Yamachiche and Village des Caron

Yep, Village des Caron, no S on the end.  Nine sons of Michel Caron, son of pioneer Robert Caron, settled here, hence the name.  The Chemin des Caron, which runs right past where the Village des Caron used to be, is still there.  Now, though, it just runs past a string of small farms and ends in a cul de sac in the middle of a field (or maybe the line between 2 fields; hard to tell, and we didn't want to risk getting mired in mud to find out).

The (ghost) village is just north of Yamachiche, itself a very small town - one church, one school, no grocery store, and the only gas station is where the main street intersects the nearest highway, on the extreme western end of town.  The one sit-down restaurant is attached to a motel by that lone gas station, is open 24 hours, and is along the lines of Big Boy or Denny's. 

Low-end restaurants, in our limited experience, all seem to run to burgers, pizza, at least one or two pasta dishes, and poutine.  They all have poutine, often in different variations.  Even the Greek restaurant where we had dinner tonight had poutine on the menu.

Another thing we've noticed is that only about half the restaurants seem to be licensed to sell alcohol.  The rest all tell you to bring your own wine, which seems to mean there's at least one liquor store nearby where you can buy a bottle to take to dinner.   We haven't noticed anyone bringing beer; don't know whether that's a social custom, preference, or something else.  Makes me wonder how the liquor laws are written here, and whether we'll see many BYOB restaurants when we get to Quebec.

We attended the vigil mass at Notre-Dame-du-Cap, about 2 blocks from our hotel.  It's a basilica, so it's big, though not as big as other basilicas we've seen.  Which is fine; it means the back rows can still see the altar.  The order of service was a little different; for one thing, they only did two readings, not three.  The second half of the eucharistic prayer didn't match the first half in the missalette, many of the prayers weren't even printed in it, and the hymnals only had the lyrics, no musical notation.  They also recited the Apostle's rather than the Nicene creed, but that's a minor matter.  The Chief said he felt like he hadn't really been to mass because he couldn't follow things but also because it seemed like they skipped things.

The Greek restaurant where we ate tonight was not like the ones we're used to in the States.  Spanakopita was only available as an appetizer, the only lamb was chops, and they didn't offer many of the mains that are standard on Greek menus in the US (no pastitsio, moussaka, fish offerings, or roast lamb).  Our dinners were so filling - served on a bed of Greek salad and fries, with a side of garlic bread - we didn't even consider dessert.  This particular place was also very noisy - the Chief and I didn't bother trying to hold a conversation.  To their credit, though, they squeezed us in even though we didn't have a reservation.