When Camping In Quebec...

If you are going camping in Quebec, there's something you should know first. To the average Quebecois, this means parking your sweet buns in a trailer park while the kids run free. That being said, most trailer parks there are very nice, clean, and family oriented. If you want a Christian campground with a lovely pool, artificial lake, and cheap prices, check out Camping El Shaddai north of Montreal, south of Drummondville, just off the highway in St-Germain. They also have tent camping.

Now to the crux of the matter. Most Francophones don't speak English as well as we might think. I phoned up a tourist line to find out where I could do tent camping. In nature.

"Natural cam-ping?" she asked.

"Yes, with trees. Someplace I can take my dog."

"Your dog?" She sounded shocked. "But you cannot take a dog to de natural cam-ping!"

"Why is that?" I asked, perplexed. The Quebecois are often perplexing.

"Dey won' let you!"

"I take my dog in Ontario, all the time."

"I don' know. You can try," she said hautily, "but I don' know where you will go."

After hanging up the phone, I told my friends, who burst out laughing. There is
camping sauvage, which is camping in nature, and there is camping au naturel, which is camping in the nude. She thought I wanted to camp in the nude, and take my dog. Which raises an image of me that left me red with embarrassment, my friends in tears, and my dog wouldn't talk to me for a week.

What? You t'ink I make da big joke?

Try for the sauvage, but if you are so inclined, there are many, many nude campgrounds in Quebec, from the middle-class to the ritzy. Evidently, there are areas within specifically for gays and people who want to make love outdoors unabashedly. And rules of conduct so that neither headonists nor uptight nudists will be offended. All you have to do is pay at the gate, take 'em all off, and carry a little towel with you wither thou goest, for sitting.

And no, I never did.