CANADA - THE SAGUENAY

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So here I am again next morning and I don't feel like it very much as yet.

And what a night to remember. I crashed out on the bed at about 21:30 but I was too busy wrestling with my conscious or something like that to fall straight asleep and it seemed as if I was awake for hours.

When I did finally go to sleep, I spent the night having weird dreams that starred Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes - the Jeremy Brett one - and ended up sleeping right the way through until the alarm sounded.

Trying to come to terms with the morning, I wished that I had felt as good as the view from out of the Dodge's windscreen. I'd certainly chosen an excellent place to park up for the night and there were no complaints on that score.

In an attempt to freshen myself up, I went for a little walk along the old road. And the view from here, looking down to the modern road and the riviere St Marguerite as they pass through the canyon was quite spectacular too.

It was also very nice of the big lorry down there to co-operate with me and pose for the photograph. It adds a touch of colour and authenticity to the photo.

After making myself some breakfast and with a hot mug of coffee in my sweaty little mitt I hit the road for the day, still somewhat half-asleep. But I don't travel too far into the canyon as once more I'm brought smartly to attention by another spectacular view.

With a lay-by quite handy for once on the bank of the river I can stop and admire the view. This is how it looks from the direction from whence I have come.

The view in the forward direction is equally as attractive, especially if you include the Dodge in the photo, and I do have to say that it's an added attraction to come here before the leaves are out on the trees and spoiling the view.

And just a word about the river itself. It has something of a repuation of being an excellent salmon river, although that statement sounds just a little fishy to me.

The thing about canyons is, as the actress once famously said to the bishop, that the farther in you go, the better it becomes, and so I'm quite looking forward to the remainder of this little deviation.

A few kilometres further on there's another interesting view that is well-worth photographing. This is Lake Parsimony and the interesting thing about this is that despite us being in early May, it will not have escaped your notice that the lake is thoroughly frozen up.

That is of course not to under-value the scenery in the background, which would have been spectacular had we had some sunshine to go with it. Nevertheless, we are having some lovely clouds and that should give you a clue as to the weather that we are having. I was right about not going too far down that dirt road last night.

Continuing our journey, there's a helpful sign directing us down a turning to the left towards the Saguenay Fjord. We can't pass up this opportunity and so I head off down there for a quick butcher's.

And I'm glad that I did too, because this really is quite spectacular. And it wasn't the best view either - merely the only one with anywhere convenient to park. That's the story of a photographer's life here in Canada.

Where I've landed is at the village of Sainte Rose du Nord. Founded in 1838, it has 400 or so inhabitants and is said to be one of the most beautiful villages in the Province. All I can say is that if it looks like this on the gloomy kind of day that we are having, it really must be something special when the sun is out.

No mention of the village is complete without mentioning, for the benefit of pyromaniacs (of which there are more than just a few amongst us) the fact that Ste Rose du Nord has followed the usual Quebecois tradition of suffering a major fire. In 1982 the church burnt down.

The one that you see in the photo is the modern replacement.

The fjord here is in some kind of Y shape and the village is situated at the end of the stalk. This is the view looking north-westwards, the general direction in which we will be travelling.

I've travelled considerably in Scotland and seen plenty of lochs in my time, but I don't ever recall seeing anywhere at a Scottish loch that looked anything like as good as this.

I've never been to Norway, but from what I've read, this is how a Norwegian loch might look and so I shall add Norway onto the itinerary one of these days.

By the way, did I mention anywhere that the Saguenay Fjord is the southernmost fjord to be found in the Northern hemisphere?

This is the south-eastern arm of the fjord, the direction from which I've travelled.

I'm standing on the quayside here taking these photographs, and right by my shoulder is a sign telling me that shell-fishing here is interdit and the carrying away of shellfish is punishable too. Apparently this is due to levels of contamination in the water and this is rather a sad state of affairs.

It's not the first time that we have encountered signs such as this either, as regular readers of this rubbish will testify.

Another thing that is interdit is plongée sous-marin, so don't bother bringing your scuba outfit.

If that's not enough, the sign tells me that the quayside is under video-surveillance. It looks as if the Fascists have arrived, even in a quiet little out-of-the-way place like this.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s I travelled quite often to the Soviet Union and one thing that always stuck in my mind, as it did in the minds of many others, was that on every street corner there would be the soldier with his notebook and radio, noting and reporting the details of everything that was going on and everything that everyone was doing.

"It's a form of oppression to keep the population under tight control" said a very well-known British politician with whom at one time I had more than a passing acquaintance. "This is what happens in a totalitarian country".

And so we in the West spent 45 years overthrowing the Soviet Union and bringing an illusion of freedom to those east of the Iron Curtain (it's all very well saying that you now have freedon to travel to other countries, but with the collapse of the Eastern economies and unbelievable levels of unemployment, no-one has the money to go anywhere so it's all totally meaningless) and then what do we do?

Answer - yes, we impose the same level of Soviet totalitarian control upon our Western population, only with CCTV cameras rather than with soldiers on the streets. When is some major Western politician going to admit that maybe the Soviets did have a point.

Many people argue that with the increase in crime and terrorism issues, the cameras are needed to protect the public. But firstly, there aren't any terrorism issues per se, as I will explain in a minute. It's all an illusion hyped up by the press and by the Governments.

