Rebecca Duclos, Reading Montreal editor

Acting as a 'foreign correspondent' this week, I am reporting from the field of Portland, Maine USA. As many of you will be quick to point out, though, Maine is not such a foreign country for many Quebec families who, for generations, have migrated or travelled to these parts. Whether it was by the Grand Trunk Railroad or from the back seat of their dad's old car, the view of Maine's thick forests, rocky coasts, tacky seafood joints, and endless motels sporting names like 'Allouette' or 'La Belle Vue' has for decades been a familiar sight to many.

This week's offerings, like my great Aunt Emma's tourtière, will contain a mix of what is at hand for me here in my temporary Maine perch. I'll be excerpting from the Tourangeau and Duclos family history and private journals that I recently discovered in my father's closet. These precious sources describe the life of my French Canadian (or Franco American, depending upon which side of the border one favours) ancestors who came down to work in the Westbrook paper mill in the 1800's.

I'll also be taking Reading Montréal out onto Cushing's Island, a tiny spec of heaven in Portland's Casco Bay whose original Ottawa House Hotel was the summer home of many, particularly Montréal, families in the early 1900's. The Island has many links to Montréal, not the least of which is its landscape plan by Frederick Law Olmstead. Less than a decade after his firm had begun work on Mount Royal, Olmstead was hired by the Maine-based, French Canadian Cushing family to offer his judgement on the Island's 'fitness as a place of summer residence and as to measures desireable for its improvement'.

Finally, we'll wrap up the week with excerpts from writer, Peter Behrens, whose memories of the family's summer trek from Montréal down to Goose Rocks Beach have as much to do with smelling the salty ocean air as they do with the feel of his dad's snazzy car as it rolled through the back woods of Maine.