This is an old story that happened at the beginning of August while Rene and Carmela were here, but I still find it worth telling.
After going up the St. Lawrence on the north shore and spending a couple of days at a camping right on the beach watching the wonderful view, we thought we’d take a ferry across and come back on the south shore, stopping en route to visit the seals at a national park. Marcel boarded the car on the catamaran and we went up to the deck to watch for whales on the way. After about an hour we reached Rimouski, and decided to go for lunch before heading to the park. We stopped at Tim Horton’s and ordered our food, sat down and ate, and left to drive the 15 minutes to the park. When we reached the park gates it was time to pay our entrance fees, and reaching for my bag at my feet I realised….there was no bag! I had left it hanging on the back of my chair at Tim Horton’s! HAAA! Quickly we turned around and drove back to town, re-entering the restaurant about a half-hour after leaving it: my bag was not on the chair anymore. I asked the ladies at the counter: they hadn’t seen it when cleaning up the tables shortly after we had left and nobody had reported a lost bag. Ooh it was not looking promising…. I started crying, Carmela went to look for the bag in the bathrooms, the guys went outside and looked in bushes and in garbage cans: nothing. My bag had been stolen!
I left my details with the restaurant and the tourist information in case the bag would re-appear and we drove to the police station to fill out a report for the insurance. We cancelled all my cards and lost over an hour with paperwork. The bag itself, the 120$ cash, the cards, they didn’t matter. The worst of having the bag stolen was the camera inside the bag….the one with our 5000 travel pictures. A camera that can not even be used in Canada because the power adapter is not available. Yes most of the photos had been transferred on the computer, but I can’t say I liked the idea of some bozo walking around with MY pics on the memory chip.
With a few hours delay we went to see the seals at the park, very cute laying on rocks drying their fur for the yearly shedding. On the drive back to Quebec I received a phone call from my sister: a nice lady had found my bag under a bench by the street and had found my sister’s phone number on the last page of my little travel book. All was still in it except for guess what? The camera. Grrrr to the a…s…h… who took it.
We travelled around the planet to places where people are very poor and nothing was taken from us.
No, it was in Canada that some scoundrel stole my bag.
Definitely not very proud to be Canadian on such an occasion.
