At this time of year the evidence of decay is all around us. There is a type of beauty in such decay. The changing pigments eventually give way, the colours gradually fading out. The leaves show blemishes and tears. It has a fragile beauty. Wrinkled parchment, with a luminosity. Many leaves are still on the trees, but at any moment the last of the life force will drain away and one leaf or another will detach itself from its branch and float silently to the ground.
The word for memories in French is souvenir. So it was apt that I would want to bring home a small souvenir of my beloved mountain on a trip back to my childhood hometown.
At the base of the mountain, along the path in the car park I noticed this heart-shaped rock. I brought it home with me, a small memento of Mont St. Hilaire. But there’s a tiny notch at the bottom missing… the little piece of my heart I left behind.
When I was a teenager, I read a junior fiction novel called Apples Every Day. The title was alluding to the fact that the school children in the story were served apples every day in the months that followed the October apple harvest. Something our family, with three apple trees in our garden, knew about first-hand. Those trees produced more apples than we could possibly use despite daily offerings of apple sauce, apple betty, apples in our school lunches... and despite my father giving box after box away to his city colleagues. Author Grace Richardson set the novel in St. Hilaire, where I grew up, and the action taking place in a private progressive school was modeled after an abandoned manor that we thought was haunted. Fast forward thirty-something years and the haunted manor house has been turned into a four-star hotel. Just look at it. Charming, and the gardens are scrumptious! I definitely want to stay there sometime!
The Manoir Rouville-Campbell, as it is now called, was built in 1832 by René-Hertel de Rouville. The house was remodeled in 1850 by Major Thomas Edmund Campbell, having purchased it from the bankrupt Rouville in 1844.
These candy apples were for sale at Auclair's barn in St. Hilaire. Look at that smooth finish and shine, like the paint job on an expensive sports car!
In my post of September 21, 2009 I wrote about the giant bar of chocolate my sister sent from
In her own words, "It wasn’t very far away, although it was hard to find. We did find it however and of course, like many places in Italy, it was closed. Everything shuts down for lunch from 1:30 to 4:00 pm. Anyway, we arrived at the factory and I peeked over the fence and pressed the buzzer. No answer. I don’t think they are really open to the public.
Not long after, a delivery truck came and they opened the gate. So in I went, determined to get chocolate for my big sister. A man came out and I explained that I was from Canada and was looking for chocolate for my sister. She says it is the best chocolate in the world. He didn’t speak English, but told me in Italian that they didn’t sell chocolate. I asked where I could buy it and he went in to get a business card."
After such a declaration what else could he possibly do? Not to be defeated, my sister asked if she could come in to take a couple of photos. And guess what? She could!
Several snaps later, with free samples to boot, my sister and her husband left to find La Bottega del Caffé ... and my chocolate. And what a charming shop it is. Just look at the shop's exterior. The chocolate purchased, the next stop was the post office to mail it to me. And it was on its way.
Note: Photos were taken by my sister.
