After a rocky start that had me nearly miss my flight on the very first day of my new job, I finally landed in Radisson. It was a small airport in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by an endless blanket of snow stretching to the horizon in every direction.
The plane had been filled with workers from all sorts of industries, many of whom were likely beginning work rotations similar to my own. As soon as we landed, everyone seemed to know exactly where they were going. Within minutes they had collected their luggage, climbed into waiting vehicles, and disappeared. I stood there for a moment, alone, trying to figure out what to do next.
I was supposed to meet a colleague I had previously dubbed Bob in a white Ford pickup truck. Unfortunately, I had no contact number, no way of reaching him, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have made much difference. There was no mobile signal, no internet… nothing. I had been in remote parts of Canada before, but this felt like an entirely different scale of remoteness. Everything seemed quieter, farther away, and buried beneath an endless blanket of snow.
It felt like waiting for the white pickup truck ferryman to carry me across the frozen River Styx. The only problem was that when I stepped outside, the parking lot seemed to be filled with white Ford pickup trucks. None of them had drivers. So I wandered in and out of the airport terminal, occasionally scanning the parking lot again, hoping that one of those trucks, and more importantly, Bob, would eventually appear.
The Trans-Taiga Road
What followed was a long half-day drive across the white northern landscape. For the first half hour, we were still on asphalt, occasionally passing another vehicle travelling in the opposite direction. Then, after turning off the main road, we joined a long gravel road called the Trans-Taiga, though at that time of year it was completely hidden beneath a thick layer of snow and ice.
Our destination was Mirage, a remote outfitter that provided accommodation deep in the wilderness. Over the years, it had become a convenient temporary base for various mineral exploration companies operating in the region.
The Trans-Taiga: one of the most remote roads in northern Quebec, Canada
At first, I was captivated by the landscape. It was my first time seeing such an immense northern wilderness in winter. Soon enough, however, the scenery settled into an almost hypnotic rhythm. Trees. More trees. Endless forests stretching in every direction, interrupted only by open snow-covered spaces concealing frozen lakes of all sizes beneath them.
The terrain itself was relatively flat, broken only by the occasional rolling hill. Whenever we reached one, the view opened up, revealing an immense white-and-green horizon that seemed to go on forever. Different, yet somehow always the same. It was impossible not to appreciate just how vast northern Canada really is.
Bob and I spent much of the drive getting to know one another. Naturally, I was eager to learn more about the job that awaited me. In my mind, I imagined spending most of my time thinking about rocks, chemistry, and geology. As I would soon discover, the work, at least during the entry-level, was often far more technical than geological. Being practical and handy was a valuable skill in the field. As someone who had grown up in a small apartment in the city, I couldn’t exactly claim that as one of my strengths. Fortunately, I was more than willing to learn.
Getting My Feet Wet
The following day, I met the rest of our small team on site. After a quick introduction to the facilities, it was time to begin learning the job that would occupy most of my first rotations.
Welcome to Mirage—a small oasis of civilization in the deep wilderness
The role was called Geotechnician and in simple terms it involved performing a series of measurements and observations on the drill core recovered by the drilling crew. The individual tasks themselves weren’t particularly difficult, but each came with its own procedures, details, and quality standards that had to be learned.
Everything, however, began with reconstructing the core. The rock recovered from the drill holes arrived in long wooden core boxes after being transported from the drill site. Before any measurements could begin, the broken pieces had to be fitted back together as accurately as possible, recreating the sequence in which they had come out of the ground.
To some people, this was the most tedious and frustrating part of the workflow, especially when particularly fractured sections looked like someone had emptied a box of irregular stone jigsaw pieces into the tray. I loved it. In fact, it quickly became one of my favourite parts of the entire process. As far as I was concerned, they were essentially paying me to build geological LEGO sets all day. And I love LEGO.
Once the core had been reconstructed to a satisfactory standard, Bob gradually introduced me to the remaining geoteching tasks. One by one, I learned the measurements, the tools, the small tricks that only came with practice, and the little details that separated a beginner from someone who could work confidently on their own.
It was a surprisingly satisfying workflow. Every task had its own rhythm and its own small challenge to master. My goal, of course, was simple. One day, I wanted to graduate from being Bob’s apprentice and earn the title of Master Piecer. Not an official company designation, but an badge of personal prestige in my head.
A curious fox checking us out from afar
Later that day, two more members of our team arrived. They were familiar faces—the same colleagues I had met over drinks in Montreal only a couple of days earlier. With everyone finally on site, our little field crew was complete.
The Path to Professional Geologist
So, puzzle piecing and technical measurements aside, you might be wondering: “What about the actual geology?” Well… there was a small catch.
In Canada, the practice of professional geology is regulated. Each province has its own professional regulatory body responsible for licensing geologists, much like the system used for engineers. In Quebec, that organization is the Ordre des géologues du Québec (OGQ).
Before receiving a full professional license, graduates first register as Geologists in Training (GITs) and complete a period of supervised professional experience. Only after meeting the experience requirements and successfully completing the professional ethics component can they obtain full professional status.
I had applied to join the OGQ as a Geologist in Training around the same time I accepted my job offer. As with many administrative processes, however, approval wasn’t instantaneous and would take several months. Until my registration was finalized, I wasn’t permitted to formally sign off on geological work in my own name. That meant my responsibilities initially focused on geoteching. Looking back, I think it was probably the best possible introduction to the profession.
Those first rotations gave me plenty of time to understand the entire workflow that takes place before geological logging even begins. More importantly, they allowed me to appreciate the challenges faced by geotechs, whose work forms the foundation for everything that follows. In time, geologists would rely on that work every day while supervising projects and interpreting the drill core. Having first learned the process from the ground up proved invaluable later in my career.
That didn’t mean I was excluded from the geology itself. Far from it. Discussing the rocks, asking questions, debating interpretations, and learning from more experienced colleagues was encouraged from day one.
Fortunately, my somewhat turbulent final years in academia hadn’t diminished my scientific curiosity. If anything, they had strengthened it. I was always eager to listen, ask questions, and join geological discussions whenever I had something worthwhile to contribute. To my relief, those years spent in research turned out to be surprisingly useful, and my colleagues seemed to appreciate the perspective I brought to the conversations.
Life at Mirage
The work schedule consisted of twelve-hour shifts every day. That might sound grueling at first, but the trade-off was equally generous time off once the rotation ended. Most of our projects operated on a two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off schedule, which over time I came to appreciate as a great balance. It was long enough to stay productive and fully immersed in the project, yet short enough to avoid burning out. Whenever rotations stretched to three weeks—or, on rare occasions, even longer—you could almost feel everyone’s energy and focus beginning to fade during that third week.
Lunch was usually around an hour, while the evenings were ours to spend however we liked. We’d all have dinner together before gradually drifting off to our own routines. Mirage was actually a fantastic place to unwind after work. The lodge had a small gym, which quickly became my favorite spot. I wasn’t trying to follow my regular training routine from home, but getting in a workout every now and then helped me stay active during the longer rotations.
There was also a sauna, hot tubs, a pool table room with comfortable seating around a large fireplace, and plenty of opportunities to simply sit and chat after dinner. During the summer, people would go fishing or gather around bonfires. Winter had its own reward. On clear nights, if you were lucky, the northern lights would make an appearance.
During that very first rotation I caught my first glimpse of the aurora borealis. To the naked eye, it was surprisingly subtle. More like faint wisps of pale light stretching across the northern sky than the vibrant green curtains you see in photographs. Fortunately, I had my camera with me, and a long exposure revealed the spectacle my eyes could barely see.
Dancing northern lights above the cold, pixeled wilderness
As for me, I usually spent a little while chatting after dinner before retreating to my room. I’d try to squeeze in an episode of a TV series or play something on my laptop, but after twelve hours of work I rarely stayed awake for very long.
Even in those first weeks, I could already tell this was a place where colleagues naturally became friends. Living and working together for weeks at a time created a sense of camaraderie that, at least to me, felt more like the brotherhood and sisterhood of a student dorm than simply a workplace.
Getting Comfortable
Just as I was getting used to my new daily routine, a new task popped up. The two colleagues who had driven up the day after I arrived had both recently obtained their professional geologist licenses. Management decided it would be better to have them working on opposite rotations, so the following day one of them, let’s call him Bill, was heading back to Montreal. That meant making the long drive back to the airport near Radisson. Since the truck wouldn’t drive itself back to Mirage, someone had to accompany him. That someone turned out to be me.
Fortunately, I already had a Canadian driver’s license by that point. Unfortunately, apart from my driving test, I had barely driven at all. In fact, the last time I had properly been behind the wheel was on the one day during my Iceland trip back in 2017, five years earlier, and even then I hadn’t exactly been overflowing with confidence. Driving had quietly become one of my bigger stress factors. There was no avoiding it, though.
Driving was an essential part of exploration work, so sooner or later I had to become comfortable with it
My mind wasn’t particularly cooperative. It happily imagined every possible worst-case scenario along the way. To calm myself down, I tried to prepare for everything I could think of. I downloaded offline maps of the region, even though the route was essentially one long road with a single important turn-off at the end of the Trans-Taiga. The company also provided emergency communication equipment, making sure I had both a satellite messenger and a satellite phone in case one system failed.
The safety culture with these guys was very much alive and well.
The Road To Radisson
Bill and I set off early the following morning. He kindly offered to drive us to the airport, leaving me with only the return journey. That alone was a huge relief. During the drive, Bill shared stories from the beginning of his own career. Like me, he had started with very little technical experience and limited confidence behind the wheel. But, as he explained, this line of work had a way of teaching you everything eventually.
Before long, you became a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Building makeshift core shacks from scratch, riding snowmobiles in winter and ATVs in summer, flying around in helicopters, solving unexpected problems on the fly… At the time, it all sounded almost unbelievable.
As we talked, I paid close attention to the road, trying to memorize landmarks and intersections for the journey back. To my inexperienced eyes, however, the landscape looked incredibly uniform. Trees. Snow. More trees. There were landmarks, of course, but they were few and far between. It would take several trips before they became second nature. For now, all I really needed to remember was one important fact: As long as I stayed on the Trans-Taiga and didn’t miss the single turn-off near the end, I was heading in the right direction.
Getting Back Behind the Wheel
After dropping Bill off at the airport, it was finally time. I climbed into the driver’s seat of a full-sized North American pickup truck. I couldn’t help thinking back to my summer field trip with Alexandre years earlier, when he had commented on how comfortable these big vehicles were to drive despite their size. Their power and stability were genuinely impressive.
I have to admit… For the first half hour, I had the classic nervous beginner’s driving posture. You know the one… Leaning slightly forward, hands gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary, head stretched toward the windshield as if trying to spot danger before it appeared. To be fair, the asphalt section near Radisson was practically rush hour by northern standards. I probably saw enough vehicles to push the total comfortably into double digits. I was also determined not to miss the turn onto the Trans-Taiga.
Once I reached the long white gravel road, though, I slowly began to relax. For the first time that day, I stopped worrying and started appreciating where I actually was… Driving a big Ford pickup across one of the most remote roads in North America, surrounded by an endless winter wilderness, blasting my music through the speakers… …and getting paid to do it. I could definitely see myself getting used to this.
In hindsight, the Trans-Taiga was probably one of the best possible places to rebuild my confidence behind the wheel. The road was exceptionally wide. Particularly along the first hundred kilometers toward LG-3. Plus, traffic was almost nonexistent. Seeing another vehicle became a noteworthy event rather than a usual occurrence.
One thing I did quickly notice, however, was that most drivers travelled considerably faster than the posted speed limits. Covering these enormous distances took a long time, and people who regularly worked in the region tended to settle into their own rhythm.
Several hours later, after a spectacular northern sunset and the final stretch through complete darkness, I arrived safely back at Mirage. I was tired. Mentally drained. But also quietly proud. My return to driving had gone far better than I could have hoped.
A Different Kind of Challenge
With an exciting and exhausting first week behind me, I found myself wondering what the second week of my first rotation had in store. Unfortunately… It wasn’t nearly as enjoyable.
Late winter afternoon at Mirage
If the first week had been about learning new tasks and adapting to unexpected challenges, the second week became about doing exactly the same thing while feeling like someone had strapped lead weights to every limb. I had come down with a nasty flu.
It started with a mild headache and unusual fatigue before progressing into muscle aches. The nurse on site immediately tested me for COVID-19. Had the result been positive, I would have spent the next several days isolated in my room. Instead, the test came back negative. Great. Well… sort of. I still had the flu and kept on working through it.
Over the following days, the nurse continued testing me, but every result remained negative. The first few nights were drenched in sweat, while each twelve-hour shift somehow felt twice as long as the last. I started using my lunch breaks for quick naps, hoping to recover enough energy to make it through the afternoon. Then came the congestion. All the while, I continued working in a face mask.
Every evening at dinner, the nurse would encourage me by reminding me that it was simply another day closer to the end of the typical week-long flu. It became a real test of endurance. Taking a sick day was technically an option, but it honestly never crossed my mind. I had come north to work, not to sit in my room feeling sorry for myself. As long as I could still do the job safely, I was going to show up.
Slowly but surely, things began to improve. After three or four days, each morning felt just a little bit easier than the last. By the end of the week, my strength had returned almost overnight. In fact, I felt better than I had before getting sick—that strange burst of energy that sometimes follows finally shaking off the flu.
The fox was back. Roaming around camp every now and again
Between learning an entirely new job, rebuilding my confidence behind the wheel, and surviving a week-long flu in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, I certainly felt like I had earned my place on the team.
The Final Week
On the third and final week of my first rotation, a new group of colleagues arrived on site. This was going to be our overlap week between cross-shifts. Basically, everyone would be brought up to speed, trained, and eased into the rotation routine that would continue from that point onward.
A couple of new employees joined the team, and suddenly I found myself in the position of training them. It was surreal. Less than three weeks earlier, I had arrived completely clueless about the job and the tasks ahead of me. Now I was already passing on what I had learned to the next people coming in. This week was arguably my favorite of the entire rotation.
I was now in full optimization mode, trying to figure out the best ways to complete tasks efficiently while maintaining the quality of the work. Then, at the same time, I was learning how to explain those same processes to others. The once-quiet workspace became much livelier. The evenings around the dinner table turned into proper social gatherings. The energy was high, and I was thoroughly enjoying it.
My soon-to-be cross-shift partner turned out to be quite the ambitious character. Let’s call her Sally. Coming from Europe herself, Sally was just as academically overqualified as many European geologists I had encountered. She also had that same desire to prove herself shared by many Europeans making the move to North America. In that sense, we had a lot in common.
Our shared work mindset quickly led to a strong collaboration. Not only during that first rotation, but throughout the following years. The week flew by, and before I knew it, it was time to prepare for my travel day home. My first rotation was coming to an end.
Those early winter sunsets across the frozen lake were always gorgeous
Unfortunately, two of my colleagues had caught my lovely flu by then and were now dealing with the consequences. Their time off would consist mostly of couches and beds for the next week. Sorry guys!
A Chaotic Departure
My return journey proved to be almost as chaotic as my first travel day. This time, however, the chaos came from a completely different source. It was the first time our company had hired a private aviation company to fly smaller aircraft directly to Mirage rather than using the commercial route through Radisson.
There was a small airstrip nearby, and despite the cost of chartering flights, it actually made financial sense when transporting multiple workers in and out of the field. It also eliminated the long drive between Mirage and Radisson. The only problem? The weather.
The forecast wasn’t looking particularly promising. Without a control tower at the airstrip, visibility conditions were critical for landing. The sky was still relatively clear earlier in the day, but due to various delays, the plane’s arrival was pushed later and later into the afternoon.
Soon enough, the day became a strange combination of: “Get ready, we’re leaving soon!” and: “Actually, never mind, we might be staying another night.” Personally, I found the whole situation quite entertaining. At this point, I wasn’t in a desperate rush to get home. I was already enjoying the unpredictability of field life. Besides, an extra day meant extra pay. A win-win.
Not everyone was quite as relaxed, however. The helicopter crew, in particular, were eager to return home. Their time off between rotations was limited, and every delay meant less time with their families.
Anticlimactic
Later in the afternoon, we were eagerly waiting in our cars near the airstrip. Waiting and listening for any sounds of an approaching airplane. The wind howling outside adding to the drama. The weather had gotten visibly worse. Nobody said a word. It was like we were in a suspenseful thriller just before the climax. At one point we finally heard the aircraft approaching.
We stepped out of our vehicles and gathered around, waiting to see if the plane would attempt the landing. We could hear it somewhere above the clouds, getting closer and closer… almost directly above us… And then it started fading away. Further and further. Until it was gone.
The aircraft never appeared. With the thick, low cloud cover the pilots made the decision to abort. It was a rather anticlimactic ending to that tense build-up scene. We were staying one more day.
My First Helicopter Ride
That evening after work, I overheard the helicopter crew discussing their frustrations and mentioning Saguenay. It turned out the pilot was from the region and lived near Chicoutimi. When I mentioned that I was also based there, they offered me a ride back home. Their plan was to fly the helicopter to their nearest southern base, then drive the remaining distance.
A helicopter ride home? Absolutely. I checked with my boss first, and they were more than happy with the arrangement. It also saved them the headache of reorganizing another complicated travel itinerary. Another win-win.
The next morning was mostly spent in standby mode. The colleagues who were leaving by truck had already departed early toward Radisson. I, meanwhile, was simply waiting for the helicopter crew to finish their morning tasks before we could leave. Naturally, that took longer than expected. Eventually, around 11 a.m., I drove out to the laydown area where the helicopter was operating.
Getting ready for my first helicopter ride
Once the crew finished their work, they gave me the pre-flight safety briefing. I wondered whether I would feel motion sickness. I wondered whether my annoying fear of heights would make an appearance. Mostly, though, I was just incredibly excited. Thankfully, neither issue appeared.
The rotor blades spun faster as the pilot completed his final checks. Then, almost effortlessly, the helicopter lifted away from the ground. And just like that, we were flying. There is honestly no comparison for the feeling of a first helicopter ride. The sheer cool factor is difficult to describe. To my geeky brain, it genuinely felt like stepping into a video game.
Once we reached cruising altitude, the flight became incredibly smooth. Clouds of different shades of blue and grey stretched across the horizon, while beneath us the endless white landscape of northern Quebec continued in every direction.
Imagine crashing in a place like this… with nothing but wilderness for hundreds of miles in every direction
The pilot explained that wind, rain, and snowfall were usually manageable. The real concern was freezing rain. That was the nightmare scenario for helicopter pilots, as ice accumulation on the rotors could quickly become dangerous. Fortunately, we had no such issues. The weather remained calm, with only a few darker clouds scattered across the sky.
Back to Civilization
About an hour later, we landed somewhere else remote, but much farther south than Mirage. The helicopter crew completed their cross-shift exchange, and soon enough we were packed into an overloaded truck filled with everything from helicopter equipment to personal fishing and hunting gear.
Another long drive followed. More forests. More snow. More endless wilderness. Hours passed before we finally reached the asphalt road.
At some point, the guys started talking about stopping at a fast-food restaurant in the nearest town. That was when I realized where we were. Near Chibougamau. After three weeks in the northern wilderness, it genuinely felt like returning to civilization. McDonald’s. PFK. Cars. People. Buildings. It felt strange.
A tired selfie from the chopper as I returned home after my first rotation
What an unusual profession. You could spend weeks living in an isolated camp surrounded by nothing but wilderness, then suddenly find yourself standing in a fast-food restaurant surrounded by everyday life. Throughout the years it really felt like living two completely different lives.
It took several more hours of driving before we finally reached the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, well after nightfall. Then, after another stretch of driving, I was finally back in Chicoutimi. I was incredibly thankful for the ride and wished the pilot a good time off. Meanwhile, his poor mechanic still had several more hours of driving ahead of him all the way to Québec City. Now that’s a commute.
Finally back home, I was looking forward to some well-deserved rest. But there was another major change waiting just around the corner. My time in Saguenay was coming to an end. I would soon start to prepare for my move to Montreal.
