Flying Carpet: Full Circle

You’d expect a flying carpet to deliver you to enchanted destinations. Well, 2,000 miles and 15 flight hours from home, over Québec, Canada, Jean and I truly felt our steed’s magic. After clearing customs at Windsor, Ontario, we gazed down upon Toronto, Ottawa, and then Montreal. Each resurrected memories of a long-ago youthful journey.

In 1971, I drove this route on a post-graduation road trip with two Chicago high-school buddies in my 1939 Chevy. After setting up camp in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, we picked up a hitchhiker named Marcel while cruising town. Lacking a common language, we couldn’t determine his destination, so he gestured us to a nearby tavern.

“If you’ll break camp and drive me 15 miles to Champlain,” Marcel offered via the bilingual bartender, “you can stay in the guest cottage behind my parents’ house.” We accepted, and while the others slept, Marcel and I “talked” late into the night via sketch pad and a French-English dictionary. The next morning, I was startled awake by the blast of an ocean-going freighter’s horn. Having arrived in darkness, I never guessed the St. Lawrence Seaway was steps away.

I was recounting this story to Jean for the umpteenth time when Toronto Center issued a frequency change. Bienvenue au Québec! Air traffic control is bilingual in Québec, so Montreal Center controllers swap seamlessly between French with Québécois pilots, and English with anglophones like me. The mighty St. Lawrence River materialized off our right wing, and 30 minutes later converged with our course at our destination. Inbound to land at the nontowered airport, we heard the following transmission.

“Trafic Trois-Rivières, Cessna Un-Sept-Deux Charlie-Golf-Alpha-Bravo-Charlie, présentement sur Alpha, je m’aligne Piste Deux Trois pour un décollage immédiat.” Jean and I looked to each another, eyebrows raised. The pilot was obviously in the local traffic pattern, but where? I requested his position in English, but he answered in French. Eventually he managed the word, “takeoff,” but we never spotted the airplane. Clearly, great care would be required to operate safely here.

The pilot was in the traffic pattern, but where? I requested his position in English, but he answered in French.I was securing the Flying Carpet when two figures rushed from the terminal, arms outstretched. It was Marcel Duval, the very hitchhiker I had picked up in 1971, and his captivating wife, Lise Marquis. Who’d have imagined that our chance friendship would endure for decades? Although Jean and I have mastered little French, Marcel and Lise now speak English well. Still, they had to remind us to slow our excited chatter for better understanding.

We and the Duvals have visited each other over the years, and swapped our sons between Québec and Arizona during summer vacations. But life got busy, and 15 years have passed since we last rendezvoused to tour Arizona and New Mexico by air.

This would be our first visit to Champlain itself since the mid-1970s, when Lise and Marcel moved to Québec City. Recently, the two retired and built a beautiful contemporary home on the site of his parents’ house where we stayed so long ago. Now we were surfing skies and had time to visit. And what a kick that the nearest airport should be Trois-Rivières, where I first picked up Marcel hitchhiking. Talk about full circle!

The next day, our hosts chauffeured us by speedboat to one of the islands defining Trois-Rivières, where the Saint-Maurice River joins the St. Lawrence. “This is where you and your friends set up camp,” Marcel observed over a gourmet picnic lunch.

We later returned by car to sightsee Trois-Rivières, Québec’s second-oldest city, and sample poutine, a questionably healthy traditional snack of gravy-topped French fries and cheese curds.

“I have something to show you,” said Marcel, parking at a nondescript intersection. “This is the corner where you picked me up in 1971.” Beyond, he noted the dome of his high school, from which he was hitching home at the time. With a lump in my throat, I photographed Marcel, thumb extended, on the very spot where our friendship began 45 years ago. Afterward we visited the Duvals’ son, François, a young professional we last saw as a teenager, and met his growing family.

The grand finale was revisiting Québec City. Ever wish you could fly to France? Well, Québec City is as close as most U.S. pilots can get without crossing an ocean. Founded in 1608 on bluffs overlooking the St. Lawrence, la belle ville de Québec is North America’s only remaining walled city north of Mexico. Stroll the city’s famed walls; tour the 1759 Plains of Abraham battlefield where the British turned the tide to take Canada from France; and explore ancient streets brimming with shops, cafés, street artists, and performers. Flavoring it all is the lovely lilt of French being spoken.

Wandering vieux Québec, we savored sushi with the Duvals’ other son, Pascal, and reunited with Marcel’s sister Louise and her companion, Pierre, our hosts when I hitched from Wisconsin with a college friend to visit Marcel in 1973.

On our final evening, we toasted lifelong friendship on our hosts’ patio overlooking the St. Lawrence, the very site of that long-gone cottage where Marcel and I first bonded. With tears all around, we vowed to meet more often in the future. Clearly, the Flying Carpet will return to Quebec.