Pow Wow

We attended a First Nations' Pow Pow festival at Wendake yesterday with a good friend. Wendake is a First Nations reserve just adjacent to Quebec City. The section of the town that we visited has a beautiful scenery rich in parks, at least one river flowing through the middle of the town, a mid-sized, but beautiful waterfall, and a number of bike and walking paths busy with people biking and walking.

It was difficult to get to the location of the festival, with seven people telling us seven different directions (most of them convincingly, a couple of them were not sure, but each suggested a pathway anyway). It took us at least an hour and half to get to the location, which should really have taken 20 minutes to get to. There was little frustration from our side though, as the walking-friendly nature of the town makes up for the inconvenience of having to miss an hour of the show.

The festival was a great reminder of what Canada really is comprised of: the diversity whose original starters are the aboriginal peoples. The show had a variety of arts and crafts display, and a series of dancing competitions. The dances were beautiful to watch, and they were mostly interactive, with many from the audiences participating.

The visit was very interesting for two other reasons that were purely coincidental as well.

In a very rare accuracy and specificity for a person you expect to meet at such events, a man with a cake in hand declared that we were either Somalis, Ethiopians or Eritreans. A conversation that begins this was was bound to be a long and interesting one. And it was. The man impressed us with his depth of knowledge of world, and specially African affairs. I wish to write more about the details of our conversation (which was mostly one way, given the immense factual and analytical superiority of the man to ours), but I can only say that I was deeply impressed to have had such a conversation in an unlikely setting.

On our way to the bus stop, we run into two elderly men who were also headed to the bus stop. We started a conversation, and we found out that they were from Maine, U.S. It was an informative encounter. Whereas I had no idea where exactly in the U.S. Maine was, I now know that it does not have a huge population and that many of its residents are French speakers, just like one of our new friends, who is bilingual. I am not to assume from now on that Canadians are the only ones that are supposed to be bilingual.

A few blocks from the festival location, one of our new friends calls out a man parking his car in front of his house. I didn't understand the exact conversation, but it led to us being invited into the house for a beer. The host and his friend were very welcoming. They cheerfully introduced themselves, and we were immediately handed a bottle of beer each, from a case that appeared to have been waiting for us: right by the door of the garage through which we entered, and the beer were cold, as if they just took them out of the fridge for us.

We were led to the backyard, where we chatted as if we were old friends seeing each other for a been in the backyard. I think the whole interaction was smoothenned-up by the easy-going nature of one of our new friends, but it also displayed the gentle hospitality of the host and his friend. We joked, told stories about our lives, made fun of someone's French or English, and took some pictures together. It was a sweet encounter, and, to me, it represented a big part of what Wendake is like.