Summer in QC City is July 15th at noon on alternate leap years. Festival d'Été is from the 4th to the 15th ( or thereabout) because it was so cold and rainy the hotels were empty. Same as for the Carnaval, set in the worst of the winter.

1) In times of recession, it is ( was ) common to lay off the supposedly easily repleceable blue-collars ( and anyway who care if they starve, they're just workers...) and keep the supposedly precious white-collar ( and they're our own class, it just can't be done...). So measured productivity will fall and labor hoarding will be observed. 2) Tradeable presumably use more capital. Samuelson core is empty and leave room for downward price adjustment. It would be intersting to check with capital intensive non-traadable services such as hotels.

Nick: avoid 417. Go by A5, 148 ( road 148 is an oxymoron but still), A50, A 640. You will avoid the Metropolitan Boulevard. ("I spake thus: for their wickedness, I shall send them a plague of locust and put them under the yoke of the dark lord of the Hellish Sands. And if they don't relent, they shall drive the whole lenght of the Metropolitan including Dorval Circle")

Anyone who choose to be impaled on his steering wheel ( a not uncommon happenstance up to the '60's) would improve the race. His killing me by losing control and slamming into the XKR would mean a great loss for humanity ( we would also lose a blond...)

Really, really final plug for Upper North Shore-Saguenay Fjord tourism industry. Unlike lodging establishments, most restaurants are not yet open. Among the good ones, only the William, inside the Hotel Tadoussac www.hoteltadoussac.com and La Galouine http://lagalouine.com/?lang=en are open. When you leave toward the 172, juste at the top of the hill leading from the village and ferry, past the Chantmartin restaurant, stop at the Casse-Croute du Connaisseur http://www.tripadvisor.fr/ShowUserReviews-g155036-d1125089-r139193534-Le_Casse_Croute_du_Connaisseur-Tadoussac_Quebec.html a greasy spoon lodged in a derelict dairy truck. Hamburgers and fries are so good, that, a few years back, a prominent Miami lawyer had the habit, one weekend each August, of flying to Montréal and drive to Tadoussac, get his burger and fries and fly back home...The former owner has retired. He called everyone "Tremblay" , (maybe because half the Saguenay area is named Tremblay) and collected 40 years worth of order slips in a barrack beh ind the truck...The current crew is not as good as old Claude Lapointe but it's still worth the stop.

One of my brothers often let me drive his XKR. Whatever their natural color, any woman beside me always turned blonde...

Nick: leave the office as soon as you can,let's say 17.00 and go via 417 and 40 straight to Québec where you should arrive by 22.30(going from Montréal to Québec on the 138 is a project unto itself). First day should be enough to cover both islands (Orléans in the morning and Aux-Coudres in the afternoon)and go to Tadoussac. Restaurants are better in Baie-St-Paul than La Malbaie ( except the luxury ones sometimes not open at noon at this time of year.) You have three days left to meander and finally reach Trois-Rivières (and then a fast evening drive to Ottawa.) You might even be able to go through the Mauricie National Park when you reach Shawinigan. In that case, enter through St-Jean-des-Piles and when you exit at St-Mathieu, go through the village and turn right on 351 East leading you to A40. ( You will save a lot of time.) If I was driving, I'd go from the 362 to St-Joseph-de-la-Rive (for the ferry to Isle-aux-Coudres)via the Côte-de-Misère (Misery Hill). It's faster than through Les Éboulements and La Grande Côte. But you're not a local and I don't want you to abruptly cease your driving-teaching-blogging career on that 1400 feet high 20% grade...

Shangwen: improvements are minimal but given the extremely low-cost, it's probably tremendously cost-effective.

While physically extended, Québec is a class,income and especially education-segregated to an incredible degree. The distinction between Upper town ( with one of the highest contration of Ph.D in Canada) and the Lower Town-Vanier-St-Charles River valley ( with one of the lowest educationnal achievement in the country) is stark. The division in reading habits, radio-listening ( the famous radio-poubelle, trash-can radio)is fierce and nasty. So, as I say, most students and profs and many civil servants live on the flat upper town plateau, where the municipal government is planning the first bike boulevard. Meanwhile, in the lower town, such projects are fought on principle. Bike are for students , fonctionnaires and other suspect intellectual sissy types. Even reserved bus lanes and the Metrobus service is fought on principle. When ,during the rebuilding of the DuVallon-Robert-Bourassa expressway, the radio-poubelles fought that because it would be used by busses for students going to Laval U.

