lots while on foot.

I wasn't overly excited about an arena built in 2008, but the QMJHL guide had nice things to say and this was still one of the 5 remaining arenas I have left to see in the Q. With that number dwindling, I'm going to be excited no matter what year any of these unseen arenas were constructed.

There was a funny bit of confusion at the start though, as I don't know how many outsiders come to Shawinigan, or use will call tickets in Shawinigan. The teenagers behind the will call desk looked awfully bored, and even confused when I rolled up and needed my paper ticket instead of unnecessarily messing around with pointless phone ticket technology. I'm sure I looked about 77 years old to them.

And now for a fun story about the Centre Gervais Auto?

After constructing this arena in 2008, Shawinigan was granted hosting rights for a Memorial Cup in 2012 to make up for the 1985 Memorial Cup that they lost when their old arena had too many supporting pillars in view of the tv cameras (swoon). Well, it's during this 2012 Memorial Cup that a couple of friends who I knew through Whitfield's wife were moving out to Newfoundland from Southwestern Ontario.

Along the way, they somehow discovered that the Memorial Cup was going on in Shawinigan and drove 30 minutes out of the way to watch championship hockey for ridiculously low prices. This was because they lucked into the non-Quebec game, so there were plenty of good walkup tickets to watch the Edmonton Oil Kings and London Knights.

You can imagine my jealousy when they arrived in Newfoundland and told me about this.

One thing I really liked about the Centre Gervais Auto was the wide spaces to see the game from the concourse, but the concourse remaining narrow enough to preserve its intimacy and not be some Devonshire Mall-wide expanse. It wasn't so tight that you would frequently bottleneck, but it was the right size to give the feeling of being squeezed into a structure like you should feel in a hockey arena.

This also might've had to do with the amount of signage, painting and displays here in Shawinigan. The busy walls and pillars made parts feel occupied even if the crowd dwindled - which can't be said for similar arenas where grey or blank walls leave you feeling like you're in a some forgotten park of the rink or wandered into an adjacent convention centre.

Everyone knows what comes next with a new QMJHL arena: the poutine taste test! And for this one, Isy and I really disagreed. In her mind, one of the key components is a properly sized poutine - which okay, Shawinigan's was on the small size.

For me, while I wanted more poutine than this, if I really wanted more, it was my birthday & I could just buy another. I suppose it would be annoying to blow money on two poutines at every game if you were a Shawinigan resident, but this wasn't a sinking factor. Shawinigan's poutine was still very tasty.

And so, we need to go back 2 years to the last new poutine in 2016 Sherbrooke. Shawinigan's wasn't so good that it unseats any of the top 4 powerhouse poutines, but I'll slot it in at #6 behind Chicoutimi and ahead of Gatineau.

One last thing I wanted to see was Isy's reaction to the cigar store Indian.

That's right, even though the Cataractes are named after the waterfalls in what used to be known as Shawinigan Falls, they still use native imagery in their logo and I guess their goal celebration. Reading up on the Shawinigan experience in the QMJHL guide, whenever the Cataractes would score previously, the statue would zip-line over the ice and then back up to its perch.

Except that following Shawinigan's lone goal in this 7-1 loss to Moncton, the cigar store Indian stayed put. I guess they did away with this one tradition in some scrap of self-awareness.

Following the game, we stumbled upon the Broadway Pub with its attached brewery, which from the outside, I knew I needed to go inside such a great and funky building. While I didn't try the local brew, the place was quiet and chill, and the bartender was super friendly and made us want to stay for many more.

(I was sad to later learn this place closed at the start of COVID and will not reopen.)

Even though that bartender was fantastic, the allure of other random places in Shawinigan won out. Isy wanted to go back to Le Trou du diable, so while we couldn't find anywhere else on Shawinigan's main street, we ended up there before getting into a cab and utilizing Isy's French to try and ask the driver to take us to a dive bar.

There's not really a one-to-one translation for dive bar in French. I started to get worried when we ended up in Big Box Store land with Pharmaprixs and WalMarts, except that he pulled up the Farfelu Cafe-Bistro, which looked like a strange roadhouse from Louisiana with an elaborate porch and an interior that reminded me of a beer tent in a big park pavillion.

I was very pleased with the cabbie's pick, but sadly they were closed for the night, or more accurately, they had moved on to the point where staff were having drinks with regulars and no one new was being served. Walking back outside, it's then that I absolutely lost my shit, no not because I needed another beer, but because I forgot my camera bag and passport in the cab we just took.

Immediately calling up the cab company, Isy's French paid off as at least we were able to explain the problem, except that the dispatcher only said he'd call us back if anything was turned in.

Walking away from the bar, there was a residential street and we took a break on the elaborate front porch of a Quebec 2-story turned business. Booting the rail, I cursed my stupidity and fumed at how this was going to ruin the whole trip. I couldn't believe I was so dumb and absent-minded.

After continuing to sit there and stare blankly, it was twenty five of the longest minutes later that the phone gloriously rang and Isy raced to answer it. Our cabbie had apparently went home for the night and didn't notice my camera bag in his backseat.

We suddenly knew where it was! It was in someone's possession!

That drunken worry of screwing up and losing something, suddenly evaporated as another cabbie showed up with my beloved bag and worldly passport. I couldn't believe that I was again holding it in my hands.

Shawinigan ftw.

The next morning we drove 10 minutes out of Shawinigan to Sainte-Flore for a highly-rated breakfast joint in an old house. This seemed like the type of spot that Isy would love and appreciate that I put in the work to find.

Except that the Cafe Bucolique didn't end up being too bucolique when they took our order and then forgot to submit it for 45 minutes.

When you add in that this is one of those homestyle fresh places where they make things slowly and take their sweet time, then my little detour ate up close to 2.5 hours of daylight in the end.

Back in Shawinigan, we stopped at the Centre Gervais Auto so I could get an exterior photo.

For a rink built in 2008, this Centre succeeded in making me look forward to the next time I find myself in Shawinigan during hockey season.

Nearby was the Arena Jacques-Plante, built as the Shawinigan Municipal Auditorium in 1937. This was home of the Shawinigan Cataractes from 1969 (originally as the Shawinigan Bruins! heyo!) until 2008, and a complete relic and museum of hockey.

Ever since I saw the initial pictures of this arena on the QMJHL Arena Guide, I cursed the fact that I only became aware its existence in 2011 and missed the boat on seeing hockey here before it closed. Thankfully, Shawinigan saw the value of the arena's gorgeous art deco exterior & renovated it into space for consultants and Revenue Quebec.

(And here I stood, never having realized I wanted to work for Revenue Quebec so bad!)

The Arena Jacques-Plante was so gorgeous that it even warranted a picture from Isy. Finally she was on that slippery slope of appreciating arena architecture, haha.

Anyway, from here we'd go downtown to walk around Shawinigan some more.

Continue to Part 2...