Leaving Sherbrooke. A hotel with endless corridors and a swimming pool with fake rocks and floating seniors. A hockey coach named Ivan came to the show and now bids us farewell. On the low-cast highways of Estrie, bikers on Harleys with racoon or fox-fur tails flying in the wind, titanic iron bridges from a bygone era, wide estuaries. We reach the hotel lobby swarming with musicians, managers, airplane crews and military brass in camouflaged uniforms, please. From the 22nd floor la vieille capitale spreads before our eyes, behind the pane of glass that doesn’t open. Sunlight is reflected on tin roofs, concrete highways swerve across low mat-like neighborhoods. On foot we drift through the old town that sometimes feels like a real-life disneyland, inhabited by chips-like cops and disoriented chinese tourist mobs. Down below on the harbour, gigantic concrete silos bar the horizon like Jericho’s walls waiting for the trumpets. Underneath the highways the Cirque du Soleil has settled. On Rue Saint-Joseph we reach l’Imperial and Le Cercle, where the Festival d’été takes place. L’Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou est là aussi…
