Quebec or Welland?

Note: The following post is not meant to be taken 100% seriously. To the fine people of Quebec: je t'aime beaucoup.

Those who know me personally, and those who pay close attention to my online presence, will know that I've just returned from spending a month in Quebec in an attempt to pick up French. While there, I kept an eye out for things that reminded me of home, and for things I'd like to see implemented back here. Some of the things I found were surprising, while others were exactly what I expected. 

I suppose there's no better way to restart the Waterfront View than to share my findings. Here are the ways Quebec City is ahead of us:

• Quebec has better tourism. Granted, they have a bit more to show off than we do, what with their European-looking streets, incredibly old buildings, and a military fort smack-dab in the middle of the tourist district. But they also know how to take full advantage of what they've got in order to rake in those tourist dollars. Not a single opportunity seems to have been missed in the entire city. In contrast, many of Welland's historical buildings are unappreciated and deteriorating, and our biggest asset - the Canal - is taken for granted.
• Their murals are in better shape. Quebec City (and the rest of the province) is full of murals, and all of the ones I saw were in excellent condition. The ones I viewed were all created as part of independent community initiatives, and their upkeep was funded by local businesses. Welland's FOA murals do not receive this type of care, and as a result, they are being lost to time.
• Cool street art. We passed under a large highway overpass in the Vieux-Port section of the city whose pillars were all covered with street art murals, each one being done by a different artist. I couldn't view it up close, as we were in a bus heading somewhere else, but I believe it must have been a designated area for such art. I also saw similar pieces of street art scattered around the city.
• Relative lack of urban sprawl. It seems like everywhere you look in Welland, there is another piece of farmland or forest being trampled to make way for a new housing development. This is not the case in Quebec City, because practically everybody lives in apartment blocks. That's what is considered the norm there. According to my professor, you only get a house in Quebec City if you absolutely need the space, or if you have money to burn by doing so.
• Lack of scooter people. Any true Wellander reading this should know what I'm referring to, and I didn't see a single one in Quebec City. They'd never be able to navigate all the hills.
• Finally, strong cultural identity. This one is more of a generalization, but we all know that the Quebecois are very proud to be Quebecois. You never hear that about Ontarians. This could have something to do with the fact that they created an entire dialect of a major world language, whereas our most famous creation is probably bagged milk, or something. But the point still stands.

So yes, Quebec has us beat in some ways. But there were also some things I saw that tipped the scales in Welland's favour. As much as I complain about some aspects of life in Welland, there were some things the Quebecois fell behind in: 

• Appreciation of their public art. For all the nice artwork they had in Quebec City, I never heard one person talk about it - and that's despite receiving a guided tour from a professional tour guide, a guided tour from a professor, and many suggestions on where to go from university students. It seems that the murals are just 'there.' Even if Welland's murals aren't cared for as well as theirs are, at least we have some people dedicated to spreading the word about them.
• Sidewalks. The entire province of Quebec has horrible sidewalks, and I don't know why. The campus of the Universite Laval was particularly dreadful, with large chunks just missing, cracks everywhere, and curbs that had literally crumbled away into nothing. Even in the touristy area of Quebec City, the situation was the same. The most puzzling part of this issue is that their roads, with the exception of the brick ones, were in excellent condition for the most part. 
• Drivers. There are bad drivers everywhere, but out of the places I've visited, Quebec had the worst ones by far. Everyone speeds all the time, and I witnessed pretty much every road-rage inducing technique you can think of. Where the traffic cops are I have no idea, as I only ever saw one police car during my entire stay.
• Fast food. I visited McDonald's restaurants three times during my stay, and each time they got my order wrong, despite clarifying it in both French and English. The one in Welland always gets my order wrong too, but at least they only do it in one language.
• Tourist appreciation. Wellanders (myself included) are always going on about how much we want tourists to come to our city. In Quebec, they have tons of them, as I mentioned before - but you can just tell that they hate them. Sure, they still cater to them, but it wasn't hard to tell that the souvenir shop owners, waiters, taxi drivers, and pretty much everyone else really wanted nothing to do with the dirty English-speaking visitors. I know there are many years of bad blood between French Canadians and English Canadians, but I'm pretty sure the Bajans never had anything to do with it, so leave me out.
• Treacherous roads. You apparently can't drive 10 minutes in any direction in Quebec without coming up to some insane hill that you have to go up, or down, or both. This was especially problematic given that we did all our traveling by bus, and the bus drivers aren't exempt from all that stuff I said about the Quebecois being bad drivers. Even when the roads were flat, there were bizarre cases where a multi-lane, 80KM highway suddenly came to a 4-way stop and continued as a residential road. Even the Quebecois I mentioned this too were quick to admit that their roads are strange.
• Fish and chips. The straw that really broke the camel's back: the people of Quebec do not eat fish and chips. Perhaps that's one long-lasting way of rebelling against the English. In any case, I don't think I could have lasted much longer than a month there with this in mind.

So Welland it is. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's homesickness, maybe I'm just biased, but my hometown comes out on top. Quebec was a beautiful place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Forget about la belle province - the Rose City is where I belong.