On a regular cold day in early February 2022, I received my graduation papers from UQAC after a brutal year of struggling against an ever-growing series of challenges and absurdities. I was now a double Master of Geology… because of the… two Master’s degrees. More importantly, I could finally apply for a Post-Graduation Work Permit in Canada.
As with most administrative procedures, the process would take a few months. Fortunately, submitting the application was enough to grant me the right to work while my permit was being processed. I wasted no time and immediately began searching for employment.
The Job Hunt Begins
Sadly, due to the pandemic and repeated lockdowns, my professional network remained rather limited. However, I had two major leads to pursue.
The first came through Alexandre. A friend of his from France had already spent some time working in mineral exploration and mentioned a company that he spoke highly of. Given my previous experiences working in Romania, I already knew how important a healthy work environment was for both motivation and sanity. Alexandre put us in touch through Facebook, and before long I had an email address to which I could send my application.
My second lead came through my supervisor and professor at UQAM. Over the years, I had gathered that he was exceptionally well connected not only within academic circles but also throughout the mining and exploration industry. I reached out to him for guidance and quickly received a reply. Before long, he suggested a Quebec-based exploration company operating out of Montreal that happened to be hiring.
Ice breaks up on the Saguenay
Before continuing, I should mention a few important points regarding the way I will write about this period of my life. I will be intentionally omitting company names throughout the remainder of this story. Likewise, the names of colleagues and other individuals involved will be changed or omitted to respect their privacy. Some details may also be kept intentionally vague where appropriate. The events and experiences themselves are real, but protecting the privacy of the people involved is more important than absolute documentary precision.
First Interview
The first company to reply was the one suggested by my former supervisor. The director himself responded with interest in my resume and invited me to a remote interview a few days later. The interview went well. I played my usual cards: motivation, ambition, and a willingness to learn. When asked where I saw myself in five or ten years, I aimed high. He seemed to appreciate that.
The only potential drawback was, once again, the French language. Speaking French was not a strict requirement for the position, but it certainly would have been helpful considering most of the team were francophones. However, he assured me that everyone also spoke English and that the work environment was fairly bilingual. Looking back, it would probably have been a good place to continue improving my French.
A day or so after the interview, I received positive feedback and a promise that a contract offer would arrive the following week. This was on a Thursday.
That same day, I received an email from the other company inviting me to a remote interview on Friday. Even though I already seemed to have a job offer within reach, I accepted. At the very least, I was curious to learn more about them.
Second Interview
The following day, I found myself speaking with one of the company’s young managers. The contrast was immediately noticeable. Whereas the first interview had been conducted by a formal senior director, this one felt much more relaxed and energetic.
We ended up having a great conversation. He explained that the company was headquartered in Western Canada and was in the process of opening a new office in Montreal. That immediately caught my attention. Western company meant that English was the primary work language. Plus I was already dreaming about moving to Montreal.
The company itself was also in a different stage of development. Rather than operating around a long-established project area, they were building a new team, pursuing multiple exploration projects, and expanding their presence in Quebec. It was an interesting comparison between two very different opportunities.
What surprised me most was what seemed to interest them about my application. I had assumed that my lack of direct exploration experience would be the main focus. Instead, they appeared genuinely interested in my diverse work background. While none of it was directly related to mineral exploration, they seemed to value adaptability and the ability to learn quickly in unfamiliar situations.
The manager explained that they intended to take my previous work experience into account and place me slightly above the entry-level junior position.
Two Offers on the Table
Toward the end of our conversation, I explained that another company was already preparing an offer and that I expected to receive it early the following week. If they were seriously interested in bringing me on board, I would need an answer fairly quickly.
He assured me he would discuss the matter with his colleague and get back to me as soon as possible. He was not exaggerating. Only a few hours later, I received another email containing a contract offer. Their response time was lightning fast and left quite an impression.
I was also somewhat taken aback by the situation itself. Barely two weeks after graduating from UQAC, I found myself considering two attractive offers for exploration geologist positions.
The difference between the Canadian and European job markets felt almost surreal. Of course, timing played a role as well. The mining and exploration industry is notoriously cyclical, with periods of expansion followed by inevitable slowdowns. In early 2022, the market was clearly in one of its stronger phases, and job seekers generally found themselves in a favorable position.
For someone who had spent the previous year navigating the seven circles of academic hell, it was an exhilarating feeling. More than anything, it felt as though all the effort, frustration, and persistence of the previous year were finally producing results.
It also reinforced my decision to step away from academia rather than continue pursuing a PhD under increasingly uncertain circumstances. For the first time in quite a while, I felt genuinely optimistic about the road ahead.
Decision Time
I waited until Monday to receive the promised offer from the first company. In the meantime, I enthusiastically consulted friends and family, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each opportunity. When the second offer arrived as promised, I quickly discovered that the decision would be more difficult than I had anticipated.
The compensation structures alone made comparisons challenging. One company offered hourly pay, while the other proposed an annual salary supplemented by various bonuses, including additional compensation for extended periods spent in the field. Estimating what either position might ultimately pay required plenty of assumptions and more than a few calculations.
Still, there was another factor at work. I have to admit that my instincts were quietly nudging me in one particular direction. Whether this was simply my subconscious recognizing details that I had not yet consciously processed, I cannot say. What I do know is that the prospect of joining a young team in the process of building something new felt incredibly appealing.
They spoke about multiple projects, opportunities across different regions, and the possibility of working with a variety of teams and clients. As someone just beginning a career in the industry, that breadth of experience seemed invaluable.
In the end, that became the deciding factor. When I politely declined the first company’s offer, the main reason I provided was simple: I felt the second opportunity would expose me to a wider range of projects and learning experiences at the very start of my career.
What Does an Exploration Geologist Actually Do?
The job of an exploration geologist is a rather adventurous one. It requires spending much of the year working in remote regions—far from major cities, often far from even the smallest settlements, and sometimes seemingly far from everything.
So what exactly do we do out there in the wilderness? In simple terms, we search for mineral resources. Gold, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earth elements… you name it. These are the raw materials that eventually find their way into everything from everyday household items to smartphones, medical equipment, renewable energy technologies, and countless other products that modern society depends on.
A sulfide-rich rock sample that I cut into a weird monolithic shape
Exploration geologists are at the very beginning of that journey. It often starts with boots on the ground. We hike through forests, mountains, and tundra searching for exposed rock outcrops that might tell us something interesting about the geology below. Once promising rocks are found, they are mapped, carefully described, and sampled. Those samples are later analysed to determine their chemical composition and whether they contain economically interesting minerals.
If the initial results look promising, the project moves into more advanced stages of exploration. This is where drilling comes into play.
The Exploration Drilling Stage
Drill holes are carefully planned to intersect the target rock formation at different angles and depths. Each core recovered from underground provides another piece of the geological puzzle, allowing geologists to gradually build a three-dimensional model of what lies beneath the surface.
Of course, finding minerals is only half the battle. The real question is whether enough of them exist, in the right concentrations and under the right conditions, to justify the enormous cost of developing a mine. Most exploration projects never reach that stage. Only a small fraction eventually become producing mines.
Because of this, early-stage exploration is also the riskiest phase for investors. The odds of discovering an economically viable deposit are relatively low, but if a project does prove successful, the rewards can be substantial.
That is also why exploration data is treated as commercially sensitive. Geological interpretations, sampling results, drilling information, and future plans are valuable pieces of information. For that reason, I will deliberately avoid discussing operational details, specific projects, or exploration results throughout these stories.
Technicalities aside, however… It is one of the most adventurous jobs I have ever had.
Heading North
The days flew by, and before I knew it I was boarding a flight to Montreal in transit towards my very first work rotation. The following day, I was booked on a commercial flight to Radisson, a remote town in the James Bay region of northern Quebec that serves as a gateway to many exploration projects in the Canadian north.
It felt good being up in the air and traveling again, even if it was part of work
Before that, however, I had half a day to spend in Montreal. The manager I had spoken to during my interview invited me out for a drink with him and a few of my new colleagues. At that point, there wasn’t technically an office yet. Everyone was still working remotely, so this was the perfect opportunity to meet some of the people I would soon be working alongside.
After our relaxed social gathering, I returned to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. It was time to start preparing for early mornings, long working days, and three weeks filled with new experiences and challenges. The following morning, I arrived at the airport ready to check in for my flight north. I was about to head somewhere that relatively few people ever visit: Canada’s true north, in the middle of winter.
Airport Shenanigans
At the manager’s recommendation, I had bought a pair of enormous steel-toed winter boots that looked like they belonged to a science-fiction power armor suit. Despite their size, they were surprisingly light thanks to their composite construction. Graceful, however, they were not. I was incredibly excited about what lay ahead.
Then the Air Inuit employee asked me a simple question. “Do you have your PCR test?” For those who have thankfully forgotten, PCR tests were one of the COVID-19 requirements still floating around at the time. Nobody had mentioned anything about needing one. She asked what kind of work I was travelling north for. “Geologist in Mineral Exploration” I replied. Judging by her expression, that answer didn’t really help. She simply responded that everyone travelling north needed a PCR test. And just like that… the troubles began.
I immediately called one of the company managers and explained the situation. He was just as surprised as I was. Up until then, none of their employees had needed PCR tests for this type of travel. We quickly discussed our options. One possibility was finding a testing center in Montreal, keeping me there for an extra day, and trying again on the following morning’s flight. Then he asked whether testing might be available at the airport itself.
While he rushed off to deal with the logistical headache this situation had suddenly created, I hurried off to investigate my options.
COVID Chaos
I scrambled to the airport information desk hoping to find out whether I could still get tested. I had already accepted that I would almost certainly miss my scheduled flight, but there was another one leaving a few hours later that I might still be able to catch.
After some waiting, I ended up speaking with a different employee and had to explain the entire situation all over again. By this point, I was becoming both anxious and increasingly frustrated. They listened carefully before asking once more: “So… what exactly do you work again?” “I’m a Geologist,” I replied again, before adding, “…in the mining sector.”
That finally clicked. They asked whether I would be working directly with Air Inuit personnel or with local First Nations communities. “No” I said. “Oh… then you don’t need a PCR test” he replied.
…What? After all that?
That was peak COVID bureaucracy. Rules changed constantly, different people interpreted them differently, and by early 2022 it felt like just about everyone was fed up with the whole situation.
Finally, I was allowed through to the check-in counter. I immediately phoned the manager to let him know the good news. His reply? “…Ah, crap. I just cancelled your ticket.”
Oof. I stayed on the phone with him while asking the airline staff whether it was still possible to buy another ticket. Thankfully, it was. I even offered to pay for it myself just to simplify matters, knowing the company could reimburse me later. Meanwhile, the manager rushed off once again to let everyone at the project know that, after all, I was actually coming.
The Domino Effect
What I didn’t discover until I reached the project was just how many moving parts my little airport adventure had set into motion.
Radisson was still over 400 kilometres from camp, so someone had to drive out to meet every incoming flight. By the time news reached camp that I supposedly wasn’t arriving that day, the driver—let’s call him Bob—had already left.
Unable to reach him by radio or any other means, the team made the decision to send the helicopter after him to signal that he should turn around instead of wasting an entire day’s drive. However, when it turned out that I was, in fact, still coming after all, another message had to be rushed through telling everyone to call the helicopter back.
Somewhere in the frozen north of Quebec
As funny as the story is now, it also illustrates how quickly small logistical changes can snowball into much bigger ones when you’re operating hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town. Every last-minute adjustment costs time and money, especially when helicopters become involved.
Fortunately, the helicopter hadn’t taken off yet, and the replacement airline ticket ended up costing exactly the same as the original one. In the end, no real harm was done. Just a healthy dose of unnecessary stress before my first official day on the job.
Looking back, it was a rather fitting introduction to life in mineral exploration. In remote field operations, even the smallest hiccup can ripple through an entire chain of carefully coordinated logistics. As I would discover, adapting to the unexpected was simply part of the job.
Following months of intense work under mounting pressure, an eerie stillness settled over my life. The article had been submitted. The thesis had been submitted. After spending so long managing one disaster after another, trying to keep an increasingly unstable structure from collapsing around me, there was suddenly very little left to do.
Now came the waiting. It would still take over a month before the reviews returned and I would have to address any final comments, corrections, or suggestions. But until then, for the first time in what felt like forever, I could finally relax. Or at least attempt to.
After the Storm
With only a few weeks of autumn remaining, Taylor and I returned to the Saguenay Fjord National Park for one final late-season hike. I must admit, few things compare to the vibrant forests of Canadian autumn. Vast hills and mountains disappeared beneath a sea of yellow, scattered with patches of deep red and lingering green. Beneath the clear blue sky, the Saguenay River cut through the landscape like a winding ribbon.
Walking straight into autumn’s golden embrace
The trip became part of a slow readjustment back toward normal life. A life where I was no longer constantly on edge, managing crisis after crisis while trying to hold together a life that increasingly felt like it was coming apart. I had to relearn how to disconnect. How to exist without immediately anticipating the next catastrophe. Though some part of me still expected another disaster to emerge at any moment.
The following month of November was not entirely uneventful either. Our small research group was scheduled to attend the first conference held in person since the beginning of the Covid crisis. Well… partially in person. It was technically a hybrid conference, and remote participation was still strongly encouraged.
After the months I had survived, reaching the top of those cliffs in Saguenay felt like climbing on top of the world
But honestly, we simply wanted to escape Chicoutimi for a while. We wanted to see other places again. Other people. Signs that the wider world still existed beyond lockdowns, laboratories, and endless administrative nightmares.
Glimpses of a Different Life
The GAC-MAC conference was being held in London. London, Ontario. Not the capital of the United Kingdom. North American city names and their complete lack of originality… am I right?
Getting there required an entire day of driving, but nothing our two experienced and enthusiastic drivers, Taylor and Alexandre, could not handle. Two major things from that journey stayed with me vividly. The first was Montreal. The second was Highway 401 near Toronto.
Reaching for whatever’s left of summer
Despite having lived in Quebec for over two years by that point, I still had never properly visited Montreal. I had only briefly passed through its airport during my arrivals back in 2019. Alexandre had visited before and spoke highly of it, despite not being particularly fond of large cities himself. Compared to Chicoutimi, however, Montreal represented something entirely different. Movement. Opportunity. Life.
Even just passing through the northern parts of the city left a surprisingly strong impression on me. And this wasn’t even the glamorous side of Montreal. Yet it was enough. The dense residential neighborhoods, the characteristic duplexes of the old French quarters, the busy streets, the sheer feeling of urban energy… all of it immediately resonated with me. After years spent in what increasingly felt like an isolated academic outpost, the city felt alive in a way I had almost forgotten was possible.
For the first time in a long while, I could clearly envision a future beyond Saguenay. All I needed to do now was graduate and secure a flexible job that would allow me to move there.
Canada’s iconic maple leaf showing off in full Quebec autumn glory
After Montreal came Toronto. Or more specifically, the legendary Highway 401. The city itself barely registered in my memory compared to the sheer insanity of that highway system. Endless lanes. Interwoven overpasses and underpasses. Traffic moving at speeds that felt borderline absurd. The only apparent rule of the 401 was momentum. It looked terrifying.
This was one place I never wanted to drive myself. Taylor, of course, loved it. She had grown up driving everywhere and handled the chaos with complete confidence. I, meanwhile, had always considered myself far more of a proud pedestrian than an enthusiastic driver. But Canada is vast, and my legs alone were never going to carry me very far across it.
Eventually, after a very long day on the road, we finally passed through Toronto and arrived in London.
A Breath of Normalcy
London itself seemed like a fairly modest mid-sized city. Clearly larger and livelier than Chicoutimi, though nothing particularly spectacular. The university campus, however, impressed me immediately. Especially the old stone tower building rising above the grounds. It gave the place a strangely classical atmosphere, like a miniature version of Cambridge or something along those lines.
Heading to Western University in the late afternoon
We had several days to spend there attending the usual conference activities. Presentations, networking, poster sessions, and awkward academic small talk. In my case, I presented a poster based on the research work that had consumed most of the previous year of my life. Oddly enough, it felt good. Rewarding even.
After so much isolation, uncertainty, and endless work, simply being surrounded by other people again felt refreshing. Conversations flowed naturally across the conference floor as students and researchers drifted between presentations. And since this was Ontario, everything suddenly became much simpler for me linguistically as well. No constant anxiety over French. Just smooth communication.
The Clocktower at Western
It was a breath of fresh air. Well… a masked breath of fresh air. But still. You get the idea.
The London Evenings
Once conference hours ended, I insisted we actually go out and do things rather than retreat straight back to the hotel each evening. Partly because I genuinely wanted to enjoy the trip, but also because I was trying to reclaim some semblance of normal life after the psychological trench warfare of the previous months.
The first evening, we settled on bowling. Reaching the venue required a surprisingly long walk across the city, but it was worth it. A couple of drinks, some terrible bowling technique, and several rounds of friendly competition turned out to be exactly the kind of normal social interaction I had been missing for far too long.
Masked bowling bandits in London, ON
The following evening, I convinced Alexandre to come watch Dune, which was still playing in cinemas at the time. The theater was almost completely empty. Naturally, Alexandre and I immediately claimed the best seats directly in the center of the room while the few other visitors scattered themselves far apart across the giant theater. The reclining VIP seats were absurdly comfortable. It honestly felt like we had rented out a private cinema for ourselves. The movie itself was excellent too.
A Worthwhile Detour
Once the conference concluded, the original plan was to drive straight back to Chicoutimi. But we also wanted to take advantage of the rare opportunity to do some sightseeing. And what better destination than one of Canada’s most famous landmarks? Niagara Falls was relatively close after all. Just a “small detour” on the drive back toward Quebec.
We left early in the morning and headed directly toward the falls. Fortunately, the weather could not have been better. Sunny, warm, and clear despite it already being November. After spending so much time in northern Quebec, I think I had genuinely forgotten what a normal temperate autumn was supposed to feel like.
Welcome to the town of Niagara Falls — Canada’s Vegas
The town of Niagara Falls itself felt hilariously North American for lack of a better description. The entire place seemed built around tourism, entertainment, and consumerism. Bright attractions, themed restaurants, oversized signs, casinos, souvenir shops — a miniature Las Vegas wrapped around one of the world’s great natural wonders. Many places were closed for the off-season, but the atmosphere remained unmistakable.
Niagara Falls
Then we finally reached the river valley itself. A massive bridge stretched across the gorge toward the United States. I could practically smell the freedom blowing in from the south.
I have no words for this one…
Parking near the falls, however, was an entirely different battle. After circling around for a while, we finally managed to secure a spot with an aggressively strict timer attached to it. Taylor warned us that parking enforcement here apparently operated with military precision and that our truck would probably be towed into another dimension if we overstayed by even a few minutes.
Eventually, though, we reached the falls themselves. And honestly… they really were magnificent.
It’s crazy how much can change within a short time span
Standing there overlooking that immense wall of roaring water, it became difficult not to reflect on how absurd the previous months had been. Barely weeks earlier, I had been trapped inside a psychological pressure cooker, unable to think beyond the next deadline, the next administrative obstacle, the next potential disaster.
And now? Now I was standing at Niagara Falls with friends and colleagues beneath clear autumn skies, feeling hopeful about the future again. The entire London trip had started to feel less like a conference and more like a strangely well-earned vacation. A reward at the very end of survival.
Weathered and worn by time, but still facing the falls with quiet strength
Finally, it was time to return home. Home. Or at least the temporary home that Chicoutimi still remained for a little while longer.
Running on Fumes
Sometime in early December, I finally received my thesis back from review. It was time for the last round of revisions. There was just one problem. I was mentally finished. Completely disconnected from the entire process.
The intense months leading up to submission had drained whatever reserves of motivation I still possessed, and the quieter weeks afterward had extinguished the rest. The comments themselves were not disastrous. Numerous, yes, but manageable. Still, the moment I opened the document and saw another avalanche of red text and corrections splattered across the pages, I felt physically nauseous.
