The scene is a country restaurant overlooking what looks to be an idyllic Laurentian lake in summer, as the better half of an English-Canadian couple on vacation gushes over the local gastronomy.
“Garçon, qu’est-que c’est le cheese dans le my wife’s bouche?” the woman’s husband asks in what’s left of his fragmented high school French.
It turns out the fromage in question is Oka, a Quebec delicacy long associated with the Trappist monks who first created it in 1893. As the waiter explains, the local fromagerie was all out, so he had his cousin ship some in from Toronto – only his French pronunciation of Canada’s largest metropolis leaves the couple wondering about the location of this city they’ve never heard of.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Globe And Mail
