Quebec City has a very special place in my heart. Any time I get back to that city a flood of childhood memories bring a smile to my face and feel like they are a constant companion as I explore the city anew. Last year a conference returned me to this beautiful city and gave me the opportunity to combine some new experiences with a collection of personal touchpoints that now date back almost forty years.

A mere hour or so after landing in the city I made my way downhill from my hotel to the St-Roch neighbourhood. If you’ve been to Quebec City before, you know that as you walk one way downhill you encounter a sort of future dread about the return walk. I put those thoughts at ease by justifying it as a way to burn off the calories I’d consume at craft brewery Noctem Artisans Brasseurs. This ended up being my favourite beer tasting of the visit and also my favourite meal – a duck confit poutine.

Speaking of poutines, they all just taste better in Quebec. No matter how good one purports to be elsewhere outside the province, it just will never compare to the alchemy that is achieved in Quebec of double cooked fries, brown gravy and those perfectly squeaky local cheese curds. This second poutine for me at La Souche’s craft brewery taproom in Limoilou (also a downhill walk with the return walk straight up a cliff to magically eliminate all the evils my dietary choices were doing on my body) was exceptional.

On account of a packed conference schedule combined with a full slate of informal get-togethers with colleagues from across the country and some new-to-me colleagues from medical schools overseas, I had limited time to explore. Luckily, many of my memories and a lot of the charm and beauty of Quebec City are packed inside the fortified walls of the city and were a short walk from my hotel. I used early mornings and the odd short mid day break to stretch my legs and follow some personally well worn paths through Vieux-Québec.

Walking past the Château Frontenac made me think of the time when I was probably about 12 or 13 years old when I was politely asked to leave the bar in the hotel when my parents stopped for a drink with our family friends. Rather than packing up and finding a place that would accommodate all of us, my dad put a $10 bill in my hand and I was off to find some fun for an hour or two on my own. Today I like to tell that story with an emphasis on this being the only time in my life where I have been kicked out of a bar.

While the beauty of the city is truly remarkable, when I visit now, I’m not stunned into submission by it like I used to be. The architecture, the views out over the St. Laurence River with the mountains in the distance are really a backdrop to memories of being here as a child with my mom, dad and sister. Standing with the view below, my mind was filled with sounds of summer buskers, melting ice cream and how I felt so far away from home in this place. It’s those feelings that I love reconnecting with every time I’m back here.

On this visit, those memories and feelings seemed to be stronger. Maybe it was the slow evolution back to a more pre-pandemic like embrace of travel… maybe it was that being in Quebec City in the off-season makes for a much quieter city; all the better to allow my mind to wander rather than being consumed by the cacophony of sounds and sights that are a staple of summers here.

On my last night, I connected with memories in a very different and unexpected way. It was a dreary, rainy night, so I decided on an indoor evening and took an Uber to an interesting looking craft brewery and taproom that was located in what would have been the parking lot of the former home of my favourite hockey team, the Quebec Nordiques. A friendly bartender, some good food, and a nice lineup of craft beers to taste were an innocuous start to my evening at SNO Microbrasserie Nordik.

It was on account of that friendly bartender who both graciously accommodated my attempts to speak his language and engage in conversation that something truly special happened. I was looking around the bar and noticed a Philadelphia Flyers trinket on a shelf at the same time I noticed on the chalk menu board a beer just labeled as “Lager” with a small hand-drawn football. With my mind and tongue loosened up from some of the beer tasting I pointed out the Flyers trinket and asked him in French if there was any connection…. might that “Lager” beer be a clone of the loved Yuengling that is a taste I have imprinted on so many memories of all of the time I’ve spent in Philadelphia over the years.

My bartender friend laughed, switched to English, and astounded asked how I put that together and that yes, it was a Yuengling clone. I told him of my fondness for Philly, and he replied that he was going to go get their brewer to meet me.

As serendipity would have it, the brewer, Dan, was a Philadelphia native. He fell in love with a woman from Quebec City, moved up here and in missing his home, decided to brew a beer that connected him to memories from his earlier life. He pulled us a couple pints, showed me some of the other nods to Philadelphia around the bar (including this beautiful Eagles framed print behind us in the photo below), and we sat down for a long conversation over our mutual love of the two cities and how both have played roles in our lives.

As you would expect, this walk down memory lane ended up being one of my favourite travel-related experiences last year. We talked at length about our love for the Eagles (Dan adored a picture I showed him of my wife and dog and me all in Eagles gear) and shared some hijinks we both got up to in school trips to Quebec City as youngsters. The collision of making a snap decision to visit this bar led to a serendipitous encounter that made for a walk down memory lane was a perfect bookend to a visit to this city that has meant so much to me.