I was just as sick the next morning, but I had slept so much last night in Halifax, Montreal and now Rouyn-Noranda, that it was time to go out for a short stroll around this new & exciting Quebec metropolis.

Our AirBNB was the basement apartment of a pretty standard Quebec house, where I finally lived that rental experience they talk about in Corner Brook, where there's so much snow that it almost entirely blocks the windows and leaves the space in darkness.

Walking through our backyard and into the fun back alleyway, I was impressed with the amount of snow. Rouyn-Noranda was holding its own in the snow battle.

After only a few streets, I saw some Rouyn-Norander riding his bike & respected the hardiness on this snowy & grim morning.

As I continued on, I went into a pharmacy for something or other, which was the fun experience of trying to purchase things en francais in Quebec, while also sweating profusely and feeling like death. There wasn't much trying to speak French on my side, rather a lot of greasy nodding.

I knew I was still plenty sick as I left that Pharmaprix, since I undid my jacket and savoured how the outside temperature felt perfect, when the windchill was actually like -15°C (5°F).

I was still on cloud nine though. One of the best things in life is getting out to these remote outposts, then walking around, exploring and taking in a place where people don't find themselves by accident.

While flying takes away some of the feeling of Rouyn-Noranda's isolation, I still picture where I am on a map in my mind enough that I was getting a decent feeling of its remoteness. This was a 6 hour drive north of Montreal, and driving north from Montreal, civilization drops off quickly. This was only 300km south of James Bay, where Google shows the main highways curving up to catch Val d'Or, Rouyn-Noranda and Kirkland Lake, but then it's local and gravel roads if you want to go any further north.

I've always thought that the best way to experience and feel the Rouyn-Noranda & Val d'Or's remoteness would be to cycle from Montreal up here. Then again, I always struggle with the idea of using 10 vacation days in order to cycle 680 km, so maybe the bus would also give me the same feeling.

My friend Garbo's grandfather is actually from here and worked in the mines. One time when I was home I grew miserable about how I'm limited by Newfoundland, after Garbo, Sam & I were coming back from a party and they complained about how they had to drive up to Rouyn-Noranda (or maybe Val d'Or) the next weekend and tried to scare me with how it's a 10 hour drive each way.

Except they looked in the backseat and realized their mistake. They were flabbergasted that if I wasn't flying back to Newfoundland the next day, I would have begged them to tag along for the 10 hour drive just to walk around Rouyn-Noranda for a few hours before driving 10 hours back to Windsor.

I hate that I miss out on these opportunities by living in Corner Brook with very few friends. At least I got to tag along to Clarenville with Holisko that one time I suppose.

Passing the seedy Taverne Des Sports, I really need to stop skipping these places because of the awkwardness of not speaking French. Heck, it would probably be my ideal bar situation where no one talks to me, lol.

Instead I returned to our dark AirBNB lair where Isy was now ready to hit the town, although I needed to lie down after exhausting myself by walking for a measly half hour.

Eventually we'd head out to one of those new age brunch spots, which was delish. Isy insisted that I didn't need to sit at brunch in my lethargic and foggy condition, but she then said she appreciated it as I waved off her concerns.

We also went to the local art gallery as I wanted the trip to include Isy's interests and not be solely hockey based (even though she does enjoy QMJHL games).

The main installation at the Musée d'Art was a stacked cone of boxes containing local museum artifacts. We were given a tablet and scanning the QR codes, the tablet told us that inside the box was an antique hatchet, an old photograph, an old iron, etc., etc.

Except Isy started questioning things after she scanned a couple of boxes and the given item was bigger than a banker's box. This led her to peer into the handle hole with her cell phone camera and see that the actual items weren't inside many of the boxes. It was all a fabrication! LOL.

The art gallery's long corridor showcased photographs from Arnold Zageris, who went around and captured the buildings of Rouyn-Noranda and the people who worked or lived in them. He had pictures like that Co-Op cab stand I also took a picture of, but his had 5 or 6 cabbies standing outside.

As you can imagine, this was right up my alley.

Afterwards we happily came across the St. George Russian Orthodox Church.

Rouyn-Noranda may seem like a weird place for a Russian Orthodox church, but once rich copper deposits were found here, there was an influx of immigrants. This was due to two reasons: there weren't enough Quebeckers or Ontarioans willing to work in the dangerous mines, plus the Noranda mine liked hiring a variety of nationalities because they thought it would fragment everyone and prevent unionization. If one were to bring in 1000 Poles, they would be chummy and talk about unionizing - but if you brought in 100 Czechs, 100 Russians, 100 Poles, etc., the company thought they would stay in their little cliques and not come together for better conditions.

These immigrants built halls and churches for their communities. When it came to halls you had the Croatian Hall, Finnish Hall, Polish Hall, Ukrainian Hall and the Russian Hall; while the Slovaks didn't have the numbers to build a hall and instead used the local Moose Lodge.