No more revision please…
I simply could not stand looking at that thesis anymore. Unfortunately, I had no choice. The corrections still needed to be completed before the winter break so the final version could be resubmitted on time. So once again, I dragged myself back into revision mode.
Some of the funniest comments involved criticisms of the French language itself. I honestly had no idea whether the French in the document was good, bad, or somewhere in between. I had translated large portions using software before handing them off to Lucie for corrections and improvements. So from my perspective, the reviewer was essentially criticizing my French supervisor’s French.
I found this hilarious.
One More Lockdown
Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I eventually slogged my way through the revisions and reached a satisfactory final version. What fascinated me in hindsight was how much more difficult this comparatively minor workload felt psychologically than the brutal months preceding it. Earlier in the year, I had survived near-impossible pressure through sheer momentum. Now that momentum was gone. I had simply run out of steam.
A snowy Monts-Valin north of Saguenay
After a final round of frustrating back-and-forth exchanges with the reviewer, the revised thesis was finally accepted. At that point, everything remaining was purely administrative. Technically speaking, I had graduated.
The entire process, however, had resurfaced enough lingering frustration that I instinctively decided to head over to the gym afterward to burn it out physically one last time. Except this time, the gym doors were locked. Another apology notice had been taped to the entrance announcing renewed lockdown restrictions. I just stood there cursing to myself. When was this shit ever going to end?
What Else Indeed…
Around that same time, Lucie invited all of us from her research group over to her place in Jonquière for Christmas dinner. Our colleague Nesrine had recently obtained both her Canadian driver’s license and her first car, so she offered to drive Alexandre and me there for the evening. Since she was still fairly inexperienced behind the wheel, Alexandre sat in the front seat to help navigate while I sat in the back.
I had prepared my staple Greek moussaka to bring along for dinner, though emotionally I was in an absolutely miserable mood. The renewed lockdown had somehow managed to feel like the perfect final insult from 2021. I had no holiday spirit left whatsoever. Honestly, I felt emotionally exhausted to the point of emptiness.
What else could this ridiculous year possibly throw at us?
As we approached the final intersection near Lucie’s place, I heard Alexandre calmly tell Nesrine to turn left. Without hesitation, the car immediately began rolling into the intersection. Now, as I have admitted multiple times throughout this blog series, I am hardly some superior driver myself. Yet even from the back seat, my instinct immediately made me glance forward toward oncoming traffic. And there was definitely traffic coming.
I reacted with the most bizarrely calm and almost amused tone imaginable, slowly muttering “Waaatch ooout…”, intentionally dragging out the words as though I were already watching the inevitable unfold in slow motion. A fraction of a second later, Alexandre’s eyes snapped forward and he shouted: “Attention!”… but it was too late.
A violent bang erupted through the cabin followed immediately by an immense jolt. And all I did was sigh. Not shock, nor fear… not even surprise. Just pure exhausted disbelief at the seemingly endless stream of absurdity that had become 2021.
Collision Day
Our vehicle spun sideways across the street and came to rest nearly perpendicular to the road. The windshield cracked. The airbags had exploded outward and were now plastered awkwardly against the faces of the two motionless figures sitting in front of me. My own back ached sharply from the force of the seatbelt, but otherwise I was completely fine. The seatbelt prevented me from smashing my head directly into the seat ahead.
What surprised me most, strangely enough, was the dust. The entire cabin was filled with it. I genuinely wondered where all this dust had suddenly come from — poor housekeeping? I later realized it was residue from the airbags deploying. Apparently that was normal. The more you know.
This car had seen better days
With a mixture of mild irritation and dark humor, I groaned: “Anyone else still alive?” A few seconds later, both Alexandre and Nesrine began moving and responding. Thankfully, neither of them appeared seriously injured. Nesrine had a bloodied lip or nose, while Alexandre described feeling hazy and disoriented afterward for several days. Looking back, we later suspected he may have suffered a mild concussion from the airbag impact, though he never actually got himself checked.
And then my priorities immediately shifted toward something far more important. The moussaka. I rushed to check whether it had survived the collision. Thankfully, it had. In fact, it tasted excellent later that evening. I would eventually joke that the secret ingredient had been a violent collision to properly mix the layers together.
Looking back, my reaction to the accident was genuinely strange. The adrenaline certainly kicked in hard, but instead of fear, I mostly felt detached amusement mixed with exhaustion. It was almost as though my brain had simply become too burnt out to process yet another disaster normally.
Eventually, emergency services arrived. The vehicles were moved aside, insurance information was exchanged, and Nesrine was offered transportation to the hospital as a precaution. And then, somehow, Alexandre and I continued onward to Lucie’s Christmas dinner. What a story we had to tell upon arrival.
From that point onward, December 24th unofficially became known between Alexandre and me as: Collision Day.
Diverging Paths
For the final weeks of the year, I hunkered down in my apartment. After the events of Collision Day, it genuinely felt as though that year, or perhaps that place itself, had it in for us. Me, Alexandre, or both. I didn’t feel like tempting fate any further and having a piano or an anvil dropped on my head while walking outside.
As 2021 came to a close, it brought with it the end of another chapter of my life. The end of my academic chapter. Not the finale I had envisioned when I left for Canada, but rather an unfortunate ending forced by unforeseen and extreme circumstances. Whatever the future held, 2022 was going to usher in major changes for both Alexandre and myself, that much was certain. This was where our shared path finally diverged for good.
My balcony overflowing with snow during peak winter
In January, Alexandre was making his final preparations to leave Canada and return to France. He planned to ship most of his furniture and belongings via container, which meant transporting everything to a shipping company in Montreal. I had little else to do during that period, so I offered to help. Not just with loading the rental vehicle, but by accompanying him on the long round-trip drives as well.
Thus began our final Canadian adventure together. The frozen winter road trips to and from Montreal.
A Slippery Slope
Alexandre had hoped to rent a decent-sized van, but the best vehicle the rental company could offer him at the time was a Dodge Durango SUV. A great car no doubt, but not nearly spacious enough to fit everything. We packed it as tightly as possible, though it quickly became obvious he would need to make the trip twice.
He didn’t really expect me to offer to tag along the first time, let alone the second. But as I told him, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. Besides, I could always use the change of scenery. So off we drove toward Montreal on a chilly winter morning. Endless conversation and music filled the hours. In many ways, the trip felt like a quiet homage to our summer road adventures through northern Quebec over a year earlier.
The Saguenay once again froze over completely
The roads remained relatively clear until we entered the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve. There, fresh snowstorms and frost had reclaimed sections of the highway. Alexandre occasionally remarked that parts of the road felt slippery, though he also commented on how stable the SUV handled despite the conditions. I barely noticed anything myself. It was the sort of subtle loss of traction only the driver paying close attention would detect. Then came the descent.
We were driving down a long, steeper stretch of highway when the car suddenly began slipping. Apparently, my guy had been going a little too fast for the icy conditions. Under normal circumstances it would have been fine, but this time the road had other ideas. I felt it immediately.
The vehicle started swerving violently. Alexandre instinctively tried to reduce speed, but that only made things worse. The SUV fishtailed across the highway — ninety degrees right, one eighty back left, then fully spinning around. Fortunately, there were no other cars nearby, giving us two entire lanes to skid across uncontested.
For what felt like the longest ten seconds of my life, we became passengers inside a giant metal hockey puck. Eventually, the vehicle came to a stop with its rear corner buried in a snowbank.
A semi-truck driver who had witnessed the entire spectacle pulled over to check if we were alright. We were fine. Just another absurd little joyride added to our ever-growing list of near-disasters. Even the SUV survived mostly unscathed. The bumper had partially popped loose, but we easily snapped it back into place. The soft snow and reduced speed from all the swerving had spared us from anything worse.
My Second Glimpse of Montreal
From that moment onward, Alexandre stuck rigidly to the speed limit and remained hyper-alert for any additional icy sections. Eventually, we reached Montreal and unloaded everything in good time. Afterward, we even took a short drive around parts of the city. Alexandre wanted to show me some of the nicer neighborhoods around Mount Royal Park.
Unfortunately, by then it was already dark outside, so I couldn’t see much beyond glowing city lights and silhouettes of buildings. Yet even that was enough to make me smile while fantasizing about potentially living in this vibrant city one day.
When we were finally ready to head back, I pulled out my phone to help navigate through Montreal traffic. The city’s road network was chaotic compared to anything we were used to. Odd intersections, aggressive drivers, questionable lane changes — the full metropolitan experience.
A dream of things to come…
The navigation app selected a southern route out of the city instead of the northern approach we had used earlier. We followed along while I remained glued to the screen. At some point, we began slowly climbing what felt like an endless elevated traffic ramp. I paid little attention at first until I suddenly realized we were now higher than many of the surrounding buildings. That was when I finally looked up and thought: Where the hell are we going? The high heavens?
An unfamiliar series of overhead electric signs displaying red crosses and green arrows stretched out above the lanes. Everything looked strange and surreal in the darkness. Then, slowly, the massive metal framework surrounding us finally became visible. We were crossing the Jacques Cartier Bridge over the Saint Laurent River.
I have to admit, that was one hell of a reveal. The rest of the drive back unfolded uneventfully.
Epilogue
Two days later, we were packing again. This time the rental company gave Alexandre a minivan instead of an SUV. Slightly more spacious, though noticeably less stable on winter roads. At least we managed to fit the remaining belongings inside.
No more dramatic slides this time around. After our previous incident, Alexandre no longer trusted the roads, the weather, or the car for that matter. He drove cautiously the entire way. Another long, tiring drive to Montreal followed. By then we were mostly recycling old conversation topics. The whole trip felt like the epilogue to our shared story.
Because of his more cautious driving pace, we ended up stuck behind a large truck for a significant portion of the highway. The constant spray of dirt and slush onto the windshield, combined with freezing temperatures, forced Alexandre to use most of the windshield washer fluid before we even reached Montreal.
This time we wasted no extra hours sightseeing after unloading. He was exhausted and still had another long drive to Montreal Airport waiting for him the following day.
One Last Near Miss
Before leaving Montreal, we desperately needed to refill the windshield washer fluid. However, Alexandre wanted to first escape the heavier city traffic before stopping. So we continued onward while I searched for nearby gas stations along the route out of town.
The washer fluid was nearly depleted, and the dirty highway conditions demanded constant use. At one point, Alexandre casually said: “Man… it’s getting pretty bad.” I lifted my eyes from the phone screen and was greeted by a completely opaque windshield covered in grime. Holy shit.
You could barely see anything anymore, and we were still barreling down the highway at roughly eighty kilometers per hour surrounded by traffic. Alexandre nervously laughed and claimed he could “still sort of see through the grains.”
Okay. This was getting ridiculous. We immediately took the next exit and slowly navigated our way toward the nearest service station. Another comical disaster narrowly avoided.
Parting Ways
The rest of the return trip became a bit of a grind. The weather worsened considerably and near Quebec City we drove straight into an ice storm that coated the roads with fresh black ice.
Conditions improved slightly once we re-entered the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve where colder temperatures meant more snow and less ice. Even so, Alexandre drove slowly and cautiously the entire remaining distance, despite knowing it meant arriving late at night and barely sleeping before his departure the next morning.
I still remember fragments of our final stop together at a convenience store where he bought a few remaining travel essentials. The poor guy looked completely exhausted. Mentally and physically drained. I embraced him farewell and wished him the best. Most importantly, I wished for him not to get himself killed during this final push.
Brothers from different mothers… fathers… and places… but still brothers
After everything we had endured together, I hoped we would meet again someday. I didn’t know when. I didn’t know where. But for the kind of friendship forged through mutual struggle and shared hardship, I was certain this would not be the last time we saw each other.
Rolling Credits
After Alexandre’s departure, things became even quieter for me.
Nothing more to do at the university. No one left to complain with about life in Saguenay. No immediate pressure, nor any concrete adventure waiting ahead. Just the quiet credits rolling at the end of a long, chaotic film.
If I were to choose a post-credit scene, it would probably be the day I finally received my MSc diploma from UQAC sometime in early February.
No graduation party with hats like after my Bachelor’s degree. No emotional celebration between friends, colleagues, and professors like when I graduated from my first Master’s in Copenhagen. Just a quiet piece of paper delivered remotely. This was the very piece of paper I had fought tooth and nail for throughout the previous year. Seemingly insignificant, yet absolutely crucial for what needed to come next.
I wasted no time. The moment my graduation documents arrived, I immediately submitted my application for a post-graduation work permit to the Canadian government. It was time to change course and begin the next major chapter of my life in this vast country.
The ultimate goal remained unchanged: to find stability.
To find a place I could finally, permanently call… home.
As usual, the moment winter ended, spring barely had a chance to exist. Within days, the snow disappeared and summer arrived in full force. A familiar Canadian transition that always felt abrupt, almost impatient.
I ended the previous post at a pivotal turning point. Not only was the season changing, but Alexandre and I had also made a major decision about our futures. Faced with financial uncertainty following the Laurentian crisis , compounded by a year of isolation, stalled progress, and mounting emotional exhaustion, we chose to downgrade our PhD programs to MSc degrees in hopes of escaping the academic system sooner.
It felt less like giving up and more like trying to reach shore before the sinking ship began to tilt.
May 2021
Our yearly salary contracts expired in May. With no progress in the Laurentian investigation, research funding remained frozen and inaccessible. Months had passed with little clarity, leaving our projects suspended in a strange limbo. Technically alive, yet unable to function in the way they had originally been designed.
Fortunately, Lucie stepped in once again. She assured us that she would renew our contracts and temporarily cover our salaries using her own research funds. It was a huge relief considering everything. At a time when nearly every part of the future felt unstable, knowing I could at least remain financially afloat removed one layer of pressure from an already overloaded mind.
American Robin. Free to fly away, while I felt more and more chained down
After deciding to shorten my studies and transition into a Master’s degree, Lucie gave me only one condition. I needed to complete and submit a scientific article before writing my thesis. I accepted immediately. At first, I assumed this request was simply a matter of respecting the work already completed. After all, abandoning nearly two years of research without producing something tangible would have felt wasteful.
Later, however, I realized there was a more practical reason behind it. This was Quebec, and in Quebec, Master’s theses are generally expected to be written in French. For someone with limited French like myself, this created an obvious problem. Fortunately, there was a loophole. If I submitted a manuscript to an English-language scientific journal beforehand, I could request permission to include that publication directly into my thesis in its original language.
In practice, this meant that most of my thesis could remain in English, while only selected sections would still require French. A bureaucratic bypass. A quiet workaround within a system I was not fully prepared to navigate otherwise. The downside was equally obvious. There was now an enormous amount of work ahead of me, and productivity would need to increase considerably.
The Insidious Nature of Greed
Parallel to everything unfolding academically, another storyline continued developing in the background. In the previous chapter, I mentioned how cryptocurrency investing had slowly evolved from a casual hobby into something more serious. By February 2021, it was no longer just a side interest. It had become a growing part of my daily focus.
After learning about the research funding crisis, my attention gradually drifted away from academia and toward markets. And honestly, it made perfect sense at the time. The supposedly stable structure of university life was beginning to unravel, while crypto appeared to be doing the exact opposite. Within weeks, my portfolio had grown beyond anything my academic salary could realistically provide.
Beneath the surface, something ugly was beginning to rise
I began imagining a not too distant future where I could buy my own place without loans. Perhaps not immediately in a large city, but somewhere stable. Somewhere permanent. At the beginning of the year, I had laid out a practical set of expectations. A twofold return would have been my minimal expectation. Fivefold would have been excellent and a resounding success. Tenfold was the absolute lottery dream.
By March and April, however, greed quietly began shifting the goalposts. I had already achieved roughly a fivefold return, yet satisfaction never arrived. Instead of stepping back, I leaned in further. I convinced myself that I could outplay the market by rotating between altcoins, chasing momentum, and attempting to ride different waves within the broader cycle as money flowed unpredictably from one project group to another.
Losing Perspective
At the time, it felt strategic. In reality, it was becoming dangerously close to gambling. The constant movement of money created tunnel vision. I became increasingly focused on short-term gains while losing sight of the bigger picture. The market was overheating, but I was too distracted by success to recognize it clearly.
My thinking became increasingly grandiose. Apartments. Houses. Multiple properties down the line. If I played things correctly, I told myself, I could become a millionaire by the end of the year. My tenfold lottery had just become another stepping stone towards an absurd hundredfold. With precognitive skills, or absolutely masterful timing, perhaps achievable. But I lacked both the supernatural skill and experience needed to pull off such a feat.
The markets had ballooned and were just about ready to collapse under their own weight
By late April, I was chasing one final move. One more doubling that would push my portfolio into six-figure territory. Meanwhile, warning signs were everywhere. Bitcoin had stalled. Momentum was fading. The market had stretched too far, too quickly. There was no fuel left.
Then came the correction.
The crash arrived in early May and hit hard. Within weeks, nearly all of my profits disappeared. I was mentally devastated. Even if recovery remained possible, I had missed the opportunity to secure something that briefly felt life-changing.
Still, there was one unexpected benefit. The loss pulled me away from obsession. Trading stopped dominating my attention, and for the first time in months, I redirected my focus fully back toward academic work.
Just in time. Because the months ahead would demand far more from me than I yet realized.
Administrative Fallout
Changing study programs was not simply a personal decision. It came with an important administrative reality that needed to be resolved. Once I received approval from my supervisors and the higher-ups within Metal Earth, I went to the UQAC administration office together with Alexandre to explain our situations and formally request the downgrade from PhD to MSc.
Technically, it was possible. The university allowed program changes of this kind, though they admitted they had never processed a case quite like ours before. Alexandre and I had a legitimate reason. The financial collapse tied to Laurentian had placed us in a uniquely unstable position, and shortening our studies seemed like a practical solution.
The dried out riverbed of the Saguenay around La Baie during low tide
There was, however, a complication in my case.
As a non-French foreign student, I occupied the most expensive tuition category available under a Master’s program. Canadian students and French-speaking international students paid relatively manageable yearly fees, usually somewhere between three and six thousand dollars. Non-French foreign students, however, were charged dramatically more. Up to four times as much.
An Unacceptable Proposal
When the administration explained the numbers to me, I nearly stopped listening halfway through.
They estimated I could be expected to pay roughly twenty-five thousand dollars retroactively to cover two years of Master’s tuition.
Waves of uncertainty stirred across the surface
I remember feeling completely blindsided. I tried to remain calm and explain that I had already been paying tuition during my PhD years. The problem, from their perspective, was that doctoral tuition had been significantly lower than Master’s tuition in my category. In other words, they wanted the difference.
Not the woman sitting across from me personally. She was simply doing her job. But the system itself suddenly felt predatory. It felt as though I was being penalized for trying to salvage an already collapsing situation.
The administrator consulted a colleague. Neither seemed entirely sure how such a request would be handled. Since UQAC functioned under the larger University of Quebec network, they explained that the case would need to be reviewed at a higher level. A decision would come later.
Whether I voiced it aloud or kept it to myself, I remember drawing a line internally. If they truly expected me to pay that amount, then I was finished. I would pack my things, leave Canada, and never look back. There was no version of reality where I would allow myself to be cornered into that kind of financial trap. Everybody loses.
The Weight of Uncertainty
Summer had barely begun. I was now expected to intensify work on a project whose future remained uncertain, dependent on decisions far outside my control. For the first time, I began to question whether the previous two years had been building toward anything meaningful at all.
The structure that had kept me mentally functional throughout lockdowns and isolation was beginning to crack. Stress no longer felt temporary or manageable. It became constant background noise. Some days I would lie in bed wondering what the point was of pushing myself so hard if the university could ultimately dismantle everything through bureaucracy alone.
Forward motion did not reduce the scale of what loomed above
Yet stopping was never truly an option.
There remained a narrow path forward, but it depended on variables entirely outside my control. The only thing I could influence was the amount of effort I put in. So I kept working. Reading, analyzing, interpreting and writing. Attempting to force momentum where certainty no longer existed.
