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Over 30,000 km it was Canada everywhere (27)
Arriving at the village of Waskaganish, a young man wearing sunglasses and a cap on accosted me in fluent English. He said he returned home recently from Ontario and told me the accommodation and fishing and what not I needed to stay.
The only hotel in the village was super-expensive with bad service. At the front-desk, two Indian girls with suspicious eyes asked me how I came here, where I stayed last night and where to go from now on with specific itinerary. After that she reported that on the phone to someone, and finally permitted my stay and required $149.53. What rude girls! Why do I have to have a certain schedule and that to report her! I was so irritated that I want to skip this hotel but I didn't want to sleep in my car tonight. They looked even not realising my feeling.
The log-cabin-like hotel was fairly new and just aside of Rivière Rupert with a magnificent view on one side. The rooms were not crowded, though I alloted a room on the other side with a view of a street. There was no parking lots, instead I parked on the naked-soil-street. Around the entrance nuts-like guys were hanging out; one of them but White watched my SUBARU curiously and asked what car this was. When I went out the entrance again, I found several finger-scribbles on dusty windows of my car.
At the fishing point of Rivière Rupert, I could easily catch a Walleye which was smaller than the one I caught in Manitoba but without fat and more beautiful in colour. I noticed Walleye are also in rivers by this. To my surprise, a huge swam of gnats assaulted me next to next finally I had to give up fishing in a short time. My face got swelled unbelievably to such an extent as I couldn't hide the ugly face with sunglasses.
I was waiting for the return of the fishermen boats by the hotel to take pictures, because the guy I first met said they would be back in the evening. Meanwhile, a 4×4 truck stopped by me. They were merely watching at me, and then an Indian man finally said, "What are you doing here?" Hearing my explanation, he said "The fisher wouldn't get back here. If you want, you can turn back the highway (the unpaved road) to some extent to a fishermen community." I had learnt a lesson from a Cree of Saskatchewan that their sense of distance is different from mine, so I said, "I'll go that far as the gas station but no further."
As going down a narrow path through the fisher community, I got an awful feeling seeing poor houses. To the old woman I first saw there I asked for shooting the place; however, she flatly refused with busily working for smoking fish. In front of the next door was a family with a table, and the head happily allowed me to, to my surprise.

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They were also smoking fish in a shed. Those were White Fish but other than that they said they use Pike, Sturgeon, Muskellunge, Char, Trout, whatever they catch. They not only go up the river but also go down until the sea, but they said the caught there are just the same as river. The man brought a fish on a dish saying, "This is my supper." It looked as if a Japanese "Himono" (a dried fish with salt). He offered me one but for I was full just after dinner they gave it wrapped for me. Beside the table, several White Fish without scales were sunk in the saltwater before smoking. They looked like Herrings. He said I can drink water of the river in front of me.
The man eating up the fish with fingers said that once another Japanese man came to observe their way of life and he ate anything they live on. And then, he introduced his mother beside to me that she was 99 years old! Soon, the children getting flock to me. As I asked to their father, "Why do you speak English so well?" A girl, who looked like with White blood, said, "I sometimes speak English, sometimes French, and sometimes Cree!" "I can't speak French but Cree. All of the children in Waskaganish are to send to a school in Ontario; so people here are able to speak English," added the father.
In addition to seemingly a wife of the man, a White woman was hesitatingly standing by children. I wondered why; she looked like being helped by the family escaping from somewhere. Night already began to fall, when the wife said the neighbour fisherman was getting back on his boat for me to take pictures. Stepping forward to the tiny wharf with me and children, she quite naturally found that my left hand was a bit swollen bitten by another gnat this time. I was very surprised because it was difficult to tell even by myself. As for her and their family, they never never had any bite by gnats. Beside me, the little girl said I am like a character in a Japanese animated cartoon (I didn't know the name of it). As the girl held the wife's hand as walking back home, she held all of the children with her whole hands ahead of me. True love has little, if anything, to do with money, I thought.

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by tetsu95jp | 2008-01-10 07:09 | 15.Québec
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