As for churches, you had enough Russians & Ukrainians that they each built churches in the Rouyn area of town almost in each other's backyard (you can see the spires of the Ukrainian church behind the Russian Orthodox church in my photo).

Another Rouyn-Noranda thing I was excited for was public skating on Lake Osisko. The only worry was that they had a few warm days previously and no one else was out on the ice. The teenager who rented us the skates back in the general store surely would've told us if the ice was unsafe, right?

There also weren't any skates bigger than size 12, so my feet throbbed like when I try to make due with fancy shoes that are too small and my foot breaks through the side stitches. Except my feet couldn't really break through the hockey skates, lol.

Regardless, I loved the setting of skating on this lake with Rouyn-Noranda's two giant smokestacks in the background. It felt very much like I was in some Siberian outpost, which ruled.

It was a funny thing that for weeks, if not months, I'd been looking at Rouyn-Noranda in Google Maps and deliberating about where we'd go for supper and also beers, but being sick and needing another lie down, we had to skip it.

We still walked to the arena, but it was so frigid that I didn't take any pictures as we raced over in order to get out of the wind. Where I love walking around, capturing and making observations about these Quebec hockey towns, today just wasn't the day. The good thing is that Isy thought it was hilarious that we vacationed in Rouyn-Noranda, so I'm sure she'll be amused when I book a trip for us to get back up here to see a game in Val d'Or. Probably even more amused if it involves 680km of cycling, lol.

Around 1910 this region was still a remote wilderness, with only a few farms and First Nations settlements far to the south. Prospectors were drawn here by discoveries in nearby places like Timmins and Cobalt, but the Abitibi region remained hard country for prospectors to ply their craft.

One prospector was Nova Scotian Edmund Horne. Horne loved the adventure of prospecting and how it brought him to places like California and British Columbia, and he decided to explore Abitibi next. Failing to find much in 1908, Horne returned a few years later for a boat excursion from the nearest settlement of Angliers, heading 180km (112mi) up the Harricana River to the shores of Lake Osisko. He returned again in 1914 and 1917, eventually deciding to form a mining syndicate and claim 760 acres of land in modern-day Rouyn-Noranda.

Investors initially disagreed with Horne about the copper deposits, but geologists started to agree, and along with a nearby gold discovery, this set off a mining rush. Prospectors made claims, erected log cabins, and in the case of Horne, entire prospecting camps. This was 1922-23, and by 1926, there were 600 people in the new village called Rouyn.

One of the first things needed was a general store and the Dumulon family saw opportunity. They built two log cabins - one a house, and the other Dumulon's General Store, which still stands today as a museum and gift shop. It's where we rented our skates to head out onto Lake Osisko. Eventually Rouyn added other necessary buildings.

Shortly after the 1922 boom, a mining company with ties to Toronto & New York was already planning on buying up huge swathes of land to start a mine and built a smelter in the area. Roads were laid out in a grid pattern, the mine started, and on March 11, 1926 the new mining town of Noranda became a municipality. Noranda Mines built all of the infrastructure and kept ownership of some houses for executives and employees, but it still wasn't a typical company town where the mine pays you in credits at the local store.

This new town of Noranda was also granted special municipality status by the province, allowing them to ban the things that plagued nearby Ontario mining towns, namely gambling, prostitution and panhandling. These things then flourished in Rouyn instead.

The incoming miners and their families quickly called for increased recreational amenities, so an outdoor rink was maintained near the St-Michel School in Rouyn, with 4 local teams competing in a league.

The first local indoor arena was built in 1926. Located kitty corner from the current Arena Iamgold in Noranda, this arena was unheated and didn't have any spectator seating, but was still a handsome structure/curling rink.

Eventually the two cities decided they each needed an improved rink. Rouyn built the Rouyn Forum in 1949, located right next to the Musee d'Art. (And yes, we thought about going inside after the art museum, but I thought maybe we were going to too many rinks on this trip...so I cut out the distant Rouyn Forum? I'm dumb.) Over in Noranda, Noranda Mines built the Noranda Recreation Centre in 1951, with the mine owners eventually gifting it to the City of Noranda for $1.

The two cities of Rouyn and Noranda would finally merge in 1986 and once the QMJHL's Saint-Hyacinthe Laser were looking to relocate in 1996, the new team would choose the former Noranda Recreation Centre, now the Arena Iamgold at the Centre Dave Keon.

The above "<N>" logo harkens back to those Noranda Recreation Centre days & thankfully hasn't been replaced with an Iamgold Corp logo.

You can't miss the Centre Dave Keon's odd roofline. Instead of the typical barrel or flat arena roof, it instead has two high extensions covered in coloured panels that look like stacked shipping containers.

Now while Val d'Or continues with junior hockey in their 2140-seat arena, Rouyn-Noranda decided the Centre Dave Keon needed renovations by 2009.