During this period, I spent a great deal of time alone inside my own head. The internal dialogue became increasingly loud. Thoughts looped endlessly, rehearsing scenarios, arguments, frustrations. Sometimes that dialogue spilled outward. A whispered sentence while pacing the apartment. A frustrated remark spoken into an empty room. Small leaks of pressure escaping an already overloaded system.
Cracks Beneath the Surface
The summer weeks settled into repetition. Work, eat, sleep, repeat.
The only interruptions were quiet walks through Parc du Moulin or increasingly disciplined gym sessions that became one of the few stable routines left in my life. But even during those moments, my mind rarely rested. The uncertainty remained constant. It fed resentment toward the university, toward the situation, even toward the region itself. I had begun associating Saguenay not with place, but with frustration and rage.
The river continued, even when the landscape no longer felt open
What exhausted me most was not simply the workload. It was the internal strain.
The mental dialogue had become relentless. Analysis layered over frustration, anger layered over fear. It felt like carrying multiple competing voices at once, each trying to interpret what was happening and decide how to survive it.
And this is where things become difficult to explain.
Dividing the Weight
Long before Canada and Denmark, during a few particularly dark periods earlier in life, I had experienced something unusual during times of prolonged stress and uncertainty. I hesitate to frame it clinically because I have no qualifications to do so, nor do I believe it fit neatly into any diagnosis. But the closest description I can give is that under enough pressure, my mind seemed capable of dividing responsibility across different versions of myself.
Not separate identities in any literal sense, but psychological roles that emerged under pressure. Some more disciplined, colder, or emotionally detached. Some capable of functioning when the others became overwhelmed.
Over time, when life stabilized, those divisions faded and reintegrated naturally. But reintegration does not necessarily erase what was created.
The Cost of Endurance
The pressure had reached a level where I no longer believed one version of myself could carry everything alone. Whether this was a coping mechanism, an exaggerated stress response, or simply the mind improvising survival strategies, I cannot say. What I do know is that I leaned into it, consciously accepting the risks it came with.
I never truly understood what lasting effects something like this might carry. I suspect more than I realized. Even then, I felt that repeatedly dividing oneself psychologically was not something the mind was designed to do without consequence. These colder, more disciplined versions of myself existed for a reason. They had to be efficient, emotionally restrained, and focused on survival.
A divided internal state under sustained pressure
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether parts of those states remained behind longer than I realized. Whether each episode chipped away slightly at older parts of me — a softer trust, a greater empathy, a willingness to believe more easily in people or systems.
It is difficult to measure something so internal with certainty. Yet over the years, I have undeniably become more guarded, more individualistic, more calculating in how I navigate the world.
Perhaps that was growth. Or perhaps it was simply adaptation leaving permanent marks behind.
I allowed myself to compartmentalize. To separate fatigue from discipline, emotion from execution. When one part of me felt depleted, another stepped forward to continue the work.
It sounds strange even writing it now. Yet in my mind, it made perfect sense. The goal was simple: keep moving forward, no matter the cost.
When It Rains, It Pours
As if things were not going poorly enough, one morning I managed to chip one of my front teeth. It had already been repaired once years earlier after a rather unremarkable accident, and of course, this was the perfect time for it to become a problem again. When it rains, it pours.
Fixing it was not a major issue in itself, but by that point I had developed a mild anxiety whenever I needed to deal with any kind of service in Chicoutimi. Part of it came from the general sense that everything around me was steadily unraveling. The other part was the ever-present language barrier, which made even simple interactions feel unnecessarily complicated.
Fortunately, the person I spoke to on the phone knew enough English, so setting up the appointment was straightforward. That was about where the comfort ended.
A common garter snake moving through its world with purpose
Once I was in the chair, it became clear that the staff treating me did not speak any English at all. Being in a dentist’s chair is already an exercise in trust. Being in one while having no idea what the person working on your teeth is saying adds an entirely new layer of unease.
At some point, I decided the best strategy was to mentally check out. I imagined I had been abducted by aliens and was now lying on some examination table, surrounded by beings performing procedures I could not comprehend. The only reasonable hope was that they knew what they were doing and would return me in one piece.
At one point, the dentist said something. “Mords.” With various instruments occupying my mouth, I could only respond with a confused sound and a raised eyebrow. “Mords,” she repeated. I raised my hands slightly in surrender. She then mimicked a biting motion. Ah. Bite. Right. Understood.
By the time the procedure was over, I walked out of the clinic in a strange, detached haze. Not from any medication, but from the sheer absurdity of the experience. Somehow, despite everything, the job had been done properly.
The alien French ladies, it seemed, knew exactly what they were doing. A small, almost trivial victory in the grand scheme of things. But at that point, I took whatever wins I could get.
Controlled Overload
As the summer progressed, so too did my work. Slowly but surely, the article manuscript was beginning to take shape. The routine itself, however, was becoming increasingly robotic. Days blurred together into an endless cycle of reading, interpreting, writing, correcting, and repeating. Once the gyms were finally allowed to reopen earlier in the year, I immediately resumed physical exercise, and by summer I had settled into a steady routine of going two or three times a week.
The more overwhelming things became mentally, the harder I pushed myself physically. It was as if the two had become inseparably linked. The mounting stress, uncertainty, and frustration had to go somewhere, and the gym became one of the few places where effort still produced immediate, measurable results. As my mind drifted further into chaos, my body was reaching some of the best shape and strength of my life.
Deadlift and squat numbers climbed higher than ever before. StairMaster sessions became increasingly absurd. At some point, climbing the equivalent of the Empire State Building became routine, followed eventually by an ascent matching the height of the Petronas Towers in a single uninterrupted session. Looking back, it almost feels like I was trying to physically outrun my own mind.
Brief Escapes
There were also a few rare moments that briefly interrupted the mechanical rhythm of that summer. On a couple of occasions, Taylor and I went on short hiking trips within the Saguenay Fjord National Park. Being from Alberta, she was an avid hiker herself, and I had sorely missed that kind of activity since arriving in Chicoutimi. The destinations were not particularly far away, but without a car I was always dependent on others whenever I wanted to escape the city.
Those outings did not magically solve anything, but they helped reconnect me, if only briefly, with a world outside the shrinking cage of work and stress that my life had become. Standing atop those hills overlooking the fjord, even for a few hours, reminded me there was still a reality beyond routines, deadlines, bureaucracy, and psychological exhaustion.
Rivière Éternité in the Saguenay Fjord National Park
Then there was the music.
The endless soundtrack accompanying my long walks to the university, gym, or grocery store. Around that time I had discovered bands like Haken and Frost*, whose songs became inseparable from that chapter of my life. Certain tracks resonated with me in a strangely precise way. Lyrics from Repeat to Fade in particular seemed to echo the monotony and emotional attrition of those months: “There’s only one way out, repeat to fade.”
Even now, hearing those songs instantly transports me back to that time. They no longer feel like mere music, but like fragments of memory preserved in sound.
By the end of August, I had finally completed the discussion chapter — by far the hardest part of the article to write. The foundation was there. What remained now was the exhausting cycle of revisions, corrections, and somehow stitching the entire manuscript into a coherent final product.
Revision Warfare
As my primary supervisor, Lucie wasted absolutely no time descending upon my manuscript with an avalanche of red comments, corrections, suggestions, and tracked changes. Entire paragraphs were reshaped, reorganized, or rewritten, only for us to revisit them days later and partially undo previous changes in favor of new ones. At some point, we reached the amusing stage where Lucie was effectively correcting her own earlier corrections — one of the unavoidable quirks of academic writing, I suppose.
Despite the chaos of revisions, I appreciated the speed at which she worked. Time was rapidly becoming my greatest enemy.
Everything moved with mechanical urgency
My other two collaborators, including my secondary supervisor, remained almost entirely silent. In the emails I had emphasized repeatedly that I was aiming for an early October submission due to the uncertainty surrounding my degree transition and the looming risk of having my studies spill over into yet another semester.
Days passed. Then more days.
After a polite reminder email produced little response, Lucie and I eventually decided to continue as though our collaborators simply had no major comments to add. There was no time left to wait indefinitely for perfect coordination. At that stage, progress mattered more than perfection.
Yet despite reaching such an important milestone, it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay motivated. The university still had not responded regarding the tuition situation. The entire future of my studies remained suspended in uncertainty, and no amount of work could resolve that lingering question hanging over everything.
When It Rains, It Bureaucracies
When mentioning the administrative tangle Alexandre and I found ourselves in after requesting our study program changes, I forgot to mention another delightful little complication.
The CAQ.
Normally, when you move to Canada on a student visa, you simply deal with the federal study permit. Except in Quebec, of course. Quebec also requires its own separate document called the Québec Acceptance Certificate for studies. Because apparently one bureaucracy was not enough.
Unlike the federal study permit, which is generally tied to your status as a student, the CAQ was linked specifically to the type of program we were enrolled in. In our case: PhD. Once we requested the downgrade to MSc programs, both of us had to reapply for entirely new CAQs reflecting the change.
A rare exception in an otherwise rigid landscape
We submitted the requests early in the summer. Eventually, the documents arrived. Mine was correct. I promptly submitted it to UQAC and moved on. Alexandre, however, got obliterated by bureaucratic incompetence one final time. His new CAQ had been issued… for a PhD. Not an MSc. Meaning he could not officially complete the downgrade process. At that point, he was simply done.
The process had already taken months, his mental state had been deteriorating for a long time, and the idea of restarting yet another administrative battle was too much. He refused to reapply. He no longer cared about graduating. His only remaining goal was to finish the semester, complete the research work he still owed for the article, and leave Canada behind for good. And that was exactly what he did.
There is only so much bad luck, stress, and institutional absurdity a person can absorb before they finally throw their hands up and walk away.
The All Clear
Around early September, I finally received the university’s decision regarding my tuition situation.
They accepted the PhD tuition payments I had already made over the previous years and agreed to apply them toward my modified study path. I would only need to pay MSc tuition fees for the single semester I remained enrolled under the new program, along with any potential additional semesters if I failed to finish in time.
It was a massive victory. Everything had been hinging on this moment for months.
The instant I read the email, it felt as though some great bell had gone off inside my head. A deep reverberating sound cutting through months of uncertainty and exhaustion. The path ahead suddenly became clear.
I had one month left. One month to finish everything. And there was still an absurd amount of work remaining. But now there was no hesitation left in me. No more doubt. No more paralysis. It was time to shift into maximum gear.
My routine immediately intensified. I woke up, ate, and worked until afternoon. Ate again, then continued working into the evening before rushing to the gym, where I pushed myself harder than ever before. After returning home, I ate once more and continued working late into the night until I finally passed out from exhaustion.
Day after day. Harder and harder. As if sheer momentum alone could carry me across the finish line.
Final Stretch
By mid-September, after what must have been the seventh or eighth major revision, Lucie was finally satisfied with the article manuscript. At last, I had something resembling a final version.
Now I just needed to write an entire thesis in roughly two weeks. In French. Well… sort of.
In reality, I wrote everything in English first, then translated it using software before sending it to Lucie for language corrections. Honestly, that woman was an absolute godsend during this period. I genuinely do not think I could have finished all of this without her help.
The workload was insane. Sections had to be rewritten multiple times in completely different formats. The article itself in full scientific detail, then restructured portions for the thesis chapters, then condensed versions for abstracts, conclusions, summaries, and introductions. Looking back, this was probably the period where I unintentionally developed most of my writing skills.
Rewritten so many times it no longer resembled its original form
Conveniently enough, those skills would later become quite useful for things entirely unrelated to academia.
By the end of September, things were finally starting to look hopeful. I was going to make it. Then my secondary supervisor finally replied to an email I had sent over a month earlier. With corrections. At the absolute worst possible time.
I nearly lost my mind.
Lucie, thankfully, calmed me down quickly. The changes were manageable, she said. She would help me deal with them. I just needed to focus on finishing the thesis. The bell rang again in my mind. Double down. We could still do this. Where one version of me might have failed, many of us would succeed.
Pushing the Limits
By October, a single phrase had embedded itself into my mind and repeated endlessly like a mantra:
“I will not be stopped. I can not be stopped.”
One evening during leg day at the gym, I pushed myself especially hard during heavy sets. By the end of them, I was completely winded and slightly dizzy. My legs felt weak beneath me and I barely had the strength to continue.
I finished the session and headed toward the locker room.
The cleaning staff had just washed the floors, and the heavy perfumed smell of cleaning chemicals hit me immediately. Combined with the warmth of the room and my already exhausted state, it made me nauseous almost instantly. I wanted to get changed quickly and leave for fresh air.
Instead, my stomach insisted I make one stop first. I stepped into a stall, closed the door behind me, and just as I was about to sit down… Everything went black.
System Reboot
In a strange hazy dream, the loud ringing in my head slowly gave way to the distant sound of a fan spinning somewhere nearby.
I opened my eyes in confusion. The gym. Locker room floor. My legs awkwardly sticking out beneath the stall door must have looked like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy’s house landed on her.
Nothing stops the train
My composure returned surprisingly quickly. I stumbled out of the stall and lay down flat on a nearby bench, somewhere between amused and deeply embarrassed by the absurdity of the situation. Thankfully, nobody else had been there to witness it.
After resting for a while, the weakness slowly passed. The cool air outside helped even more. Looking things up while I walked, I was relieved to discover that passing out during or after extremely heavy leg training was apparently not uncommon. Intense exertion could redirect blood flow heavily into the legs, especially combined with poor breathing, overheating, exhaustion, and dehydration.
In other words: I had essentially overclocked myself. Yet somehow, even that ridiculous episode became part of the larger story of that period.
As I continued walking home through the cold autumn air with a smirk on my face, I repeated the phrase aloud this time, almost as if defying nature itself:
“I will NOT be stopped. I CANNOT be stopped.”
Nearing Deadlines
I was entering the final week before the Monday submission deadline. Working at maximum capacity.
The final revision of the article was nearly complete. My thesis was approaching the finish line as well. The plan was straightforward in theory: first submit the scientific article to a journal, then immediately submit the thesis to the university based on that article submission. Afterward, I would still have two months left to complete an additional project course required by the new MSc credit structure before finally addressing whatever thesis corrections came back from the reviewers near the end of the year.
If all went according to plan, I would somehow complete one of the most absurd academic loophole-jumping feats imaginable, all while navigating bureaucratic chaos, collapsing funding, lockdowns, and relentless psychological pressure. And somehow… it was actually working.
With each passing day that week, I could feel myself getting closer to the end. Yet paradoxically, I also kept working harder and longer with each passing day. The final push. Fatigue had temporarily lost its grip on me. I was a machine.
L’Îlet, La Baie. So close I could almost step onto it
Then came Thursday morning. Lucie called me. In her deceptively cheerful tone — the one she used whenever masking impending disaster — she informed me that we had “another small problem.”
Oh no. What was it this time?
Well, after speaking with administration, she had learned that all course credits needed to be officially completed before thesis submission. Our entire workaround plan had just collapsed. I could no longer finish the additional course afterward.
It felt like a hammer came crashing down onto everything. Not because it completely ruined the situation, but because it meant I would now have to extend everything into another semester. More wasted time, more money and more administrative purgatory. Deflated, I told Lucie that this was probably it then. No way around it anymore.
But she hesitated. “Not necessarily…” Then, cautiously but hopefully, she asked: “Do you think you could write a course report in three days over the weekend?” I answered instantly. “I’ll do it in two.”
At this point, it was obvious we were all-in.
One More Impossible Task
I was allowed to choose the report topic myself. Naturally, I picked something closely related to my research work while still being different enough to avoid simply recycling material.
I gathered several articles and a reference book, ignored everything non-essential, including proper meals, and started writing. And then something strange happened. The information simply began pouring out of me. Hours blurred together. Thought became momentum. Momentum became flow and by early evening, it was done.
An entire fifteen-page review report on porphyry mineralizing systems. Complete with figures, references, formatting and everything. Written in under a day. Even I struggled to fully process what I had just done.
I sent the report to Alexandre and asked if he could quickly proofread it for me. He got back to me surprisingly fast with only a handful of minor corrections. More amusingly, he openly admitted that he was shocked by how good it actually read considering the absurd timeframe.
Honestly, so was I. That night, I sent the report to Lucie for final review and submission.
Mounting Momentum
At this point, the accomplishments were becoming increasingly ridiculous.
A scientific article assembled within months under catastrophic conditions. A Master’s thesis completed in roughly two weeks. Now an entire course report researched and written in less than a day. I genuinely think I may have broken some kind of unofficial academic speed record somewhere along the line.
By Friday morning, I was overflowing with confidence. Despite everything that had happened since the collapse of our funding months earlier… despite the lockdowns, the isolation, the bureaucratic warfare, the mounting psychological strain and constant uncertainty… I had somehow managed to force my way through it all.
Against all odds, I was going to make it.
The Final Stretch
My report was accepted almost immediately. Credits were rushed through administration and officially granted in time. Final article and thesis submission was scheduled for Monday.
That weekend was probably the happiest I had been during my entire time in Chicoutimi. For the first time in what felt like forever, the pressure had lifted.
An epic sunset over the Saguenay, seen from my balcony for once
I shared a bottle of wine with Alexandre and we drank to survival, success, and whatever uncertain future waited for both of us afterward. My mind drifted through a surreal haze somewhere between euphoria and exhaustion. At times I would simply stare blankly into space while my thoughts struggled to adjust to the idea that there might not actually be more work waiting around the next corner.
My brain no longer understood the concept of rest.
Even during moments of calm, some part of me remained hyper-alert, continuously scanning for unfinished tasks, hidden complications, or incoming disasters. But by Monday morning, I had finally begun letting go. For the first time in months, I was almost ready to relax.
Then I opened my email. And everything exploded again.
Collision Course
The third collaborator on my paper had finally replied to the discussion manuscript I had originally sent back in August. And she was furious.
I will not name this person. The purpose of these stories is not to shame individuals, but simply to recount events as I experienced them.
The collaborator had previously worked in academia at Laurentian and had studied some of the same geological material I was working on. Our projects were never meant to directly overlap. Hers focused primarily on geochronology and age dating, while mine centered more around geological processes and interpretation. However, under Lucie’s guidance, my final manuscript had ended up including a small amount of age dating work as well.
And our ages did not perfectly agree.
The differences were relatively minor, but the uncertainty ranges also did not fully overlap. That was enough.
A minor discrepancy began to branch into something harder to contain
The collaborator launched into a full-scale email meltdown on the very day we were supposed to submit the article. Various higher-ups were copied into the exchange. Claims were made that this violated the original project scope agreement and that publication of my work could jeopardize her own unpublished research.
After everything I had endured… after months of stress, endless work, mental deterioration, institutional chaos, and near burnout… I now stood at the finish line watching someone threaten to destroy everything because they themselves had not yet finished publishing their own work.
I reread the email chain multiple times. The more it sunk in the more heat rushed through my body.
I was absolutely furious. Not frustrated. Not upset. Livid.
I was out for blood.
The Brink
I called Lucie immediately.
She had already responded diplomatically within the email chain and was trying to arrange a direct conversation with the collaborator. When we spoke, she explained that she still hadn’t managed to reach them. Likely because they were working in the field somewhere. Lucie promised she would continue trying. She also reassured me that even if necessary, we could delay submission by up to a week without compromising the overall outcome.
On the surface, I remained calm. Internally, I was a furnace.
All of the focus, pressure, compartmentalization and psychological intensity I had built over the previous months now redirected itself toward a single target. My mind immediately began evaluating scenarios, outcomes, and countermeasures.
The Raging Tempest
Lucie and I discussed options in case diplomacy failed.
Without going into unnecessary detail, we both understood that we ultimately held stronger cards than the collaborator did if things escalated further. The knives were out. But there was still hope that they would not need to be used. The following days were brutal psychologically.
The raging torrent of the Rivière du Moulin mirrored my state of mind at the time
At times, I managed to calm down and remind myself that the situation was temporarily out of my hands and that Lucie was doing everything possible to resolve it. Then reality would crash back into my thoughts again and reignite the fury instantly.