Frances: Québec is in fact a physically large city,divided by 7 nearly impassable autoroutes ( Québec has more autoroutes per capita than Los Angeles and even New York. Btu the bike -friendly demographic is concentrated: students from Montcalm or St-Jean Baptiste to the east or Ste-Foy and Sillery to the west going to Laval U or the 4 upper town cegeps or civil servants going to the Colline Parlementaire ( a hill only in contrast to the Lower town,not the Plateau.) Or, below , students from Limoilou or St-Roch-St-Sauveur going to Limoilou cegep or the downtown departments of Laval U. The future deputy ministers going to the St-Roch campus of the École Nationale d'Administration Publique presumably practice their limoisine skillls.

Louis built the navy in time for XVI to use it. Tactically, the French suffered defeat but were far tougher than the British had been accustomed. Better to have both tactical and strategic success,but if you have to choose, take strategic. In the end, the French succeeded in their strategic objectives, the British did not. In WWI, the German Fleet was better with metallurgy ( guns,shells and armor), chemistry (propellant and explosives), optic ( gun ranging), ship design ( british battle cruisers were death traps) and were more imaginative in tactics and ship handling. At Jutland (Skagerrak), the British lost far more ships and men than the Germans. A tactical defeat which gave them complete control of the sea... See also Battle of the Coral Sea, where what was an almost tactical defeat for the Americans insured their long term dominance of the Southwest Pacific.

Nick: final recommendation. From Tadoussac, up the 172, down the 170 so you can see Cap-Éternité, Cap-Trinité and L'anse-St-Jean ( the village on the old $1000 bill.) West back to Baie-St-Paul and up the 381 ( mountains are even more majestic and no truck traffic).Then 170 toward Alma, 169 then 155 through the Chambord gap and down the St-Maurice valley. Back on the 40 and 417.Lot of driving but I presume you won't do it twice. Unless you want to do it ten times... Of course you could add le tour du Lac ( around Lac-St-Jean) or north on the 167 to Chibougameau and Abitibi and down the Ottawa river. But that would be a week.

SimonC: hills between Upper and Lower town are steep and so are the slopes toward Charlesbourg, Neufchatel and the upper part of Beauport. But if you stay in the St-Charles Valley-Old Port-Côte-de-Giffard-Côte-de-Beauport or on the Sillery-Ste-Foy-Université Laval plateau toward the Colline Parlementaire, you are on a very flat terrain.

genauer: thanks! Wish the U.S.border ( called in QC "les lignes" ( "the lines" as it is mostly lines in the middle of the map of the forest)) would revert to what it was a few years ago, what you now enjoy.

Bob: read my post...After being trashed almost every time from the 1600's till the Seven Years war, France decided to get back in the game. Choiseul rebuit the navy and one of the British problems was that for once the tables were turned and supplies and men couldn't get through at will, unlike the situation in 1759. One reason of anti-french sentiment in some U.S. quarters is that they don't like remembering that their independance is due more to the french navy and army ( and more to the professional Continental army than to the militias...)

Nick: sorry to miss you (I am in Tadoussac till Thursday,union business). The weather is sunny but very cold, even for the season. Which make it rather easy to book accomodation and restaurants. In a few weeks, it will be the Festival de la chanson http://www.chansontadoussac.com/ and 20 000 people will throng this superb village of less than a thousand. When leaving Qubec City, try to do the Tour de l'Île. ( Île d'Orléans).Don't forget at Baie-St-Paul to take the 362 along the river instead of the 138. If you have time, go to the Isle-aux-Coudres http://www.tourismeisleauxcoudres.com/ (ancestors settled the place, for a Québécois the place is mystical...) If you have time, go back through the 172 to Saguenay then either the 381 (magnificent mountains, I went through a snowstorm there yesterday)to the 138, or the 175 straight to Québec (if you're lucky you might see caribous) or the 155 to Trois-Rivières.