So in 2011, they lopped off the back end and also built on top of the main entrance. Inside you can see the original curving wooden roof covered in metal, with the newer back portion stretching up into the sky, with a collection of I-beams and sheet metal like any construction site you might've sneaked into in the last 20 years. These renovations added 1000 seats, relocated the restaurants, and added box suites for the suits.

The CBC Abitibi-Temiscamingue page has some great mid-renovation pictures.

Even with my ailing health, I was loving the Centre Dave Keon. There was lots of history on the walls, weird quirks to get into the tight restaurant space, and all the feel of a rink built in 1951 from where I was sitting.

These renovations were the perfect solution in my eyes. Those people who can't handle being cold in an arena or some slight bottlenecks, can go sit in the new, sterile portion - while everyone else is fine and enjoys the hockey in the 1951 portion.

Like look at the mean mug on buddy in this picture. He doesn't care about some narrow concourse or it being cold, haha.

As for the game, I was so excited because this was Game 1 of the QMJHL playoffs and I couldn't wait for Isy to experience the atmosphere.

Except I totally got this wrong! Being jammed in, with all of the seats sold and all the commotion in an admittedly tight arena, she longed for Drummondville or Sydney days where we'd go and there'd be a couple empty rows behind us. D'oh!

I was still jazzed up about the playoff atmosphere though, that is, whenever my mind could form thoughts through my plagued fog. Noah Dobson, who had been picked 12th overall by the Islanders just a year prior, was muscling people around for the powerhouse Huskies, while the lowly Shawinigan Cataracts were still surprisingly putting up quite the fight.

One thing I succeeded at was researching how the Rouyn-Noranders love vuvuzelas and blow said horns for every slightly positive Huskies play. Knowing this, I brought ear plugs for Isy & I, which were invaluable in reducing the ever-present BRRRRRRRRRNT noises. It was also noisemaker night, so everyone who didn't have their own vuvezela was helpfully given a fan card that made a loud clapping noise.

I'm sure the noise was also helped by the number of boozehounds about, which I noticed upon approach of the beer cart. The lady working was great with getting people fresh, cold beers, but there were just so many dudes all double-fisting 16oz cans, that they clogged up the area as they bullshitted with one another. And then when I only asked for one Molson Export, the lady was dumbfounded and checked with me to make sure I really only wanted to purchase one and that it wasn't a matter of being lost in translation.

Yeah sorry lady, I'm sick here. No double-fisting like the Rouyn-Noranda locals for me!

(I barely managed to finish my one tallboy by the end of the game.)

My sickness also sabotaged the famed QMJHL poutine rankings!

It sure looked delectable as I held it in my hand, but following 3 or 4 mouthfuls, I turned to Isy and asked if she also found that it tasted like Pepsi.

She shook her head at how sick I was and let me know that my sense of taste was gone.

After the game ended, Isy headed to the lobby to wait for the cab, while I needed to quickly use the washroom. Trying some strange doors, I ended up in the curling rink and basketball court area of the Centre Dave Keon, where I fell in love with this clock.

A few years back, my friend grabbed me the plexiglas "Belle River" sign from the scoreboard in the old Amherstburg Arena, and I thought about how much I'd give for a clock like this is it were my hometown. That piece of plexiglas had me excited enough!

As for the game, Shawinigan kept it much closer than the 4-1 final would lead you to believe. Noah Dobson didn't dominate like I thought he would, and Boston Bruins pick Jakub Lauko was just okay. Shawinigan's Valentin Nussbaumer had much more of a noteworthy game in a Cataractes loss.

Anyway, finding Isy in the lobby, the cabbie wasn't there and he didn't show for a while. We briefly entertained simply walking back to the AirBNB, but the northern temps had plummeted and we changed our minds before we even emerged from the wind shadow of the Centre Dave-Keon.

The next morning, our earlyish flight left us without much time for anything besides getting back over to the Rouyn-Noranda Airport.

Arriving outside, I laughed at how I'd looked at this airport in Streetview and pictured grinding their tasty rails. I discovered I would have needed a shovel if I wanted to get it done anyway, while I was also questioning whether my health would improve enough to let me ride at all on this trip.

So instead of putting my bike together, we cleared security into a strange greenhouse area where we shed our clothes in the sun's warm rays.

I suppose you need to get all the sun you can up here, and the Rouyn-Noranda version of Anthony Bourdoin sitting in front of us didn't seem to mind.

Our flight left on time and since we didn't need to stop in Val d'Or today, it was a quick 80 minute straight shot down to Montreal Trudeau.

Even though I look back at things with a clouded, ill haze, visiting this area was still a great use of Aeroplan miles. Good times in a-ROO-in...nu-ronda¹.

Continue to Part 3...

1 - Isy's father corrected her pronunciation of Rouyn-Noranda &
we subsequently corrected each other in a very over-the-top manner