Everyone I spoke to during that period knew the situation and reacted with the same disbelief. Even if the collaborator had not intended actual malice, the timing of everything felt catastrophically destructive. And my mind responded accordingly.
The anger kept building. Pulse after pulse. Closer and closer to boiling over.
The Storm Breaks
Days later, Lucie finally called me back. She had managed to speak with the collaborator at length and the entire situation ultimately turned out to be one massive misunderstanding that had spiraled into an equally massive overreaction. One that had nearly destroyed everything I had worked toward.
In reality, even if there was some overlap between our work, the collaborator’s methodology was far more precise than my own. Their future publication would have no problem refining or overruling parts of my results later on. And honestly, I didn’t even care about this anymore. At that point, all I needed was to submit the article and escape the endless spiral my life in Saguenay had become.
Autumn light breaking through the trees deep in the Saguenay Fjord Park
The sheer amount of chaos that accumulated around this project as I approached completion was genuinely unbelievable. Yet somehow, through relentless effort, stubbornness, and Lucie’s unwavering support throughout the ordeal, we had made it through.
The article was submitted later that same day. Moments afterward, I submitted my Master’s thesis as well.
And then it was over. Slowly, the storm lost its fury. The ragged clouds finally began to part, revealing the sky beyond them once more. After nearly two years of chaos, pressure, isolation, uncertainty, and psychological exhaustion, the machine had somehow dragged itself across the finish line.
I sit here five years after the events of this story, revisiting them in their full form for the first time. This is not a year I ever enjoyed looking back on once I had survived it. Yet not every moment was terrible. There were small flashes of joy scattered between the difficult stretches. There was also a lot of music that I discovered during long winter walks, late nights, and periods where distraction became a form of survival. Music was always a reliable crutch.
Now, as I write this while listening to many of those same tracks, nostalgia quietly creeps in. Part of me almost misses those moments. At the same time, the rational side of my mind feels stunned by the audacity of wanting to relive a year that pushed me so close to the edge. Because 2021 was not simply difficult. It was the year that tested my resolve more than any other before or since.
Frozen Routine
The year began quietly. We were still trapped inside another strict lockdown rolling over from 2020. Apart from supermarkets and the restrictive university campus, nearly everything remained closed. Days moved slowly, stretched thin between routine and uncertainty.
A small space, a warm bed, and a quiet corner where old habits found their way back through a new musical instrument
At the time, I was still waiting on the final laboratory results for several rock samples. Something that should have taken weeks had already dragged on for nearly two months. Delays had become normal by then. Restricted work schedules and reduced access slowed nearly everything down. Once the results finally arrived, the next phase of my project began: data analysis. Hours disappeared into plotting graphs, comparing trends, searching for patterns and anomalies hidden inside datasets that I would later try to interpret.
Winter had settled fully over Saguenay by then. It had been there since November, and by my second year living in the region I understood that this was simply the rhythm of life in northern Quebec. Nearly half the year existed beneath a blanket of white, interrupted only by varying degrees of cold. Heavy storms would occasionally sweep through, dragging temperatures down toward -40°C, sometimes even lower when wind chill was particularly nasty. Most days, however, floated somewhere between -10 and -30.
A few months earlier, I had moved into a neighbouring apartment within the same house. Slightly smaller, but with a balcony and a direct view over the Saguenay. A small spatial trade-off for a permanent face-to-face with the fjord itself
By that point, Alexandre and I had adapted enough that -10 already felt like springtime. Anything warmer bordered on beach weather. We had integrated into the Canadian climate more than either of us probably expected.
Learning to Live With Winter
The most frustrating part of winter was not even the cold itself. It was the roads.
Chicoutimi sits within an ancient geological rift valley known as the Saguenay Graben. There is nearly a hundred-meter elevation difference between the lower ground near the Saguenay River where my apartment was located, and the upper plateau where the university, shops, and commercial areas sat.
When the roads froze solid beneath a glaze of ice, the steep streets became dangerous. Without fresh snow to provide grip, the pavement transformed into a slippery downhill slide. More than once, I chose to avoid the roads entirely. Instead, I would cut through deep snowbanks or take a longer path through Parc du Moulin. The route added time, but it also offered something the town itself often lacked during winter: silence.
Routine walks through the park sometimes meant forging my own path through untouched snow
Walking through the park meant escaping the repetitive landscape of parking lots, oversized roads, and rows of near-identical houses. It was quieter there, more natural, and easier to forget how repetitive lockdown life had become.
When Alexandre and I went shopping after work, we usually took the bus home. Nightfall came so early during winter that by the time errands were finished, darkness had already swallowed the streets. One particular evening remains especially memorable.
The Walmart Orogeny
A winter storm pushed through town that evening. Fine snow drifted across the asphalt in thin winding patterns, forming snaking shapes that looked almost like miniature sand dunes moving across the ground.
We had just finished a late-afternoon shopping trip at Walmart. Darkness had already settled outside. By that point in winter, snowbanks had grown enormous. While most of the surrounding landscape sat buried beneath at least half a meter of snow, the Walmart parking lot looked different.
Snowplows had spent months pushing snow into one corner of the lot, gradually building what resembled an artificial mountain range. The compressed snow hardened into towering icy ridges — five to ten meters high in places. Alexandre and I named it the Walmart Orogeny.
Where are we going, boys?
After leaving the store, we made our way toward the nearby bus stop, trying to shield ourselves from the freezing wind. The storm had emptied the streets. We seemed to be the only people outside. We waited there shivering while the bus ran late. Eventually, headlights emerged through the blowing snow.
An empty bus pulled up quickly, displaying the correct route number. The doors opened, and a young black guy with dreadlocks leaned toward us from the drivers seat with an unexpectedly cheerful grin. “So, where are we going, boys?” he asked in English, which itself was already shocking considering the limtied use of English in this part of the world. For a second I just stared at him, half laughing. “You tell us,” I replied. “You’re the bus driver.”
After some confused laughter and a bit of head scratching, he managed to get himself lost in some back streets due to various road closures. He was probably new on the job. It turned into one of the strangest bus rides I had experienced. Equal parts awkward, funny, and oddly memorable.
The Shattering
Winter carried on like that for weeks. Days blended together into a routine of snow, university work, grocery trips, and long stretches of quiet repetition. Then sometime near the end of January, Lucie called a meeting with the entire research group. Remote, of course. Face-to-face meetings between multiple people still felt discouraged, if not outright frowned upon.
Since the previous fall, a new student had joined our group. Taylor, from Edmonton, had come to complete her Master’s at UQAC despite speaking almost no French. We hadn’t even gotten the chance to meet her yet with all the restrictions and busy schedules. She was about to receive an intense introduction to Quebec academic life.
A clear winter day in the park, where snow and light softened the landscape into something quietly beautiful. A contrast to how the same season often felt from within
Lucie appeared on screen smiling as always. She had an energetic warmth that rarely seemed to disappear. Unfortunately, her smile did not always signal good news. This was one of those moments.
She wanted to tell us personally before the information spread further. A major financial crisis had surfaced at Laurentian University, triggering a large-scale investigation. The consequences extended far beyond one institution. Research budgets stalled and funding channels froze. Including those of our sponsors, Metal Earth…
In simple terms, our primary research funds had just been paralyzed. And just like that, the atmosphere changed. What had previously felt like a slow, frustrating winter suddenly became something heavier. The uncertainty was no longer abstract. The stability of the project itself no longer felt guaranteed.
Funding Frozen Indefinitely
We were all stunned.
Lucie tried to reassure us in whatever way she could. At least for now, our contracts were secure until May. PhD funding worked on a yearly basis, even though the projects themselves were designed to last four years. On paper, nothing had changed yet. But the truth was that she knew as little as we did.
Nobody could tell us how long the situation would last, whether funding would return, or if the projects would survive in their original form at all. So for the moment, we carried on as if nothing had happened. Not an easy thing to do when financial uncertainty hangs over your head like a storm cloud.
At the height of winter, the Saguenay lay still. Sealed beneath ice and silence
Without additional funding, further laboratory work and fieldwork were effectively off the table. If we wanted to continue, we would need to reshape our projects around what already existed using previous results, existing samples, and literature reviews to construct something workable from increasingly limited resources.
The Truth Behind Truth
It’s difficult to describe what a complete clusterfuck this situation had become.
Both Alexandre and I had entered fully funded four-year PhD projects with clearly defined goals, timelines, and expectations. Then the pandemic arrived a year earlier, throwing everything into disarray. Lockdowns slowed research, delayed lab access, complicated logistics, and gradually wore away at morale.
Despite all of that, we had managed to recover. By the end of 2020, we were finally back on track. Through stubbornness, efficiency, and a willingness to work relentlessly whenever opportunities appeared, we had clawed our way back into progress.
Lucie also played a major role, often shielding us from the more rigid and overly cautious layers of academic bureaucracy whenever our enthusiasm pushed beyond acceptable protocol. But now this. Something completely outside our control.
Nothing like this had happened before at a Canadian university, and somehow we had become tangled in the fallout through the financial lifeline supporting our projects.
An Odd Balancing of Scales
But as the universe taketh, so too it occasionally giveth.
Some posts ago, I mentioned how I had slowly become interested in cryptocurrency investing before leaving Denmark. What started around 2018 as casual curiosity had gradually evolved into a side hobby.
Over the years, I learned to tolerate the volatility. I followed traders on TradingView, watched technical analysts on YouTube, and slowly developed an understanding of how cyclical markets behaved. Crypto, despite its chaos, seemed to follow recognizable emotional rhythms — waves of optimism, collapse, accumulation, and eventual resurgence.
As temperatures eased, the first movement returned only where the current was strongest. The rest of the river still held in winter’s grip
For years, people talked about the elusive bull market phase of the four-year cycle. And by early 2021, it appeared to have arrived. The pandemic crash of 2020 had briefly crushed everything. Markets collapsed alongside global panic. But central banks responded by flooding economies with liquidity, printing money at historic levels to stabilize financial systems.
Everything rebounded. And risk assets, especially cryptocurrencies, surged. I had invested quite a lot by the end of 2020. Good timing, whether through foresight or luck. Suddenly, what had been a hobby was transforming into something far more serious.
Despite making several objectively terrible trades during early 2021, my portfolio grew rapidly. My crypto holdings began outpacing my actual academic income. For the first time, I wasn’t just saving money for a rainy day. I was making eyewatering profits. It felt unreal.
While uncertainty grew in university life, another parallel reality was unfolding quietly on my screen — one filled with charts, profits, optimism, and the dangerous illusion that perhaps financial freedom was not as far away as it once seemed.
Unravelling
While crypto helped keep my morale afloat, Alexandre was not doing well.
The lockdowns had hit him especially hard. Over time, his frustration with Chicoutimi, Quebec, and Canada itself became increasingly difficult to hide. The isolation weighed heavily on him. Now, with funding uncertainty threatening both his income and future, the pressure intensified. But academic stress was only part of the story.
Every step forward carried the risk of slipping further down… sometimes more literally than expected
He also had to live beside a deeply unstable neighbour. The guy regularly took drugs and experienced frequent mental breakdowns. Alexandre often complained about screaming late into the night, objects smashing against walls, and violent outbursts that made sleep nearly impossible. The landlord could do little because tenant protection laws complicated intervention. Then things escalated further.
At one point, the neighbour rammed a metal pipe, or something similar, directly through Alexandre’s wall. Police were called. Nothing meaningful happened. And so Alexandre remained trapped beside someone increasingly unpredictable.
We discussed moving him elsewhere, but realistically that would have to wait until summer. By then, though, the damage was already being done. He was exhausted. Mentally fried. And slowly approaching his limit.
The Decision to Leave
As April approached — still winter in Saguenay, despite what the calendar claimed — Alexandre had reached a turning point. He told me he was done. Fed up with the uncertainty, the isolation, with the absurdity of the place and his situation. He wanted to quit and move back to France.
The final piece pushing him toward that decision was family. Through video calls, he watched his parents age from afar. What had once felt temporary began to feel irreversible. Time suddenly seemed more fragile than before. He realized he no longer wanted to spend years feeling miserable in another country while missing precious time with people he loved. And honestly? I could not argue against it anymore.
The Saguenay river followed its natural course eastward, toward the sea… and for some, toward home
I understood. By then, I had also lived abroad for nearly seven years and had watched distance slowly reshape relationships with home and family. But I had committed to a different path. I had accepted long ago that I would keep moving until I found somewhere stable… somewhere that finally felt like home.
Alexandre already had that. He loved France and missed it more every day. He had something waiting for him. I didn’t.
Eventually, he told Lucie he wanted to downgrade his PhD into an MSc and finish within the year. His real goal, one he mostly kept between the two of us, was simple. He wanted to go home.
A Hollow Escape to Tadoussac
Sometime during what should have been spring, Alexandre, Pedro, and I decided to escape Chicoutimi for a day. We needed air. A change of scenery. Anything.
I can’t remember who suggested it first, but we drove east toward Tadoussac. Located where the Saguenay River meets the much larger St. Lawrence, Tadoussac is normally known for whale watching and summer tourism.
At times, tidal forces briefly reverse the Saguenay’s flow westward, against its natural course… against the sense of return
At that moment, we needed no excuse to go. We were simply happy to leave Chicoutimi behind for a few hours. That town had begun to feel heavy. Like a lead cloud permanently hanging overhead.
Driving through Saguenay Fjord National Park, I found myself unexpectedly struck by the scenery. The road wound between steep rocky cliffs and narrow valleys carved by ancient geological forces. For the first time, I fully appreciated the beauty of the landscape. And it frustrated me. Because my experience there had been so dominated by struggle that I had grown resentful toward the place itself. Yet the land remained beautiful regardless.
Tadoussac, however, felt lifeless. Late winter had stripped it of charm. The village sat somewhere between seasons. Neither winter nor spring. Dirty snow lingered in patches while mud surfaced through thawing ground. Everything seemed grey.
A lifeless Tadoussac. A few worn out colors contrasting the bleak late winter
The sky remained mostly overcast, allowing only faint pale sunlight to break through. Cold wind moved through empty streets. The occasional masked pedestrian only reinforced the atmosphere. A reminder, as if any of us needed one, of how everything had changed since the pandemic began. The place felt abandoned. And somehow perfectly aligned with the emotional tone of that year.
The Ice Begins to Melt
On the return trip, we crossed the Saguenay by ferry and stopped near La Baie. There, we walked onto the final remnants of ice still covering the river.
During peak winter, the Saguenay froze into a thick surface strong enough to support ice fishing camps and even vehicles. Locals built temporary communities directly on the frozen water. This was the first time we had seen it ourselves. I had been there for over a year, yet somehow remained a stranger to the place. I lived within the landscape, but never quite within the life of it.
The last remnants of ice fishing tents and equipment being packed up
This late in the season the ice was already deteriorating. People packed up tents and equipment as slush formed across the surface. It was surreal watching full-sized pickup trucks still driving over what looked increasingly unstable. In the pale yellow light of a sunset I watched winter losing its grip on the river. Reflecting on how I… would soon lose my only close friend there.
The thought of continuing alone, in a place that still felt alien due to the language barrier, especially under uncertain funding and growing instability, was not comforting. Things were changing. And I would have to change with them.
The Path Forward
Not long after Alexandre officially decided to leave the PhD program, I began seriously considering the same path. Not because I wanted to leave Canada or return to Europe, but because I wanted out of the academic system, and out of the depressive spiral that Chicoutimi had slowly become.
My goal had never truly been academia itself. From the moment I chose Canada over opportunities elsewhere, the objective had always been to build a future there. I needed a Canadian degree to qualify for a post-graduation work permit, but it did not need to be a PhD. What I really wanted was stability — a path into the mining industry, a career, and eventually a place that felt permanent. Alexandre was trying to return home. I was still searching for mine.
The sun sets over the slushy, unstable ground above the Saguenay
I sat down with Lucie for an honest conversation. She encouraged me not to rush my decision, but she also said something important. As valuable as research was, mental health mattered more.
I have to give her enormous credit here. Many supervisors might have pushed harder to keep students tied to projects out of pride, reputation, or convenience. She did the opposite. Lucie understood what the previous year had done to us. She had seen how hard we worked whenever opportunities existed. She had also lived through the same endless restrictions, bureaucracy, and funding collapse herself. Most of it was beyond her control.
Ferries sailing past each other across the Saguenay near Tadoussac
A few days later, I made my decision. I wanted out of the PhD program as well.
I would downgrade my study program, finish sooner, and leave the academic life with a second Masters degree rather than risk losing everything.
Approval came quickly. No resistance from supervisors. No objections from Metal Earth.
And so, two foreign PhD students prepared to do something that had apparently never happened before at that university. We asked to have our status changed from PhD students to Master’s students.
I returned to Chicoutimi and my student life fully revitalized after four weeks of field work in the north. Revitalized in the sense of normalcy within the bleak year of 2020. The harsh lockdowns of the previous months had drained my willpower, but that stretch in the field rekindled something. A sense of momentum. Of purpose.
On a late-summer’s day, somewhere in Chicoutimi
September had arrived and the academic year had begun. The university was slightly more open now. Masks and distancing were still in place, but at least there were people in the halls again. Some recreational spaces reopened too, including the gym I had signed up for. Slowly, it felt like we were climbing out of the lockdown haze.
Back to the grind
With the amount of material Alexandre and I brought back, we had months of work ahead. All those rock samples needed processing. Cutting them down, preparing them for thin sections, and eventually for geochemical analysis.
We both had prior lab experience and felt confident going in. The lab manager walked us through the equipment. A couple of fixed rock saws, a discussion about blades. Alexandre asked David, the lab manager, for the best blades since our samples were granitic, quartz-rich, and extremely hard.
Coming back from the field with rock samples of different sizes
David gave us the “student treatment.” He didn’t trust us with the sharper blades and handed us the smoother ones instead, telling us to just take more time. Not a great start.
After a single day it became obvious those “safe” blades weren’t going to cut it. Literally. We were standing there for hours, barely making progress. Eventually David gave in, and from the next day on we were allowed to use the proper blades.
That solved one problem, but another quickly appeared. Even with the right blades, the machines kept shutting down under strain. David explained the fix involved flipping a breaker switch in an electrical box, but according to protocol, he was supposed to call an electrician to do it.
For us, this was next level. Calling an electrician just to flip a switch? How did anything get done? It was the complete opposite of the fix-it-yourself mentality we grew up with in Europe.
Outlaws in the lab
The work settled into a routine. Daily sessions of rock cutting. Alexandre had far more to process than I did, seventeen buckets compared to my five, so I helped where I could.
The breaker issue quickly became unbearable. It would trip multiple times a day, and David wasn’t always around. Sometimes we’d be stuck waiting hours just to continue working. Then came the day he wasn’t there at all.
The bridge to nowhere across nothing in northern Chicoutimi
Within the first hour, everything shut down again. That was it. Alexandre had had enough. The electrical box wasn’t locked, just braced. He opened it, flipped the switch, and closed it back up. We were back in business. Outlaws at work. And we got a lot done that day. No more waiting. No more interruptions. Just progress.
By late afternoon we were exhausted but satisfied. Then I noticed something that instantly killed the mood. A small ocean had formed in the lab. All the water from the saws hadn’t been draining properly. It was pooling in the center of the room and slowly creeping toward David’s office.
We were screwed.
The Great Flood scandal
The design of the room made no sense. The lowest point was where the water pooled, while the drainage grates sat slightly higher. It was absurd.
So we grabbed the wide navy brooms and started pushing the water uphill toward the drains. It took over an hour. By the end, most of it was gone, but the floor was still wet and muddy. We were completely drained ourselves, so we decided to leave it overnight and come back early to finish.
The slabs I ended up with after cutting the rocks, prior to sending them off for thin sectioning
The next morning was a disaster. David was furious. He wanted to ban us from the lab. Alexandre had already taken the initial hit before I arrived, and Lucie was there trying to mediate. We explained the drainage issue and what had happened, but there was another problem. He had found out about the breaker.
