I have spent the last couple days in Fredericton, capital city of the officially bilingual province of New Brunswick. My too-short stint (Wednesday evening through Saturday morning) in that picturesque city was frenetic and mostly internet-less. Hot and fresh donuts from the Boyce market, a specially arranged tour of the beautifully restored legislature building, and jaunting around the winter wonderland of southern New Brunswick in February made it all more than worthwhile.

But I’ve said goodbye to the Atlantic provinces for now. Last night, I made a journey across Acadie and into Lower Canada, by rail. Gradually as the night wore on, the signs outside my window and then the voices around me inside the train turned French. And at 8h15 this morning, I strode off voie 13 of Montréal’s Gare central (in the officially monolingual province of Quebec, a “nation within a nation“), and now I’m sitting behind my MacBook in a café on rue Notre-Dame in Vieux-Montréal, across from the palais de justice.