Diplomatrip to the New World
Great news, Canada can now participate to European projects! The Walloon and Brussels regions have a deep diplomatic relationship with Québec, a French speaking Canadian region. So, a delegation of representative from CyberWal by Digital Wallonia embarked for a diplomatic trip. The WBI (Wallonie-Bruxelles International) organized a meeting with universities (Polytech Montreal and Concordia) as well as requested our presence at the North American version of the French “Forum inCyber). As it was my first time there, I decided to take a bit of time to travel around the land of the beaver (or the moose). Using the fruits of my networking skills built when I worked for the big D. I reconnected with previous colleagues working in Montreal and I secured a comfortable spot on a coach after landing and eating a poutine. I wanted to see how travelling was in Canada, so I booked buses and trains trips between Toronto, Niagara, Montreal and Québec. Twelve hours of bus made me think that renting cars could be nice as well. However, I was sure of it after taking the train. Leaving late, driving at around 50km/h, arriving late. Nevertheless, I always reached my destination which was a bit unexpected.
Niagara is a small town that offers nice views depending on which angle you look. Between casinos on both US and Canadian sides you can see the old Tesla’s hydro generators. And not far some falls. Then I came back to Toronto, it’s a bit like New-York ((big buildings and people speaking English), (fun fact Niagara is between both towns), (I know some colleagues like parenthesis within parenthesis)). In Toronto I discovered Value Village and Winners, some nice stores that I feel like people love. The first one is second hand, and the other one offers various new clothes from well-known brands at a fraction of the price. Then I ate a poutine.
The next day (night) I left for Montreal on a night bus to catch a day train to Quebec. Couldn’t sleep. The train was late. Went shopping. Quebec is nice (it’s more about 2 streets nice then the rest looks like classic North American towns and suburbs). It feels like Namur, small and if you don’t know anybody then you get bored. Then I ate a poutine.
At the end of the weekend, I left for Montreal to get ready for the industrial conference (it looks like an academic one, but people are well dressed, and they sell stuff). The Conference was interesting; I talked with a guy from “Exiger” an American company working on supply chain vulnerability. If a company gets bought, then the name of all the (OT) devices sold previously by that company changes. It means that vulnerabilities are no longer tracked online so, they follow this merger and acquisition history and gather all the vulnerabilities linked to a device regardless of its name. Then, the next day we went to the Polytechnical school of Montreal where we had the chance to see their new Cyber-Range (OT physical device emulator) and their personal 3 axis flight simulator for live cyber-attacks simulation. Concordia needs not blushing with their server rooms with multiple Cyber-Ranges and satellite antenna for real-time time-synchronization. They also had miniature cars for ADAS testing and development. Each car was worth 30k CAD, I don’t know the prices of the drones and warehouse rovers they had. Then I ate a poutine Korean barbecue.
Bouh! 👻 Halloween, people take it seriously there. Everybody was dressed and I got complimented for my “Belgian researcher on a foreign mission” cosplay. We had the opportunity to go have a drink at the “Foufounes électriques” a classical Montreal bar. There I encountered Bubbles from “Trailer Park Boys” disguised as a WW2 soldier. Then I ended up at the appartement of a Belgian ex-pat with another researcher from UC Louvain where we had the chance to perform a nice DJ battle. Then we checked out of the hotel, and we ate a poutine with most of the diplomatic delegation.
Finally, I visited Montreal with my previous colleagues and the last day I rented a car and went to Mont-Tremblant. I realized after an hour walking that I was off-track, so I took a shortcut to a nice viewpoint 1200m above where I started, it was challenging.
In the end, I think I liked Canada, but I liked its nature more. The people there are nice, they’re a bit like a civilized version of US Americans, without guns and with access to schools.