Illegal. Catastrophic. Students flipping a switch. Endangering everyone. You get the idea.
Lucie was more understanding. She had grown up in France and shared our mindset. Later she even told us she once got scolded for changing a light bulb herself instead of calling an electrician. Canada… what the hell?
Yes, it sounds ranty. But that’s exactly how it felt. The whole situation was absurd. We were put in time-out. Not for long though.
Once David ran the saws himself, he quickly realized the drains were clogged. That was the real cause of the flooding. Not us. We were eventually pardoned, with one condition: stay away from the electrical box.
Fair enough. Luckily, thanks to our “outlaw day,” we could afford to slow things down.
Better days
By October we were finally done cutting. The samples were sent off, and the next phase began. This was my favorite part.
Thin sections opened up an entirely new world. What looked simple in hand sample became incredibly complex under the microscope. Beyond quartz, feldspar, and amphibole, there were all these accessory minerals. Titanite, apatite, sulfides, magnetite, zircon and more. Zircon was of particular interest for us. Its resistance to alteration makes it ideal for dating. Tiny crystals carrying time itself. You could get a surprisingly accurate idea of when the host rock formed.
Microscopic image of one of my thin sections in natural light, with a colorful array of amphiboles and biotite in a dirty white sea of feldspar
I was equally interested in apatite and sulfides. Some for thermometry and barometry calculations, others just out of curiosity. This was the kind of research I loved. Digging into complex methods, trying to reconstruct pressure, temperature, even oxygen fugacity of ancient magmatic systems. From that, you could infer things like the potential of a magma to transport gold.
It was precise and logical, yet somehow felt like science fiction.
Remote science in a strange year
Restrictions still made things complicated. For laser ablation work, we used the LA-ICP-MS at Laurentian University in Sudbury. Their setup was more powerful than what we had at UQAC. The lab manager, Jeff, was fantastic. After a short introduction, he trusted me to book and operate the system remotely. It was a pleasure.
Another thin section image, under polarized light this time showcasing the vivid colors quartz and zonation in feldspar
However, not everyone was that flexible. The microprobe lab in Quebec City refused remote access entirely, despite my prior experience from the University of Copenhagen. In doing all of the work themselves, their schedule was very limited and it took a very long time for me to get my results. Everyone was adapting differently to the new world of restrictions.
Still, those final months of 2020 were good for me.
Another thin section, this time under cathodoluminescence, highlighting a bunch of apatite crystals in a fluorescent green
“Laser time” became something I genuinely looked forward to. I would spend entire days in Lucie’s lab, remotely running analyses on my samples in Sudbury. One of my favorite tools was the EDS system. Quick, on-the-spot chemical readings. Not as precise as the laser, but perfect for identifying minerals and satisfying curiosity.
I’ll never forget December 2020. That’s when I identified a rare fluoro-carbonate mineral as parisite. High in rare earth elements. My first and only truly exotic find using EDS. Another memorable moment was spotting thorite inclusions inside zircon grains that looked completely destroyed from within. A perfect example of metamictisation. Radiation slowly breaking down the crystal structure over time.
Magnetite (in the center) and three zircons in preparation for EDS analysis. The top and rightmost zircons retained their zonation, while the bottom-left one has a destroyed core, replaced with bright white inclusions of thorite
These were my small discoveries. Quiet victories in a microscopy lab, with avant-garde progressive metal playing in the background. Some of my best memories from UQAC.
A quiet, uneasy ending
But December also brought a tightening of restrictions again. A new COVID variant, renewed panic, and Quebec shut things down once more. Non-essential services closed. The gym, which had kept me active and sane, was gone again. A curfew was introduced. Christmas gatherings were effectively cancelled.
After nearly a year of this, we had enough. Restrictions or not, Alexandre, Pedro, and I decided to meet for a turkey dinner at Pedro’s place.
Christmas turkey dinner at Pedro’s
I remember how dead the streets were that evening. Even by Chicoutimi standards, it felt eerie. Snow-covered, silent. Curtains drawn everywhere, as if people were hiding how many guests they had inside. It felt like everyone was quietly rebelling, but also watching over their shoulder.
The idea that you had to hide a small gathering from the authorities was… surreal. Still, we had our evening. We caught up. We laughed. For a moment, things felt normal again. 2020 was coming to an end, and we allowed ourselves a bit of hope.
Surely 2021 would be better. How much worse could it get?
After a rocky first week of geology field work in Chibougamau, pun intended, our fortunes were about to improve. You could say we’d hit rock bottom… Okay, I’m pushing it now with the dad jokes. Just to recap some of our mishaps: we lost one of our GPS devices somewhere in the forest, we lost one of the truck’s side mirrors, and we got it stuck in deep mud, requiring the other team to come pull it out. At least we were being productive and getting some rock samples. Well, at least Alexandre was. I couldn’t reach one of my primary targets due to the thick forest and overgrown roads.
But field work has a funny way of balancing things out. Just when it feels like the forest is determined to humble you, something finally goes right.
Heavy Duty Sampling
As we got more accustomed to the terrain and our new sampling routine, we were becoming increasingly efficient with our time. Regular geological field sampling usually involves finding a good representative outcrop and hammering off a few fresh pieces of rock from it.
Sampling rocks using various tools
In the Canadian Shield, however, the outcrops are most often flattened, rounded, and polished by ancient glacial activity. That makes it highly difficult to hammer any decent rock pieces out of them. Even when using a chisel, we would usually end up with thin, superficial weathered chips that would yield poor geochemical results. Hardly representative of the magmas that had crystallized billions of years ago.
In Canada, however, we had an alternative method of sampling, something I had never seen, nor needed to use during field work in Europe: a rock saw. Or a concrete saw, as some call it. Essentially a hand-held motorized saw fitted with a large diamond cutting blade. A chainsaw for outcrops, if you will.
The rock saw and water pump backpack tank we used
This thing… was impressive. It was big, heavy, loud, and an absolute pain on the lower back to use. But boy, could it sample. Instead of hammering on a flat outcrop for half an hour only to collect a few useless weathered fragments, we could cut thick slabs of fresh, unaltered rock straight from the interior of the outcrop. As an added bonus, the vibration and exhaust during cutting kept most of the bugs away. Suffice to say, it quickly became our preferred method of sampling.
The rock saw did have two major downsides. It required a nearby water source to fill the cooling pump tank, and it was quite cumbersome to carry on longer hikes deep into the dense forest. However, for the easier-to-reach outcrops, it was a no-brainer. It saved us an incredible amount of time.
The Needle in a Haystack
One day, after becoming quite efficient with our rock saw, we managed to finish the day’s sampling targets surprisingly early. With plenty of spare time on our hands, Alexandre and I decided to head back to the forest where our GPS had gone missing during the first week. Maybe, just maybe, we could find it somewhere near the road.
Cattails swaying where the boreal meets the bog
We only had an approximate idea of the location since there were no GPS tracks to follow back. Alexandre parked the truck in roughly the same area where we thought we had stopped before. We headed into the forest and began searching. Pretty quickly, though, it became clear that this was a hopeless task.
The forest all looked the same. Thick bushes and tangled underbrush everywhere. The ground covered in a soft carpet of leaves, moss, and rotting branches. We wandered around for five or ten minutes before Alexandre finally gave up. It was the very definition of a needle-in-a-haystack situation. Defeated, we slowly wandered back toward the truck, still half-heartedly scanning the ground as we walked.
As I neared the road and slowly put one foot in front of the other, something caught my eye.
A faint flash of bright orange beneath the leaves, right where I was about to step.
THE GPS.
Against all odds, almost as if guided there by sheer luck, my foot nearly landed right on top of it. My eyes lit up. My jaw dropped. I bent down, grabbed it, and with a triumphant battle cry echoing through the forest, raised it high above my head like a long-lost trophy. We couldn’t believe it.
Fireweed in the endless green
It was a moment of pure disbelief, followed by sheer amazement and slightly manic laughter. It felt like a sign. Fortune had clearly turned in our favor.
“Pluton de France” the Second Attempt
After that stroke of luck, I decided to take another shot at Pluton de France on my project’s next field day. Since we had failed to reach the outlined polygon on my map by car the previous time, I wanted to attempt it on foot instead. This was going to be a bold undertaking, as the bush in this particular part of the Abitibi looked extremely dense.
Alexandre wasn’t too keen on the idea of a long, arduous hike through the boreal jungle. Fortunately, Adrian happened to be free that day and was willing to join me. So for one day I swapped partners and headed back northeast toward the elusive intrusive rocks somewhere near the edge of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt.
We drove as far as we could, essentially until we reached one of the old roads that had once led toward my target area. The road, however, had long since been reclaimed by nature. It was completely overgrown by dense alder thickets.
Right this way, sir… your target awaits just a couple of kilometers ahead. Enjoy your refreshing swim through the green foliage. Don’t forget your goggles… and a prayer
These alders seemed to thrive anywhere the forest had once been disturbed. Where logging had opened the canopy, they quickly took over the landscape. They grew like a strange hybrid between bushes and small trees—clusters of multiple thin trunks sprouting from a single base in the ground. Their branches were flexible, tightly packed, and tangled together into nearly impenetrable walls of vegetation.
Ironically, pushing through these alder thickets was often far more difficult than walking through the untouched forest. At least beneath the mature spruce and pine trees there was space to move. In the alder patches, however, every step became a battle against springy branches and dense foliage that refused to let you pass.
Swimming in Trees
We powered through as best we could, large tool-filled backpacks and all. This was easily the worst forest trekking of the entire field trip. We were legitimately fighting the forest inch by inch. Roots constantly tripped us up, while dense branches grabbed at our clothes and gear. This was the moment when I coined the phrase “swimming in trees.” The large sledgehammer sticking out of my backpack kept snagging on branches every few steps, which certainly didn’t help.
At least the trees provided shade from the mid-August sun
Still… we pushed on. Slowly. Extremely slowly. Fighting for every meter through an endless wall of dense bush. After a couple of hours of this, we finally reached the Pluton de France polygon according to the geological map.
And of course, there wasn’t an outcrop in sight. However, further ahead we noticed what looked like a small rise in the terrain. A hill meant there was a chance that bedrock might be exposed beneath the soil. So we pushed on. Eventually we reached a small incline and decided to start digging. We removed thick layers of leaves, branches, and soil until we struck rock. Finally!
The problem was that it looked… strange. Dark, heavily weathered, and altered by the soil to the point that I couldn’t immediately identify it. So we kept digging, clearing away more of the surface. When we finally managed to hammer off a few pieces, the truth became obvious.
A proud Adrien after we found and unearthed that first outcrop
It wasn’t what I was looking for at all. Not even close to what the map had suggested.
Pluton de Lies
Blasted inaccurate map, I thought. Still, we were close to the edge of the polygon, so I took a sample anyway and suggested we push a little farther toward the nearby lake that covered much of the mapped area.
Somewhere around that time another thought crossed my mind: this would be an absolutely terrible place to have a wildlife encounter. If we ran into a bear here, there would be no easy way to escape the sea of trees surrounding us. Then again, perhaps a bear would be smart enough to avoid pushing through such thick forest. Unlike us.
Some time later, deeper inside the target area, we finally found a small clearing near the top of the hill. To my relief there were even a couple of outcrops exposed there. Of course, they were perfectly flat and glacially polished—impossible to sample properly without the rock saw.
Hammering rock, only to find disappointment
And worse still… It was once again the wrong rock type. Dark, heavily altered basalt everywhere instead of the light-colored granitoids I had been hoping to find. What a disappointment.
More than anything, I was frustrated with the map itself. These geological maps, after all, are produced by the Québec Ministry during annual field campaigns. But even those teams can only cover so much ground, and sometimes the boundaries of geological units end up being… educated guesses. I marked the location on the map to note the discrepancy and kept the token sample from the previous location as reference.
Lucie later appreciated the effort, but she still had me discard the sample since it wasn’t useful for the project. All that effort. All that struggle through the forest. For nothing. But that’s field work. You win some. You lose some.
Roaming the Chibougamau Region
We continued our sampling campaign well into August. Alexandre’s project took us all around the Chibougamau area—from the high cliffs northeast of the lake to the far western stretches near Oujé-Bougoumou.
And once more we were close to a temporarily restricted area
On the western side of the Chibougamau pluton, we stumbled across several piles of trash near Oujé-Bougoumou. A sad and unfortunate eyesore in an otherwise vast and pristine wilderness. We also came across numerous animal tracks, mostly large canine ones. Likely local dogs, though wolves were certainly not out of the question.
Maybe someone should invest in a trash bin, or ten…
The only wildlife we consistently encountered, however, were the grouse, or as I liked to call them, forest chickens. We had heard plenty of stories about them beforehand, usually involving their questionable survival instincts. Instead of fleeing from danger, these birds, especially protective mothers, would often charge directly at the perceived threat in a rather unconvincing display of bravery. Not the best strategy when facing modern human inventions like trucks.
A mother grouse coming out onto the road to escort us away from her chicks
On foot, however, they were simply amusing. They would follow us around at a cautious distance, clucking and posturing, as if politely insisting that we leave their territory.
In the northeast, on the other hand, we encountered more “exciting” forest roads for our battle-hardened truck. At one point, a deep natural ditch carved out by a small creek abruptly killed the engine as the truck dropped into it—perfectly synchronized with the beat drop of the music playing in the car. No lasting damage, but plenty of dramatic effect.
The southern Wetlands
Whenever we shifted focus back to my project, we found ourselves driving farther and farther away from Chibougamau.
Only the best road conditions for us
One day took us deep south toward a small intrusion known as the Hazeur pluton. The landscape there transitioned from dense forest to open wetlands. At one point, the water had quite literally claimed part of the road. Alexandre, understandably, was having flashbacks to our previous encounter with waterlogged terrain that had left us completely stuck. This time, however, there was no mud, just firm gravel beneath the shallow water. We proceeded cautiously and made it through without issue.
The small Hazer pluton location. Still in doubt whether outcrop or boulder.
At the end of the road, a small outcrop, or possibly just a very large boulder, awaited us. The quiet swamp surrounded us on all sides. Far removed from any main road, it felt like prime territory for wildlife encounters. We spotted a few birds, including a large and majestic sandhill crane. In the distance, the eerie calls of loons echoed across the wetlands, occasionally interrupted by the faint howling of wolves.
A true call of the wild.
Zoomed in shot of a Sandhill Crane striding through tall grass in the Canadian wilderness
Despite that, there was no real sense of danger. We were working right next to the truck, heavy tools within reach. If anything, I felt completely at peace. There were barely any bugs, the scenery was wide open and beautiful, and for a moment it felt like we had stepped into a nature documentary.
Lesser Yellowlegs foraging stealthily in a marshy reed bed, blending perfectly with the surrounding cattails and reflections
To top it all off, I managed to collect several excellent sample blocks for my study. Easily one of the best locations we visited during the trip.
Blood for Samples
Another day took us west, past Chapais, toward a small syenite intrusion known as the Dolodau Stock. There, I finally managed to collect some of the best samples for my project. But the bounty came at a cost. Blood. We had wandered deep into black fly territory, and they were out in the millions. We were the main course.
Coming across blueberry bushes everywhere we went
Between hammering rocks and repeatedly drenching ourselves in bug spray, we uncovered one of the most fascinating outcrops of the entire campaign: a carbonatite unit, quite a rare igneous rock type, crosscut by sulfur-rich syenite veins.
Shiny disseminated pyrite cubes sparkled within the syenite. Grey magnetite blobs and black flaky micas stood out against the white carbonatite. Thick, blocky calcite veins cut across the outcrop like frozen rivers of stone. It was a geological treasure trove.
The large carbonatite unit, riddled with phlogopite (black mica) and magnetite
Throughout our field days, we often stumbled upon vast patches of wild blueberry bushes. Whenever we finished early, we would start gathering and snacking. Before long, we had collected an impressive haul, which we eventually brought back to base to dry and preserve.
The Final Days
The August days slipped by quickly, and our field campaign began drawing to a close. A few moments from that final week still stand out.
Prepping for a stroll along the northern railway
One of them involved walking along a set of railway tracks to reach a cliffside outcrop. It was a surprisingly calm day. No bushwhacking, no brutal driving, just a relaxed walk and straightforward sampling.
On another day, possibly our last, we aimed to reach one final target within the Chibougamau pluton. It was an easily accessible outcrop near a side road running parallel to the main road. However, the only connecting route required a long detour. Naturally, we decided to make things more interesting.
Killdeer standing alert and photogenic in short grass
After finishing our work, and soaking our boots while crossing flooded ground, I suggested taking a shortcut based on the map. Alexandre hesitated, but eventually gave in. I think we were both feeling a bit nostalgic about pushing our luck one last time. A sharp turn later, we found ourselves driving through a wet, sandy stretch just before a ramp leading up to the main road.
And… the truck got stuck. Again. This time, however, we were ready.
I jumped out to assess the situation while Alexandre quickly wedged traction aids under the tires. On my signal, he floored it, and the truck launched itself free, gliding across the remaining sand with ease. We had clearly graduated from the school of getting stuck in the mud.
The vast empty straight roads of the north
A Thunderous Roar Downstairs
Back at base, we needed to dry our soaked boots for the next day. There was a designated drying room, but it wasn’t quite enough for boots that wet. So naturally, we came up with a brilliant idea:
We put them in the dryer. The sound was… apocalyptic.
Meanwhile our blueberry bounty was drying in the kitchen upstairs
The machine roared and thundered as it violently tossed the heavy boots around inside, like drums announcing the end of the world. We closed every door we could, but the noise still echoed through the building like a distant storm. Miraculously, the dryer survived. And so did our boots.
The End of a Successful Field Campaign
On one of the final evenings, the sky was perfectly clear. No moon, no clouds. I suggested we drive out of town and stop at one of the abandoned quarries for some stargazing. After some hesitation, Nesrine and Adrian agreed. It was well worth it.
Above us stretched a breathtaking night sky. The Milky Way cut across the darkness, its bright star clusters contrasted by the deep shadow of the dark rift. As we stood there in silence, we once again heard wolves howling in the distance. It felt like the perfect ending to our time in the wilderness.
Under a crystal in northern Canadian wilderness
After 28 days of field work, we had collected 24 buckets of rock samples. Despite the rough start, we had successfully completed our summer campaign during one of the strangest years in recent history, 2020. A year when the world seemed to shut down. When uncertainty, isolation, and restrictions became part of everyday life.
And yet, out there in the wilds of northern Canada, things felt… different. For a while, we were free.
Free to work. Free to explore. Free to live something that felt almost normal again.
It wasn’t always easy. There were frustrations, setbacks, and long exhausting days. But there was also laughter, discovery, and moments that stayed with us. Moments that Alexandre and I still find ourselves retelling years later. And just like that, it was time to head back to Chicoutimi.
Messy beards, messy hairs and a truckload of samples after an adventurous month in the field
Back to our strangely constrained lives as PhD students in a world that hadn’t quite opened up again.
August, 2020. After months of solitude during the first COVID lockdown, our research team was finally somewhat liberated and on the move again. Our supervisor, Lucie, had secured us a three-week fieldwork campaign in northern Quebec. Two trucks. Two teams of two. Adrien and Nesrine, our group’s Master’s students. Alexandre and I, the PhD students. We set off north from Chicoutimi toward Chibougamau, the road stretching deeper and deeper into the boreal wilderness.
A Proper North American Truck
Even though I had recently obtained my Quebec driver’s license, I was still chickening out of driving. I was more than happy to let Alexandre take the wheel, especially since he seemed to prefer it anyway. Win-win.
The university had provided us with a pair of Ford F-150s. It was the largest truck either of us had been in, let alone driven thus far. Its size and power was clearly impressive. Sitting high above the road gave a commanding view, with very spacious and comfortable seating and engines that had more than enough muscle for the long northern highways. However, for the kind of forest roads and tight access tracks we would soon be navigating, the sheer size of the trucks would prove highly inconvenient.
