There’s something to be said for Lac St-Jean

With the Alouettes, I’ve travelled as far north as the Lac St-Jean region, Abitibi and Rimouski, and all over the south-west of the province.

But this isn’t a column about travelling in Quebec or supporting our local tourism industry.

Rather, what I want to share is the experiences I’ve had travelling our province and working with or meeting with locals through sport and seeing just how alike we all are.

I grew up pretty well-off – not rich, but certainly not poor, and certainly not wanting for much in a community in NDG that was mostly of that ilk.

Of course, there was also with a handful of the too-rich-for-anyone’s-good and a smattering of the too-poor-to-afford-proper-equipment, but for the most part, we’re a wealthy community in that most of us can afford to live comfortably – to the degree of the relativity of such a statement.

When I was younger, the rest of the province – or even the rest of the Island of Montreal – seemed far off both in terms of distance and culture.

As I grew into my teen years and started travelling a bit here and there for sports, I was exposed to a few different regions and cultures and realized that the world outside of Montreal is not just one big homogenous zone of angry-francophone-separatist-farming-anglo-haters – as one who does not venture outside of the city might assume.

Now in my late-20s and with a few short years of multi-cultural working experience, I see that the latter is not only true, but obvious, and is well reflected in the sports community.

Last weekend, the Alouettes Hockey Tour took me to the Lac St-Jean towns of Dolbeau and St-Félicien, where I was struck by a couple of things.

One, is that apparently "la question nationale" is of little or no relevance to those in Saguenay and Lac St-Jean, and two, apparently neither is the question of language.

I’ve been up in that part of the province before, but on those trips, I wasn’t afforded much time to mingle with locals as they were really work-first, socialize-later voyages.

This time, I had a chance to hang out a bit with some people from the area, one of which who stood out – a young man named Olivier, who was not only interesting, but also one of the best goalies I’ve ever played against.

After our game, we all went out and had the chance to get to know each other a bit, and Olivier – just 16 – and I had a really interesting conversation about the region and what it was like to come from a place so far away from "the big city." "La question nationale," he told me, takes a back seat to the local rivalry between his Lac St-Jean region and the slightly-south-east Saguenay area.

The English language? It’s not prominent in the area, but he understands and speaks enough of it to get by because, well, to him it just makes sense. Why limit yourself, he asked me in an obviously rhetorical fashion.

So a few days later as I look back on my trip north, I feel not only enlightened, but the need to share with people that there’s more credit to be given to the outskirts of the province than we may think.

We "city folk" often get so wrapped up in our own indulgence that we don’t realize just how smart the rest of the world is.

My recommendation is for you to go out there and see it for yourself. Please feel free to contact me any time at noahsidel@gmail.com.