A new look at Quebec trade mission

Editor’s Note: Following are excerpts from the notebook of news reporter Bill Trotter, who traveled with the Maine delegation on a trade mission to Quebec last week.

In keeping with diplomatic traditions, symbolic gifts were exchanged last week between members of the economic delegation and their Quebec counterparts. Yves Gendron, director of CIMIC, a technology vocational school in the Quebec city of St. Georges, gave Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner David Cole a set of candlesticks made at his school, while Gov. Baldacci handed out framed photographs of Maine scenes to officials he met.

While visiting CIMIC, members of the Maine mission seemed as impressed if not more with the school’s geothermal heating-cooling system than they did with any of the projects being studied

by CIMIC students.

Meals were where much of the mission’s face-to-face contact occurred. A Maine economic developer exchanged information with a Quebec maker of syrup-processing equipment during lunch last Thursday at a hotel in St. Georges, while another Maine economic developer said that at the same lunch he talked to two Quebec businessmen who want to do business in Maine. The exclusive Garrison Club, a private facility next to the Citadel in Quebec City, was the site of a Friday lunch attended by mission members, who that night were given tours of the nearby Quebec Parliament building.

There was one noticeable difference between the cultures on either side of the border. Wine was served to everyone, government officials included, who attended the mission’s organized lunches, whether they requested wine or not.

Organizations represented on Gov. Baldacci’s mission included national shipping company A.N. Deringer, Bangor Savings Bank, Portland law firm Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer and Nelson, Hancock Lumber, Eastern Maine Development Corp., International Northeast Biotechnology Corridor, Maine Small Business Development Centers, Northern Maine Development Corporation, Teague Biotech Center in Fairfield, Roaring Brook Consultants, Maine International Trade Center and University of Maine System.

The Maine missions to Quebec coincided with the 50th anniversary of Quebec City’s Winter Carnival, an annual two-week event that features large snow sculptures, dog sled races through the streets, parades, a canoe race across the ice-floe-clogged waters of the St. Lawrence River, among other events.

Bangor is approximately the same distance from Quebec City, roughly 230 miles, as it is from Boston.