The long drive north passed easily enough. Alexandre and I filled the hours with endless conversations, comparing cars, sharing relief about finally escaping our pandemic-induced confinement, and making plans for the weeks ahead.
A thick calcite vein cutting across an outcrop at Dolodau
We also had an unusual passenger with us. Alexandre had decided to bring along his cat, Turalyon. Leaving him alone in Chicoutimi for four weeks didn’t feel right, so Alexandre arranged for the cat to stay at a small animal shelter in Chibougamau while we were working in the field. Every few days, after returning from long days of sampling and driving through the wilderness, we would stop by to visit him.
Turalyon was not particularly fond of long car rides. Alexandre had to pull over a few times to clean up some cat puke along the way. Just another fun little bonus activity during our drive north.
Music also became a major part of the journey. Both of us were enthusiastic listeners with overlapping tastes, so the truck stereo quickly turned into a rotating playlist of band recommendations and rediscoveries.
The kilometres rolled by as the forests thickened and the towns grew fewer.
A Mining Town in the Boreal North
Chibougamau is the largest town in northern Quebec’s administrative region—an immense, sparsely populated territory that covers much of the province’s interior. Surrounded by endless boreal forest and lakes, the town sits within the traditional lands of the Cree Nation.
The region first drew attention during the 19th century when prospectors began exploring its mineral potential. But it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that Chibougamau truly emerged as a mining center, after significant copper and gold deposits were discovered in the surrounding area.
Watch out for that first step… it’s a doozey
Today the town remains an important hub for exploration and mining operations across northern Quebec. Geological surveys, drilling campaigns, and mineral development projects continue to bring researchers, geologists, and industry workers through the region. Companies such as SOQUEM maintain a strong presence, supporting exploration efforts across the vast northern landscape.
For a group of geology students heading into the field, it was very much the right place to be.
Barracks Living
Once in Chibougamau, we settled into our temporary accommodation at a SOQUEM work barracks on the edge of town.
As long as I got my Salmon Jerky with me, I’m good to go
It was certainly no Hotel Manoir D’Auteuil—a luxurious stay we had enjoyed during a conference trip the year before—but it provided everything we needed to get through the campaign. Well… almost everything.
The tap water, for instance. It smelled… swampy. And it tasted just as questionable. As we soon learned, the facility wasn’t connected to the city’s main water system. The barracks relied on its own untreated water source, which explained the unusual flavour.
Alexandre and I quickly made the executive decision to stick to bottled water. Adrien, on the other hand, decided to wing it. His stomach protested the decision rather violently. After several days of intense bathroom visits, a valuable fieldwork lesson had been learned.
Organizing Ourselves
Lucie would only be joining us during the second week of the campaign. Until then, we were largely responsible for organizing and coordinating the work ourselves. Without a clearly defined leadership structure, the early days required a bit of improvisation. Lucie had informally suggested that Adrien take on a coordinating role, mainly because he had already spent a year working in Quebec and was somewhat familiar with local field protocols. However, it wasn’t presented as a strict hierarchy, but more of a practical suggestion.
Our improvised office in Chibougamau
In practice, this meant that everyone approached the work with slightly different ideas about how things should run. Adrien tended to lean toward established field routines and procedures. For example, he suggested that we follow a schedule similar to one he had used during a previous placement with the Ministry, where Sundays were reserved as rest days. Alexandre and I looked at the situation a bit differently.
Our campaign was limited to just four weeks, and we had a substantial amount of work to complete. From our perspective, it made more sense to remain flexible and take advantage of good weather windows whenever possible. Rather than fixing a weekly day off, we preferred to let the weather dictate our rest days. As it turned out, that approach worked out quite well.
We ended up working straight through several Sundays when the weather was ideal. Later, when a particularly miserable stretch of rain rolled through during the week, we simply stayed back at the barracks and took that opportunity to rest while the others pushed through damp conditions with limited progress.
Time Versus Caution
Another topic that sparked some discussion was the question of daily working hours. Adrien suggested we follow a strict afternoon cut-off time. No matter what we were doing in the field, we should be heading back toward the barracks by around 4 p.m.
Gilman lake on the east side of Chibougamau
Alexandre and I once again leaned toward a more flexible approach. In August, daylight in northern Quebec stretches well into the evening, and it felt almost wasteful to leave productive field sites while the sun was still high in the sky. Our instinct was to maximize our time outdoors whenever conditions allowed.
At the same time, Adrien’s caution wasn’t without merit. Fieldwork in remote terrain carries its own set of risks. If something were to go wrong—vehicle trouble on a forest road (foreshadowing), an injury on an outcrop, or getting temporarily stuck somewhere off the grid—it might require assistance from the other team. Pushing too far into the evening could mean that any unexpected situation would have to be dealt with as daylight faded, increasing the complexity and risk of resolving the problem.
In other words, what Alexandre and I saw as maximizing productivity, Adrien viewed through the lens of field safety and contingency planning.
Neither approach was inherently right or wrong. It was simply a reflection of different working styles. Alexandre and I tended to focus heavily on efficiency and optimization, while Adrien leaned more toward structured procedures and established routines. Like many field teams thrown together for the first time, we were still figuring out our rhythm.
Two Projects, Two Field Strategies
Because Alexandre had more intensive fieldwork to do in the immediate area, we decided to divide our schedule somewhat strategically. Weekdays would be dedicated to his work, while weekends would be used for my own sampling campaign.
Alexandre’s PhD research focused on the Chibougamau pluton, a massive granodiorite intrusive rock body underlying much of the region around the town. Formed roughly 2.7 billion years ago during the late Archean, the pluton represents an ancient magmatic system associated with significant gold mineralization in the region. His work aimed to conduct a detailed petrogenetic study of these rocks—essentially reconstructing how the magma formed, evolved, and ultimately crystallized deep within the Earth’s crust.
The kind of pinkish rocks we were looking for during our field trip
My own project took a somewhat broader approach. Instead of focusing on a single intrusion, I was sampling a number of different late-Archean syenite intrusions scattered across the region, which Lucie and I had preselected before the campaign. These locations were much farther from Chibougamau and often required long drives from our base.
In simple terms, both of us were chasing light pinkish rocks formed from very ancient magmas—just slightly different kinds, and in different places. Alexandre was studying the internal story of one major intrusion. I was comparing several others in order to test the validity of a somewhat debated geological model known as intrusion-related gold systems. Different scientific questions, but somewhat overlapping regions of work.
Day One in the Ghost House
The first day began under a murky sky with light rain in the forecast. We drove northeast out of Chibougamau, gradually leaving pavement behind as we followed increasingly questionable forest roads winding through lakes and dense boreal forest. Somewhere beneath us lay the Chibougamau pluton itself. The intrusion stretches across dozens of kilometres beneath the region, extending beneath the large lake in the area.
So far so good. The road’s looking pretty chill… except for maybe that last bit
The roads we were using had once been logging or mining access routes. Many had clearly not seen much maintenance in years. Some looked like they had not seen any maintenance at all. This particular road was a pretty good contender for the worst we’d encounter.
Branches increasingly scraped along both sides of the truck as we pushed forward through narrow overgrowth. Every few minutes I would optimistically reassure Alexandre: Look, it’s getting better. Almost immediately another set of branches would slap aggressively against the doors and mirrors.
This was also where the size of the F-150 started to work against us. These trucks are perfect for the big wide, preferably paved, northern roads. But not for these tight abandoned roads that were slowly being reclaimed by the forest. Now, some people might have suggested parking the truck and continuing on foot. But the distances Alexandre needed to cover for his sampling were enormous. With limited time and an efficiency-focused mindset, we decided to push forward with the vehicle and see how far we could get.
Deeper and deeper we went searching for rocks
At some point early in the trip, while driving along one of the forest roads, I noticed a strange button on the truck’s key fob marked with a little exclamation point. I had never seen anything like it before, so I jokingly asked Alexandre if it was the panic button. Curious himself, he pressed it—and the truck immediately erupted into a series of loud honks that echoed through the quiet forest, catching both of us completely off guard. So yes… it was indeed the panic button. From that moment on, that’s exactly what we called it.
Later that same day, after wandering through the misty woods in search of rock outcrops, we eventually decided to head back toward the road. The problem was that we weren’t entirely sure where the road actually was anymore. We thought we had a decent sense of direction, but just to confirm, Alexandre pressed the panic button again so we could listen for the truck. The honking came from the complete opposite direction—not slightly off, but entirely wrong. And this wasn’t even in the dense jungle-like forest we would encounter later in the trip. It was a humbling reminder of just how easy it was to lose your bearings out here without proper navigation equipment.
The First Day’s Results
And cover ground we did. By the end of the day we had pushed as far along that road as we reasonably could without wasting too much time wandering blindly through the forest on foot. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much reward waiting at the end of the drive.
Outcrops were scarce. Most of what surrounded us was dense forest, marshland, and the occasional lake. Not exactly a rocky paradise for an ambitious geologist on his first field day. Still, we had managed to survey a large area, collect a few samples, and, most importantly, get a better sense of the terrain.
Were we even on the road anymore? Who knew?
The mood remained high throughout the day. Music played through the truck speakers while we joked constantly about the excellent road conditions and weather. But on the way back, our spirits took a sudden hit.
Remember those branches scraping along the truck? Well… some of them were larger than others. Quite a bit larger. In several places the vehicle had essentially been squeezed through narrow sections of overgrown road. Forced through might actually be a more accurate description. Somewhere along that journey, without either of us noticing, the passenger’s side mirror decided to take a hike. Not the entire mirror assembly. Just the glass. Gone. Vanished into the northern wilderness.
Driving back to base with morale in the toilet
We hadn’t thought to fold the mirrors while navigating what increasingly felt like a boreal jungle. Another lesson learned. Alexandre immediately slammed the truck into a U-turn and we began carefully retracing our path in the hope of recovering the missing mirror. Despite a thorough search and a considerable amount of backtracking, we never found it.
Not Exactly According to Plan
The unexpected mirror recovery operation also meant we pushed our return much later into the afternoon than originally planned. By the time we rolled back into the barracks, it was well past the time Adrien had suggested we should be safely heading back from the field. The situation did not exactly improve the ongoing debate about field schedules and safety margins.
Another tense discussion followed between Adrien and a very frustrated Alexandre, fueled by our late return, the damaged vehicle, and the already diverging approaches to how we thought the field campaign should run.
For the moment, Alexandre and I quietly decided to keep one particular detail to ourselves. Namely, that the truck was now missing a mirror. We were off to a spectacular start.
The Terror of the North
A couple of days later the skies finally cleared and we were rewarded with several bright, sunny days. With the warmth and sunshine, however, came one of the true terrors of northern fieldwork: the insects.
The weather had improved, but would our fortune improve as well?
The boreal forest is infamous for its seasonal waves of bloodsucking pests. Four main culprits dominate the warm months, each appearing at slightly different times of the summer, sometimes overlapping in particularly miserable combinations. The most famous worldwide is the mosquito. Ironically, these were often the least annoying of the group at least during the daytime.
Then came the true terror of the north: black flies. These tiny specks looked almost like fruit flies, but they were relentless carnivores. And where there was one, there were usually thousands. They crawled into every opening they could find—ears, sleeves, collars—biting and harassing you constantly. Walking through the forest meant being surrounded by a cloud of them, endlessly probing for exposed skin. They were absolute hellspawns.
A fuzzy bug on an outcrop
The other two members of the northern insect quartet are deerflies and horseflies, but thankfully we encountered relatively few of those during this particular adventure. The black flies, however, were more than enough.
The Jungle of the North
Some days were worse than others, and some locations were far more tolerable. Around town or along major roads things were manageable. But the moment we stepped deep into the forest, or near lakes and swampy areas, the insects quickly reminded us who really owned the place. But for us newcomers, it was pretty brutal.
The forest itself didn’t help matters either. In many places the vegetation was so dense that moving through it became a full-body workout. Progress meant constantly pushing through branches, tangled bushes, and young trees fighting for sunlight. Coming from Europe, it felt almost surreal.
A white-spotted sawyer beetle in the back of our truck
This wasn’t the kind of forest I had grown up with. Not even close. It was more like an overgrown jungle. Without a machete, you were essentially swimming through vegetation, pushing your way forward against an endless green current.
More Bad Luck
On one of the weekdays during our first week, we were traversing a section of what I would generously describe as medium-density forest. That meant it was still somewhat walkable. We carried our usual gear: hammers, sample bags, notebooks. Alexandre had his tablet, and I carried his Garmin GPS unit clipped to my belt.
Roaming through the boreal forest
After finishing our work in the area, we returned to the truck. That’s when I noticed something odd. The only thing still clipped to my pants was the carabiner and the battery clip. The GPS itself was gone. When I had changed the batteries earlier, I had apparently failed to properly lock the safety latch back into place. Somewhere during our trek through the dense vegetation, the bushes must have caught the device and ripped it clean off.
I felt terrible about losing it. Alexandre, meanwhile, was already becoming increasingly demoralized after the string of mishaps we had experienced so far. To make matters worse, the device design itself seemed almost engineered for failure. The small clip used to attach the GPS to your belt was mounted on the battery compartment, not on the main body of the unit. Meaning if the clip came loose, the entire device simply vanished.
We had to stay close in the forest because even with high visibility vests, we could easily lose each other in the green
Improve your device design, Garmin!
The Quest for the “Pluton de France”
During the first weekend we dedicated Saturday to my project. My target was a large pink blob on the geological map labeled Pluton de France, a sizeable Monzonite intrusion located northeast of Chibougamau. From literature it seemed close enough to what I was hoping to sample for my study.
We tried several old logging roads, driving long stretches only to eventually encounter dead ends. Some roads had collapsed entirely. Others had been completely reclaimed by vegetation. It quickly became clear that any industrial activity in this area had likely been abandoned for many years.
An overgrown old logging site providing a large clearing in the forest
Rather than return empty-handed, I decided to improvise and sample several interesting-looking outcrops along the way. Fieldwork often requires adapting to reality on the ground. After all, there’s only so much you can determine from a rock in hand before laboratory analysis reveals the full story.
At one point we reached a large open clearing left behind by past logging operations. The place felt strangely peaceful. Calm. Quiet. Even the bugs seemed to take a break there. But then we spotted something on the ground. Bear droppings. Suddenly the calm silence of the clearing felt a little less comforting.
A Couple of Hours to Kill
After trying, and failing, to reach the Pluton de France from several different directions, I eventually admitted defeat. We still had some time left in the day, though, and curiosity got the better of me. Just north of our location on the map was a massive lake with a peculiar shape, almost like a giant claw mark carved into the landscape: Lake Mistassini.
Leaving the logging roads behind for the day
From the map it didn’t seem that far away. At least not when zoomed out. We were already roughly halfway between Chibougamau and Mistassini, so why not take the opportunity for a bit of sightseeing? There was just one complication.
Despite the illusion of normality our fieldwork provided, the world was still very much living through the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. We had been clearly instructed that the nearby First Nations communities, including Mistissini and Oujé-Bougoumou, were off limits to outside visitors. And yet here we were. Driving toward Mistassini. Rebels.
A Forbidden Detour
We justified it to ourselves with a simple plan: drive to the lake, take a few photos, refuel, and head back. No interactions with locals. Besides, we were already running low on fuel. The Mistassini gas station was now closer than the one back in Chibougamau. Unfortunately, when we reached the turnoff toward town, we discovered a line of cars waiting at a checkpoint.
The community had set up actual road controls to monitor who was entering and leaving. This is when we started sweating. Turning around was not an option anymore, but Alexandre wasn’t interested in pushing our luck any further either. We would do exactly one thing: reach the gas station, fill up, and leave.
Sunsets from our base camp in Chibougamau
No sightseeing, no lake, No detours. I wasn’t going to push the issue. Alexandre had already had a stressful enough week. And so Lake Mistassini remained unseen. Another small opportunity lost to the rigid world of 2020.
The Beaver Dam
The following day we returned to exploring the Chibougamau area for Alexandre’s project. Another sunny day. Another road our truck was probably never meant to drive on.
You see an impenetrable forest, I see a shortcut
Despite appearances, the road actually wasn’t too bad overall. The only questionable part was a small creek crossing in a swampy section. Otherwise, it was quite decent by our new standards. We collected some solid samples, the insects were tolerable, and the day progressed smoothly. But on the drive back something had changed.
The small creek crossing had widened. Part of the road had begun collapsing into the swamp. Still, we had crossed it once already without issue. Surely the second time would be fine. Alexandre eased the truck slowly forward into the muddy water. And then… The truck stopped. Stuck.
Getting the traction aid out
We stepped out to inspect the situation and quickly realized the problem. The road had been built over an old beaver dam, and that dam had begun collapsing. The more Alexandre tried to drive out, the deeper the front wheel dug itself into the mud. Water seeped into the growing crater around the tire while the truck slowly tilted sideways like a sinking ship. Eventually the car felt so tilted that I had to pull myself out through the drivers side whenever I wanted to get out.
We tried digging. We tried traction aid under the tires. Nothing worked. After more than an hour of struggling, we finally admitted defeat.
The Accidental Distress Signal
Alexandre pulled out the satellite phone and managed to reach Adrien after several attempts. Meanwhile, I grabbed the SPOT emergency GPS device we had been given for field safety. In case of trouble, we were supposed to send a notification through it so our supervisor Lucie, back in Chicoutimi, would know our situation.
There was just one small problem. During the original briefing, it hadn’t been made entirely clear which button should be used in which situation. The device had three buttons. One was strictly for life-threatening emergencies and would contact national rescue services. The other two were meant for lesser degrees of trouble.
Traction aid was doing a great job at sinking into the mud under the tire
Out of the two, I picked the one that sent a distress alert to Lucie and the entire research team back at the university. This naturally caused a brief panic on their end. Some people began discussing whether national rescue services might need to be contacted. Fortunately, Lucie knew us well enough not to immediately escalate the situation.
So no helicopters were dispatched to rescue two geologists with a truck stuck in the mud.
The Rescue Operation
Adrien and Nesrine were already on their way back to the barracks when Alexandre reached them by phone. They immediately turned around and headed toward our location. Meanwhile, we packed our essentials, locked the truck, and began walking down the road toward the main route.
Thankfully, we hadn’t gotten stuck too far from a larger road, so reaching us wasn’t too difficult. After the week Alexandre had endured, he was clearly bracing himself for another argument about field decisions. But none came. Adrien simply picked us up and tried to lighten the mood. No judgment. These things happen. He was a trooper.
Adrien arrived with the second truck
He had also brought along a tow cable. None of us had ever actually attempted a recovery like this before, so a fair amount of improvisation followed. We hooked the two trucks together, stepped back to a safe distance, and Adrien floored it. His truck fishtailed wildly for a moment… Then suddenly our vehicle broke free from the mud with a loud, satisfying suction pop. Cheers erupted.
The crisis was over. And when we returned to base later that evening, we suddenly realized something unfortunate. Oh. Look at that. The passenger-side mirror was missing. What a shame. Clearly it must have fallen off while the truck was stuck in the mud and not at any other point in time… Those damn beavers and their dams.
A Turning Point
For all the misfortunes that plagued our first week—lost mirrors, missing GPS units, insect swarms, collapsing beaver dams—it would ultimately mark the lowest point of the entire campaign. From that moment on, things slowly began to improve.
What a great road… 10 out of 10, would drive it again
The remaining weeks of our fieldwork would prove far smoother, far more productive, and far less chaotic. But those first few days in the northern wilderness had already given us stories we would be laughing about for years.
And the rest of the expedition still had plenty in store for us.
Following Christmas week in New York City, 2019 quietly came to an end with a relaxed New Year’s Eve dinner and drinks between two good friends. I was deep in my experimental cooking phase and had Alexandre over for a homemade, slightly burned, Greek moussaka.
A new year awaited. After the kind of year I’d just had, it was clear 2020 would probably be calmer. A step back. A year to build, not explode forward. As everyone now knows in hindsight, it would be far more than that — for all of us.
