Chateau Frontenac (#182, Topic N)

The Travel section in today's Washington Post features Quebec City, complete with a big color photo of Chateau Frontenac and its commanding view of the harbor. This brings back many fond memories. Some three decades ago, the American Accounting Association held its annual convention in Quebec City. (At the time, I was on leave from the University of Washington to serve as Associate Director of Cost Accounting Standards Board, an agency of the U.S. Congress, and our children were in high school.) Our son suggested making it a family vacation, and he and his sister planned the route. So, together with their mother (my wife), the four of us, in an Oldsmobile station wagon we owned at the time, visited many interesting but out-of-the-way places -- on the way to QC, Mystic Harbor in Connecticut; Providencetown and Hyannis Port, MA; Skowhegan VT, which boasted a woman senator, rare at the time, and where the state fair was going on strong when we checked into a nearby motel. From there, a route, with very little traffic, led us directly to QC. The convention's headquarters were at Chateau Frontenac; since I registered several months ahead, we had a good room, with view. The second day in this four-day gathering, a good friend of mine, whom I had invited earlier to serve as a visiting associate professor to the Chinese University of Hong Kong (when I was in charge of its MBA program -- now voted as #1 in Asia, though it was just two years old at the time), invited us to an excellent Chinese dinner in the city. I usually like to sample Chinese food in major cities we visit, so this was a real treat. On the way back, we routed through Montreal, visiting its Olympic site (another sight I enjoy doing), and then Lake Champlain in NY. Thanks to the excellent planning our children did, the four of us all had a good time. Four years ago, my wife and I were on a cruise to Canadian's Maritime Provinces, stopping at both QC and Montreal (for St. Lawrence waterway). Somehow, without our children alongside, the visits were uneventful. On the other hand, we were impressed by Portland ME, where two hoteliers brought indoor plumbing from New Orleans when they returned home to retire (their home became a musuem, which we visited as a part of city tour); and by Halifax, where hundreds of Canadians opened their homes to strangers whose travels were interrupted, and who were stranded in Halifax, as a result of a shipwreck. A local cemetery became a sight, and we indeed visited it when we joined a city tour there.