Same thing for me as for Patrick: even in June, with wind from the sea plus my own speed, the wind-chill factor here is almost below freezing. Dressing back to work makes it even more impractical. There is one guy who bike almost every day at my college. The evening janitor...

Doug:Under Louis XIV, the French Navy was somewhat inferior the the Royal navy but France was more interseted in the land power balance on the continent. Under Louis XV, during the American war of Independance, the French navy wupped up the british ( who took their revenge during the napoleonic wars...)

geauer; thanks for the museum info. I remember seeing an article in the NYT about the Czech and German villages sharing service. What made it somewhat poignant was that , at the same time, there was a similar situation in SW Québec- NE New York, with the QC town providing fire protection for the U.S. village. Then,one night, a call came in and the firemen rushed toward the border. Instead of being waved through by their friends, they found that a new crew was there . They were blocked: they were asked for work permit and their truck had to be inspected , for security reasons. Meanwhile, the house burned down. The EU experiment, despite its flaws, is the noblest political experiment in a very long time. May it succeed...

Québec City and Montréal were established at choke points on the St-Laurent and Trois-Rivières at the confluence of the St-Laurent and St-Maurice. And today, we can argue that the Chateau Frontenac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_Frontenac http://www.fairmont.com/frontenac-quebec/ capture the toll from the view. In fact , a few years ago, before the shale gas boom, there was a project for a deliquifying natural gas plant to import foreign gas into the North American market. Some bozo had decided that the ideal location was right across the river from the Chateau Frontenac. A study established the view's value as between 45 to 75 $ Millions. ( The study used the capitalized difference in estimated room rate value between after and before the plant construction).

I sympathized with you not going to the Oktoberfest. It's been a good 15 years since I went to the Quebec Winter Carnival. I don't sense missing anything...

Apart from booking sites being weird, it is clear that hotels discriminate between the locals who know the alternatives and the foreigners ( beginning at the Ottawa river...). In fact,last July , I booked a hotel in Tucson, AZ, for $49 ( it is the low season there, known as "monsoon", one of the five AZ seasons (winter, spring, first growth, monsoon, second growth)). The season was so low that a Hilton in the Coronado Mountains nearby advertised a 3-room suite for $549 instead of the winter rate of $ 2500... As a"Platinum member " of that chain, I am entitled to "always best price available" (and I am supposed to be greeted as "Welcome Mr.Giguere, Platinum member"...) When I arrived, a display in Spanish advertised a rate 10% lower, which they gave me. I presumed that "Platinum " trumped "less-wealthy Mexican...". We could also view that as restoring PPP...

Another problem is how conversant with statistics is the writer, enabling him-or-her to ask the relevant questions and understand the answer. And the political problem , no less or more acute since Sept. 4 but benefiting from The Gazette hyperventilation, is more about language used at work or language used for customer service, especially on first contact. Other things, important in the political context , are not in any census. Such as , in what language is the interface of the wi-fi service of your hotel? I am in Quebec City today and it is in englisg only...( I know from experience that other hotels of this chain have multlingual versions of this software.)

An add-on: in my view, the most peace-producive measures are the Erasmus program, the civil service exhange program (France and Germany, maybe some others?) the NATO offficer exchange program and the multinational military units (French-German,Polish-German, Dutch-Belgian, French-Belgian, French-Spanish-Italian). Till Cameron-Osborne destroyed the Royal Navy, France and Britain operated their aircraft carriers in an almost integrated way.

Nick: tourism is the ultimate way of consuming high productivity while avoiding declining marginal utility ( there are so many places to visit...). Remind me of a passage in "Brave New World" where some alpha higher-up explains to his students :"Some years ago, we trained deltas and epsilons to love nature. The goal was to consume excess transport." ( not the exact wording,quoting from memory). genauer: indeed , great powers behaviour after WWII up to now had been remarkable.Debt forgiveness and Marshall Plan. In fact,even Soviet behavior after 1945, even under Stalin, was remarquably less horrendous than it could have been, given the abomination that were the 20's and 30's. The restraint shown during the Cuban crisis ( compared to let's say 1914) and so on. And one thing that help maintain this sanity may be tourism. It is increasingly difficult to demonize people you see regularly. I should divert myself from some of mysecret anglophilia and visit Germany. Any good aviation museum to recommend?