Compare what is happening in modern times with what was happening in the 1970s when (white, Christian) Irish terrorists, financed by US interests were waging uncontrolled war on the civilian population of the United Kingdom and in the 1960s when (white, Christian) Francophone terrorists were waging war opon the civilian population of Canada.

The Irish are still doing it too , which shows you just how effective the security cameras are, and the only reason that the Francophone terrorist aren't doing it is that the Canadian Government cravenly surrendered.

As for my point about there not being any terrorism issues per se don't forget that we were talking about the events of 11th September 2001 and that was one issue that affected the USA and only the USA - and the USA is considered by many to be the biggest terrorist nation in the world.

The events of 11th September 2001 were nothing whatever to do with anyone else and yet the rest of the Western world joined in with Bush's declaration of war on Islam, (it was not Islam that declared war on the rest of the Western World), and then launched a whole raft of attacks in the Middle East that was nothing more than naked aggression.

And who is so stupid (apart from a Western politician of course) to declare war on a particular group of people and not expect them to fight back?

Make no mistake, all of these modern terrorism issues in the Western world would not have happened had the West not declared war - the West has simply brought them upon itself and serve it right.

White-skinned terrorists are out there of course but in the modern Western world, a thousand white-skinned Christian atrocities won't attract anything like the headlines that one brown-skinned Islamic atrocity might attract.

And as for the thousands of atrocities that are being committed in Palestine by the Zionists, the modern Western world is too afraid to say anything for fear of being called anti-Semitic and losing the Jewish vote.

It's all a total nonsense, but nevertheless the Western media and the politicians have frightened their citizens into a most astonishing level or paranoia.

But it does have its purpose. "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country"

That was of course Hermann Goering, and it makes you wonder what else our Western leaders have learnt from the Nazis.

But don't Goering's comments bring to mind the treatment of the Dixie Chicks? You couldn't look for a better example of "denounc(ing) the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger"

The Western governments have terrorised their own people and frightened them into submission.

On the subject of Goering, back in the 1940s when the UK was nightly being blown to bits by Goering's Luftwaffe and the Nazi V-weapons, the British people never panicked and never lost their nerve.

And the reason?

Simple. The reason was "humour".

British people back in those dim and distant days had a sense of humour and they took the mickey out of everything that happened - even out of the most desperate situations

If you laugh at something or someone, you subject them to ridicule and once you do that you can't possibly be afraid of them. And the more you laugh at them, the more you subject them to ridicule and in the end they become figures of fun and you can't take them seriously.

Anyone remember Richmal Crompton's Just William stories and
"Herr Hitler? You can't call him Herr Hitler - that sounds like he's a girl. We'll have to call him Him Hitler, like Me Tarzan and You Jane"?

And who can be afraid of this army ?

The British Government wanted the population to laugh at the Germans and treat them to ridicule. It kept up the morale of the population and encouraged them to think positively.

Today, though, you aren't encouraged to laugh and joke about terrorists and the enemy. Try it and see what happens. Tell the customs official in the airport queue to be careful with your bag in case it goes off.

There's no danger at all that the country will be overwhelmed, yet the Government doesn't want you to think positively and keep up your morale.

It wants you to be dispirited and disillusioned and have a collapsing moral fibre so that it can turn the screw on you and frighten you into giving up more of your freedoms for this totally unnecessary security.

Like anything else - it's all about control. Western nations are imposing more and more controls on their citizens and the West is becoming worse than East Germany ever was.

And what this has to do with our drive around the Saguenay Fjord, I don't have the slightest clue whatever.

But one thng that I will say is that while I was using one of my eyes to review all of this, my other eye picked up this news article . The cynic inside me ... "inside you, Eric? Perish the thought" - ed ... made me wonder what is the next freedom that is about to be lifted from the British public.

Moving on from yet another good rant, we cross the quayside to a typical North-American diner. It's been quite a long while since I've set foot in one of those, and it might have been even longer had I come here a few days earlier, for the place was closed for the winter until 1st May.

One thing that I can say about the diner was that it served one of the best coffees that I've ever had in North America and that made me feel so much better. If you've been following my antics for any length of time, you'll know that normally I wouldn't even consider washing the car windscreen in what passes for coffee over here.

Ah-hah! This is quite interesting. Many of these school buses are built by a company called Thomas, and so that company is well-worth checking out for a time-expired diesel-powered school bus, as one of these - a 12-seater one - will make a superb mobile home for me on my travels, if I remove most of the mirrors and lights.

The regulations surrounding school buses are in my opinion quite absurd. I don't believe in cocooning children from their environment.The world is a cruel and unforgiving place and the earlier a child realises it, then the quicker and the better a child will come to terms with it.

Children need to learn to cope with modern traffic conditions, not to be insulated from them, otherwise they are going to be in for a few nasty surprises when they are older.

The mains plug on the front of the bus, right by right-hand mirror, caught my eye. Knowing nothing about the configuration of North-American diesels, I reckon that it might be for a built-in pre-heater for the block and for the fuel as well.

When the temperature has dropped to -30°C outside (and that's on a good day) in the middle of winter and you need to start your diesel bus, that kind of thing will certainly help.

It's much safer than the memories that I have of my father during the savage winter of 1963 in the UK, lighting a fire underneath the fuel tank of his lorry to unfreeze the diesel. As Sir Daniel Gooch said 140 years ago when reminiscing over the early days of rail operation on the Great Western Railway, "what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?"

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