The New Semester Brought a New Victim to UQAC
With January came a new semester at UQAC. Alexandre and I registered for the two required PhD courses. Geology was always a small circle with barely a handful of students, most of them foreign. Among them was Pedro, a Brazilian PhD candidate who had just moved to Chicoutimi.
Welcome to the North. This is what you’ll see for half a year.
Pedro was one of those people who collects stories simply by existing. A guy who had never seen snow in his life moved to northern Canada in January, during a -40°C cold snap, with meters of snow and winter storms rolling in like clockwork. The story practically wrote itself.
After surviving the thermal shock, he endured months living with a questionable Québécois family. Among the gems he would retell: the time he opened the basement fridge to find his sandwich placed beside a box containing a dead cat. The owners were “waiting for spring to bury it” and didn’t want to leave it outside.
Pedro processed this information the way any rational person would — by moving out as soon as possible. With the amount of crazy stories he told us about his first months in Canada, he should honestly write his own blog.
The Rivière du Moulin during winter
He fit perfectly into our little circle of mildly disgruntled foreign PhD students trying to decode Quebec one snowstorm at a time.
The Quest for a Drivers License
For me, that winter felt like a tense calm before a summer storm. It was the first year of my PhD. That summer I was scheduled to do three months of fieldwork across Quebec and Ontario. Which meant one thing: I needed to renew my driver’s license.
The path ahead — Park du Rivière-du-Moulin
At the time I possesses an expired Romanian relic I hadn’t used since one lonely drive in Iceland in 2016. Naturally, it couldn’t be simple. Because my foreign license had expired, Quebec couldn’t simply exchange it. I had to redo the tests. Easy enough. Except I had barely driven in ten years.
Confidence low. Stress high. Instead of responsibly studying the driving manual, I decided to go in blindly. In contrast to my first driving exam when I passed both theory and practice on the first try, this time around I failed. Then failed again. The upside? Exam fees were cheap. Unlimited attempts.
The downside? A mandatory one-month wait between attempts. And of course, the regional SAAQ office was in Jonquière, not Chicoutimi. Which meant an hour-long bus ride each way through Saguenay’s bleak winter landscape every time I wanted to fail another exam. It was not a joyous era.
But with each attempt, I improved. Eventually I passed the theoretical. Then came the practical — rinse, repeat, stress, repeat. By summer, I finally had my Quebec driver’s license. Considering what was unfolding globally, this minor bureaucratic victory now feels oddly monumental.
My routine 10 km park walks to and from the supermarket and gym
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind to winter.
Francisation
Another goal I had set at the start of the year was learning French properly. The university offered nothing useful in that regard. It was Pedro who pointed me toward Quebec’s government-funded francisation classes for newcomers. The Centre de formation générale des adultes was a ten-minute walk from campus.
When I went to register, the woman at the desk spoke exclusively French and had to evaluate my level. I stitched together broken sentences from memory. It didn’t come across as much. Beginner level it was.
But within a few weeks, something interesting happened. Fragments of childhood French combined with fluency in Romanian, a Latin language like French, roots began clicking into place. Vocabulary accelerated. Patterns emerged.
So I was bumped up a level or two. It felt like I was on the right path. Well on my way to adapt and integrate into my new life in French-Canada.
Routine into the Storm
Between language classes, Jonquière license expeditions, PhD coursework, and research work, I barely had time to breathe. But it was structured. Productive. Forward-moving. A couple times a week, Alexandre and I would make our “shopping expedition” — a half-hour walk through snow-covered streets to Place du Royaume, with a mandatory stop at Archambault along the way. Life was cold, busy, and routine. Until mid-March.
Sometimes the waterfall just completely froze
Another winter storm was forecast — strong winds, heavy snowfall. The university closed for the day. Nothing unusual. The next day I returned to find the campus in complete blackout. The storm had damaged major power lines. Parts of the town were without electricity. I made my way to our office using my phone flashlight. Inside, a few colleagues were sitting in pitch darkness, casually talking. Our office had no windows. This never bothered me much, but Alexandre hated it. We chatted in the dark for a while, laughed at the absurdity, then left. No work accomplished.
The following day was another write-off. I can’t even remember if it was still the outage, another storm, or just institutional confusion. The week was dissolving. At some point I joked to my friends: Just watch, Friday’s excuse is going to be a University shutdown because of that coronavirus thing. The news had been escalating into fear mongering. China. Italy. Numbers rising. Dramatic headlines.
Then Friday came. And with it, a state of emergency. The university closed. The province shut down. The world closed itself off. And just like that, routine evaporated. Me and my big mouth.
The New World Order — Life during the COVID-19 lockdown
Early into the first lockdown, I have to admit I felt a selfish sense of vindication. A quiet, petty sort of justice. For months I had been navigating life in a place where I barely spoke the language and knew only a couple of people. Isolation had been my baseline. And now, suddenly, everyone else was getting a taste of it.
Welcome to my world.
Time stopped dripping here. The world held its breath, and winter simply kept sculpting what was already still
At the same time, I secretly welcomed the abrupt pause. My schedule had been escalating into overload — PhD work, language classes, driving exam shenanigans, constant self-imposed pressure. The world hitting pause felt… convenient. I expected it to last a week. Maybe two. And then it just kept going.
Mask mandates appeared. Supermarket floor arrows dictated which direction you could walk, as if we were items on a conveyor belt. Entire stores closed. Curfews were introduced. News cycles amplified panic daily. Then came the toilet paper crisis. One of the stranger collective breakdowns of modern civilization.
Meanwhile, my mom in Romania described increasingly rigid restrictions there. At one point, people had to fill out official declaration papers justifying why they were leaving their homes. It triggered flashbacks for her — memories of life under Ceaușescu’s communist regime, when movement and speech were tightly controlled.
The longer the restrictions lasted, the more frustration built. The virus itself wasn’t what weighed on me most. It was the scale of disruption. The sense that normal life had been switched off indefinitely.
Remote Everything
The lockdown halted my French learning completely. At first, the school closed. Weeks later they began discussing remote options. But by then something inside me had shifted. My motivation drained slowly, almost imperceptibly. What was the point?
The surface freezes while the current moves on. Stillness and Motion.
University research continued from home. At that stage, most of my work involved literature review, so technically it was manageable. Psychologically, it was another story. For some of us, the university environment was essential — a mental trigger that said: now we work. At home, especially in small studio apartments, the boundaries collapsed. The same room that was for sleeping and relaxing became the office, classroom, gym, cafeteria. It blurred everything.
The university experimented with remote courses. It was… rough. At first, everyone tried. Professors adapting to Zoom. Students attempting to focus. But attention spans eroded quickly. Small distractions became irresistible. Changing backgrounds. Flipping someone’s screen. Eventually most students logged in, turned off their cameras and microphones, and disappeared into parallel lives while the professor lectured into the void. I often used that time to cook or clean. Assignments replaced exams. Everyone passed. I retained very little.
The longer the lockdown dragged on, the more pointless everything began to feel. The one concrete achievement of that period was my driver’s license. After all the failures and bus rides through frozen Saguenay, finally passing felt disproportionately triumphant. A small win in a shrinking world.
A Dead Campus
Fighting persistently on our behalf, our supervisor managed to secure limited access to the university for our research group. Strict rules, of course. Masks at all times. Only certain rooms permitted. Not our windowless office, but Lucie’s windowless lab-office. It was something.
The branches held their shape. Everything else waited. Frost simply finished what pause had started
When I think of UQAC now, I mostly remember it as it was during that period: a silent, cold building where you had to ring a security guard to enter. Empty hallways. Fluorescent lighting humming over abandoned corridors. It felt like living a post-apocalypse survival video game.
Apart from each other and supermarket outings, Alexandre and I hadn’t seen people in months. The streets were dead. The first time we saw our supervisor in person again, we talked for hours. Complained. Reflected. Laughed. It felt strangely profound — as if we had all returned from separate planets. Human contact had become a novelty.
The Slow Summer Shift
Weeks passed. Then a month. Finally, our supervisor pulled off another small miracle: approval for one month of fieldwork in August up north for her entire research group of four. Alexandre was relieved. Energized. It felt like movement. Progress. Normalcy.
I felt… nothing. What had begun as quiet vindication had slowly dissolved into indifference. I remember preparing supplies at the university and running into an old colleague, Tague. He was genuinely excited for us. “You guys must be thrilled!” I shrugged. Meh.
The cold had pressed pause so long the world forgot warmth. Yet here, on sun-heated rock, life tests its wings once more, slow and deliberate
In hindsight, I think something subtle had been settling in. Not dramatic, nor cinematic. Just a quiet flattening of emotion. A kind of functional numbness. I went through the motions. I did what needed to be done. But the internal spark, the ambition and momentum I had carried into 2020, had dimmed.
It would take a long time to recognize it for what it probably was. A slow, quiet form of depression.
Following my rough landing in Quebec, I was settling into early PhD life in Canada, slowly building a routine in Chicoutimi. My daily commute traced a familiar path: starting from the shores of the Saguenay, climbing the steep hill toward the cathedral, passing the CEGEP and its long stone wall, then continuing up yet another incline all the way to the doors of UQAC. It wasn’t a long distance, but it was a relentless one — a daily reminder that nothing here would come easily.
Early PhD Student Life
One of the first major differences I noticed between Europe and North America was how PhD candidates are treated by their institutions. In most European countries, PhD students are considered employees. Whether through contracts with the university or the research group, the general attitude is that you’re part of the research staff — junior, yes, but staff nonetheless.
In North America, however, you are firmly a student. You don’t receive a salary; you receive a grant. You don’t automatically gain elevated access to labs or resources. In many ways, you’re treated no differently than an undergraduate who might still be figuring out where their next lecture is. For many of us Europeans, this distinction was immediately noticeable — and not particularly well liked.
Roadmap ahead
That said, I would have two mandatory courses to take in my second semester, while my first one focused on independent PhD research work. At this stage, my “research” consisted almost entirely of information gathering for what they called a research proposal. In practice, it was an exam — an extensive written report and a formal presentation at the end of the semester, used to determine whether you were deemed fit to continue as a PhD candidate.
At first, the idea of having to prove myself again after already landing the position felt mildly irritating. But in hindsight, it was actually a solid approach. The process forced us to define the scope of our projects early, while also thinking through logistics, feasibility, and costs — all things that would become painfully important later on.
Historical Park of Sainte-Anne’s Cross on the north side of Chicoutimi
My time at the University of Copenhagen had prepared me well for steep learning curves, so the research proposal itself didn’t worry me much. The courses, however… those were a different matter. They were supposed to be taught in French.
How, exactly, was I supposed to pass university-level courses in a language I could barely understand?
The Sergeant
During our first weeks there, Alexandre and I had already heard one of our course professors mentioned several times by our supervisor, Lucie. She spoke fluent English but retained a strong French accent — normally not an issue, except for one small problem.
Neither of us could quite understand the professor’s name. All we got was Sergeant Barnes.
Alexandre and I exchanged looks, silently wondering what kind of military drill instructor we were about to encounter. Was this man going to bark orders at us? Make us march? Fail us out of spite?
South side of the Parc de la Rivière-du-Moulin
After weeks of mystery, the Sergeant revealed herself to be Sarah Jane Barnes — a highly respected English geologist teaching at UQAC. Together with her husband, she would be responsible for the handful of courses we were required to take.
Bizarro World
In what felt like a linguistic reverse uno card, the two professors turned out to be fluent French speakers with the harshest English accents my ears had ever been subjected to. So strong, in fact, that even native French students sometimes struggled to understand them — and would occasionally mutter that they wished the courses were taught in English instead.
It was truly bizarro world.
As October rolled in, it brought with it the cool, pre-winter air
Fortunately, “the Sergeant” turned out to be both sharp and considerate. Early on, she asked the class whether we would prefer the course to be taught in French or English. On that particular course, non–French speakers were actually in the majority. With even the French speakers’ approval, we continued in English.
From what I gathered, this was not something UQAC was particularly thrilled about — which made the situation even more ironic.
An international university… right?
Priorities
Courses aside, I clearly had to start learning French sooner or later — if nothing else, simply to improve my quality of life. I asked at the university what options they had for language courses, but these were limited to specific semesters. Eventually, I realized my best option was the government-sponsored French courses for immigrants. Free of charge. I would start the following year.
For now, the priority was getting past the PhD candidature exam.
Just a little Saguenay duck scratching an itch
Another aspect discussed with my supervisor was the need for a valid driver’s license the following year. This was, after all, North America, and I couldn’t realistically get anywhere — let alone do fieldwork — without driving. My old Romanian driver’s license had expired a couple of years earlier, and since I hadn’t used a car in a long time, I never renewed it.
Another thing to deal with next year.
The tasks were slowly mounting for 2020. I was already foreseeing a heavy workload for at least the first half of the year…
Heh. I had no idea what was truly coming. But I guess none of us did…
Small Town, Limited Options
During my free time, I took the opportunity to familiarize myself with Chicoutimi and its places of interest. There weren’t that many. The town center was essentially a single street lined with stores, bars, and a handful of restaurants.
Alexandre and I tried them one by one, but — how can I put it — the quality was mediocre at best.
Even Turalyon (Alexandre’s cat) was unimpressed
I’m fairly sure neither of us will ever forget a certain pizza we ordered once. It was so overloaded with low-quality industrial sausage, cheese, and astonishing amounts of salt that it felt like they were aggressively compensating quantity for quality.
Other options included the typical North American fast food, especially Quebec’s beloved poutine. I kept hearing locals rave about it, so I finally gave it a try. For the uninitiated, in its most primal form, poutine consists of deep-fried fries topped with a strange, gummy-textured cheese curd and drowned in gravy.
It was… certainly something. I’m still not sure I would have categorized it as food.
With limited options for eating out or ordering in, we were left exploring the wondrous offerings of Walmart. Like… Pogos. Another deep-fried favorite — now also frozen. Essentially a wiener in a bun… on a stick.
Ah. The joys of Chicoutimi.
My daily commutes through endless residential neighborhoods
On the days Alexandre and I didn’t meet up, I used the opportunity to improve my cooking skills and prepare my own meals. It was cheaper and infinitely better. In the following months, I also discovered higher-quality supermarkets like IGA and Provigo. These at least offered a wider selection of meats and produce — and even some decent cheese, which my very critical French friend actually approved of.
Ah, Chicoutimi. You were definitely an experience.
A New Sanctuary
Despite the many eyebrow-raising experiences, Chicoutimi did manage to provide me with a sanctuary.
I mentioned in older posts how, whenever I move somewhere new, I inevitably end up finding a place that simply clicks with me — somewhere I return to when I need calm, clarity, or just space to think.
A large natural park following the Moulin River from the southern outskirts of the town all the way north to the Saguenay River. Coincidentally, the northern entrance to the park wasn’t far from my place, and one of its many exits led straight to the large shopping area with the supermarkets, shops, and the gym I had signed up for.
Waterfall and rapids along the Moulin river
In the turbulent years that followed, the park became more than just a refuge from troubling thoughts. It turned into my almost daily (or every-other-day) trekking route — roughly 8 kilometers — whether I was heading to the gym, the shops, or the university.
Rain or shine. Breeze or blizzard. Plus or minus thirty degrees.
Quebec City
In November, our research group prepared for a short trip. Quebec Mine — one of the annual mining and research conferences — was coming up, and all of us were attending. It would also be my first time in Quebec City.
Château Frontenac, one of the most iconic buildings in Quebec CIty
Having been there before, Alexandre was excited to show me around one of the more civilized and urbanized parts of Quebec. Our supervisor gave us a budget limit per night and allowed us to book our own accommodation.
We, uh… chose a pretty dang nice one. Barely within budget, of course. Hotel Manoir D’Auteuil.
Each room had its own name and theme, and somehow, they placed the two of us in the chapel. Name aside, it was easily the most opulent hotel room I had ever stayed in — elevated beds, rustic furniture, and a marble-clad bathroom with an absurdly inviting bathtub.
Welcome to the chapel at Hotel Manoir D’Auteuil
The one and only downside was the bathroom floor, which remained brutally cold at all times.
Otherwise? 10 out of 10 — would chapel again.
The Conference
The conference took place mid-semester and was modest in size, drawing mostly local Quebec professors, researchers, and mining industry experts, with a handful of attendees from elsewhere in Canada. Most participants were French speakers, but the lectures themselves were held in English so that non-French speakers like me could follow along.
I spent most of my time attending talks and meeting new people, including my second supervisor, Stéphane — a highly respected professor from UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal).
In the evenings, Alexandre and I would stroll around the beautiful old city center of Quebec
Despite the increased socializing, my limited French once again came back to haunt me. Conversations would usually start with a bit of small talk in English, only to abruptly flip into French. I’d catch a few words here and there, maybe even the occasional sentence, but following along was exhausting. Eventually, my brain learned to quietly phase out whenever discussions went fully French — something I had experienced before in Denmark when surrounded by Danish friends.
The Challenge Bowl
The highlight of the conference for me was a contest I decided to take part in — the Challenge Bowl, as they called it. Entry was free, I needed some entertainment, and best of all, it was entirely in English.
We were paired up in teams of two and thrown into a series of multiple-choice trivia challenges focused on geophysics. Now, I am not a geophysicist. I had absolutely no business being there. Then again, neither did my randomly assigned partner. A dream team, really.
Taking part in the 2019 Challenge Bowl
Giving up was obviously not an option, so I told him we’d simply try to figure out the pattern of right and wrong answers as we went along and see if we could beat the system. As with many things that come out of my mouth, it was mostly a joke. Mostly.
Yet the more we succeeded, the more I began to believe in my apparently undisputed ability to click the correct button at exactly the right time. Toward the end, things became more tense — wrong answers now cost points, while speed still mattered. Speed, however, was always on our side… because we didn’t really need to stop and think. The magic finger decided.
Victory in Sight
My partner could barely contain his laughter as we somehow kept pulling ahead, trolling our way up the scoreboard. As the final rounds approached and the prospect of actually winning became real, we both grew increasingly uneasy — and slightly horrified — by the effectiveness of our strategy.
The grand prize was $2,000 toward a trip to the national finals in Alberta.
I told my partner to imagine the two of us — complete clowns with minimal knowledge of the subject — marching into the national finals of a geophysics competition. If my enchanted button-clicking finger had carried us this far, surely it could take us even further. Barely a few months in Canada, and the Romanian was already trolling his way toward the top.
Almost got’em. Congratulations to the well deserved winners!
Fortunately for everyone involved, we just lost first place to a team that actually knew what they were doing. We happily took second place instead — grinning like idiots.
What a blast that was.
Evenings in Quebec
When we had time in the evenings, Alexandre and I wandered through Quebec City’s old town. It was easily the most European-looking place I had seen in Canada — or at least the most European part of a city. Cobblestone streets, old stone buildings, narrow alleys… I loved it.
Famous wall mural in Quebec’s old town center
Step just a few blocks outside of it, though, and you were instantly back in familiar North American territory. Wide roads, modern sprawl, and parking lots. It felt like a city within a city.
Still, it was several leagues above Chicoutimi, and it didn’t take long before we both found ourselves wishing we lived there instead. Once the conference wrapped up, we boarded the bus and headed back north to Saguenay — where a fully entrenched winter was now waiting for us.
The Final Grind
The rest of the semester passed in a blur of focused isolation. We hunkered down, grinding away on our research proposals and preparing for the decisive exam. At one point, I even recruited my mother over Skype to act as a practice audience for my presentation. Awkward? Very. Useful? Surprisingly so.
In the days leading up to the exam, I felt the need to give myself something to look forward to — a reminder that this wasn’t a life-or-death situation. A reward on the other side of the stress.
Greeted by the eternal white and cold back in Saguenay
Looking back, it was almost absurd to realize this was still the same year. 2019 had already seen me move back to Copenhagen, nearly relocate to Switzerland, embark on an unforgettable journey across Greece, visit Lithuania, and finally uproot my life to Canada.
So I decided to end it properly. One last adventure to crown the year of all years.
If I passed the exam… I would go to New York for the Christmas holidays.
