Confidences of travelers | “Dream, get up and go”

Traveling is like riding on a mountain road. But among the ups and downs, there will always be those indelible memories that you carry with you all your life. The Press recounts the adventures, big or small, of fearless travellers. Today: a travel enthusiast ready to do anything to discover the world.

“On July 18, 1971, I boarded my first plane and I never stopped. »

From her home in Petawawa, Ontario, Francine Lévesque tells us how she made travel her life goal. “As soon as I had an invitation, as soon as I had an opportunity, I left,” she says confidently.

Insatiable…

And if there’s one message she wants to convey, it’s this: never turn down an opportunity to visit a country.

To this day, she still remembers the warm blast of air stepping out of that first plane when she arrived in Miami more than 50 years ago. “It was very exotic at that time! I never lost this feeling. »

At almost 73 years old, she still has a country ahead of her to discover. Moreover, when we spoke to her, she was packing her bags for Croatia. With the same energy as a child on Christmas Eve. “Dream, get up and go. One day, I read that and I said to myself: hey, that’s going to be my leitmotif. »

In 1989, long before it became fashionable via the internet, she was already doing house swaps with her family. “I received the catalog from HomeLink Home Exchange. They had an office in Vancouver — the only one in Canada. The catalog must have been almost two inches high! And it was my bedside book; we chose the country or the house that interested us — there was only one photo! —, the dates, and from that, we wrote letters and we received answers. I was traveling every night,” she recalls with amusement.

From one dream to another

Since her first trip, Francine Lévesque has always recorded her stories in notebooks. So much so that she found herself in front of a big box. “A real chaos. That’s when she started writing some stories about her travels and the people she met all over the world.

Then, when the pandemic hit, she found herself with plenty of free time. As soon as she was vaccinated, she flew to the island of Grenada, where she spent three months writing the rest of her stories, which were finally published last winter in her book The reverse side of the trip — 50 stories of adventures around the world.

The only time she gave up was in the early 1980s; her daughters were still small and she had to fly to Egypt, just after an attack that targeted two Canadians.

If there have been a few misadventures that she recounts in her book and which involve “mega-tarantulas” in Mozambique or an uncomfortable encounter with a lone buffalo that forced her to climb a tree, she does not never experienced what she calls “fear of the other”.

Yes, he happened to meet “not easy” people, like in Corsica, in the 1980s. “We had a metropolitan plate on the car, and they claimed their independence. There was a group that was sitting on the hood of the car. I faced them, explaining to them that we too, in Quebec, had the same claim. Then there was this endless wait on the train at the Russian-Mongolian border, practically in the dark, his passport confiscated by the Russians. “But I wasn’t afraid. These are moments to tell, let’s say. »

The next few years will also be filled with travel for Francine Lévesque — and writing projects, too. “Since I turned 70, I find that I have been in a very good period of my life. We have a lot less worries and responsibilities. All that remains is to seize the opportunities to set off again.

The other side of the journey — 50 stories of adventures around the world

Francine Levesque

Apotheosis Editions

386 pages