Cilei and I stayed at a Motel outside of Louiseville for the weekend trip which you can see in the painting. The owner had seen me painting around, and came over to talk a bit, turns out he and his wife bought the Motel in the 1990's from the original owners who built it in the 1970's. It was a decent enough place for the price, and the highway was not too noisy at night, although the train was thunderous. I scanned and updated the previous blogs from our trip, with additional comments and corrections.
Motel Normandie sign, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2025 (No. 4796a)
The view out the back was very relaxing, there were views of soybean fields and corn fields, with some neat blue pine trees reminiscent of Van Gogh's Cyprus trees from southern France. Turns out you can skip the trip to southern France and go to Louiseville Quebec instead. Louise is the name of a royal dignitary who was part of the British colonial times, one of the main roads is King road. So the architecture had a mix of Anglo and Franco themes, and the locals we talked to at the businesses were bilingual. The bakery Le Pain Griffé was incredible, great baguette and even better smoked salmon sandwich. Unfortunately they closed Sunday which precluded our plans to buy the local confectionery they had for sale. In the foreground of the painting you see a composter... that was a nice touch we could compost our banana peels, apple cores and coffee grinds.
Fields and tree vertical, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2025 (No. 4795b)
Here is the same scene on a horizontal format. Van Gogh had landscapes with dramatic undulations and mountains in the background, while here it was laser-beam flat until you got up to the hiking trails in st Ursule. Another neat spot was the adjacent town, Yamachiche, which had a UNESCO certified wetlands on the embankments of lake st Pierre. Long boardwalks took us all the way to the waterfront where we saw an endless expanse of reeds. Signs along the way showed all the different kinds of birds that were supposes to live there but we did not see any. All in all, this trip was a life-changing, immersive journey into the cultural melting-pot of lower Quebec, and we savoured the mouth-watering street food including a notable smoked-salmon sandwich and locally made jams. I might be exaggerating a little, but it was indeed a good weekend getaway a stones-throw, and a few highways, to the north of Montreal.
Fields and trees horizontal, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2025 (No. 4796b)
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