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| CANADA |
BERGERONNES
If you had come here even in comparatively modern times, you wouldn't have found anything like this. The north shore of the St Lawrence beyond the Saguenay was considered to be the boundary between civilisation and the wilderness.
But with this area being rich in natural resources and the price of raw materials going through the roof, then it's in the interests of Provincial, and even National government, to improve the infrastructure of the area.
This will encourage people to stick around and will also encourage other more diversified economic activities to consider coming into the area.
You can see what I mean by looking at the road system just here. This all has the air of something comparatively recent, and also something comparatively expensive too.
It's sad for the tourist such as Yours Truly who has come out here to experience the wilderness and whatever the wilderness might have to offer and ends up on a two-lane blacktop of the type that can be found just about anywhere in the developed world.
But then again the tourist doesn't have to live out here 365 days per year and confront the challenges of mobility with which the residents have to deal, day in and day out. The height of the snow poles gives you some idea of what goes on here in winter.
So just admire the scenery instead. There are loads of lakes around here north of Tadoussac and they are all very beautiful. In fact the scenery along this part of the highway just east of the ferry is thoroughly enjoyable and if it keeps up like this it will be a wonderful drive down to the end of Highway 138.
I was here twice in May 2012. The first time, seeing as how I was about a week early for what I had in mind (more of which anon), I went on a round trip around the Saguenay River and the Lac St Jean.
The turning for Highway 172 down the Saguenay is a few miles outside Tadoussac - round about here in fact - and when I have the time I'll post the notes of the journey. And it's well-worth waiting for, I promise you.
When I was here in 2010 I was in rather a rush. I was on my way to the Trans-Labrador Highway and it was already October and so I couldn't afford the time to hang around for a good exploration if I wanted to make my tour before the weather breaks.
Nevertheless, I did stop at the Riviere des Petites Bergeronnnes to take a couple of photos. This is the view looking west, the way from which I have just come ...
... and this is the view looking east, the way in which I'm travelling. The road is over on the left edge about halfway up the image.
It loks really nice and bright here right now, which it was, but what the photo doesn't tell you is that there was a foul, bitter wind blowing along the valley and it was absolutely freezing here.
If it keeps on blowing like this, I'll be rummaging through the luggage looking for my woolly hat and stick it on my woolly head.
The St Lawrence comes to join us a little further along near the small town of Les Bergeronnes and as it was lunchtime when I passed by here in 2012, this seemed to be a reasonable place to stop for lunch.
I was intrigued by the objects in the water out there and so I put the big zoom lens onto the Nikon
Whales are quite common in this area and there's a whole whale-watching industry for the tourists back at Baie St Catherine and there's good reason for this.
The St Lawrence there is saline and tidal whereas the Saguenay is fresh-water and flowing. Fish floating down the Saguenay with the current are quite often stopped dead in their tracks when they hit the saline tidal water and as the rivers are fairly shallow at that point (we saw the big sandbank there) it's a feeding paradise for the whales.
I'm not sure if I haven't already mentioned anywhere that Highway 138 around here is called the Route des Baleines - The Whale route. And I'm certainly having a whale of a time ... "silly blubber!" - ed.
I have further company while I'm sitting here eating my butty. The Simon Schulte goes sailing ... "dieseling" - ed ... past my little spec. We haven't had a ship of the day yet for day 12 of my 2012 journey, so here's the first candidate.
She's a Liberian-registered bulk carrier of about 25,000 tonnes and was built in 1996. At 190 metres long, she's also 31 metres in breadth and has a draught of 11.25 metres, which is a lot for the St Lawrence.
And while I'm sitting here, I'm reading a press cutting from the "Platte River Reveille" from the late 1860s. I'm intrigued by that newspaper's use of the word "parenthetically" - this seems to be the Victorian way of saying "well, in brackets ...". I'm going to add that word to my vocabulary.
Back on the road again and I take a little deviation off the modern Highway 138 to visit the twin towns of Petites Bergeronnes and Grandes Bergeronnes.
The modern highway comes down that hill in the background and by-passes the towns completely. Where I'm standing is on what I imagine to be a previous trace of the highway where it runs through the town.
The claim to fame of these two towns is that in August they hold a 4-day Festival of the Whale. As we've noticed, whales are not uncommon around here. Bring your own harpoon and you might be lucky enough to go on a Nantucket sleigh-ride.
A bergeronne is apparently a type of bird - not that I would know because I have no interest whatever in bird-watching (birds of the winged and feathered variety that is, he said parenthetically). Champlain saw thousands of them around here when he passed by in 1603 and so gave the place its name.
The first colonists arrived here in 1844 and a flour mill was set up at Petites Bergeronnes and a sawmill at Grandes Bergeronnes.
But never mind bergeronnes and whales and sawmills and the like. I've found something much more interesting.
In Europe, this vehicle would be a Chrysler Horizon, or a Talbot Horizon, or a Simca Horizon, because name-badges meant nothing on these cars. It's actually a descendant of the Hillman Avenger (which were in fact better cars than their reputation suggested), otherwise known as the Plymouth Cricket.
They date from the early 1980s and are quite rare beasts indeed. I don't think that very many even made it to double figures in the UK, such poor cars that they where, although when I moved to live in Europe in 1992 I remember seeing a few still on the roads.
Thinking about it though ... "which you usually do" - ed ... I'm sure that I've seen one over here in North America and I wish I could remember where.
30 years old for a European Chrysler, or Talbot, or anything to do with what used to be the Rootes Group or whatever you wanted to call it back in those days is just totally astonishing and the owner of this vehicle should take a bow.
Now we've seen this ship before, haven't we? Just about 10 kilometres before Les Escoumins the road rises up over a spur and presents something of a panorama of the St Lawrence estuary with the south shore away in the distance.
And what do we find dieseling past us in the late afternoon in September 2011 is the ship that has been following us down the St Lawrence all day.
I can't read the name from here (Euronav is the name of the operating company, he said parenthetically ) but it's some kind of bulk carrier by the look of it. I can't tell you any more about it right now but I might be able to find out more about it in a little while.
"How do you know?"
"Easy! I have read the script!"
There is said to be one of the most stunning views along the St Lawrence River from a little sightseeing pavilion at the end of Cap de Bon Desir, midway between Bergeronnes and Les Escoumins. The turning is just after the 603 km marker. However, this is what I find after the long drive down the road.
Mostly I'm too late for the season but having dealt with that issue by coming to Canada in May 2012 it now seems that I'm too early. I just cant win
As an aside you'll notice that every now and again I'll be giving you the mile-marker signs, measured from the western direction travelling east as I am doing.
The reason for this is that very shortly, civilisation will be thinning out and so other landmarks, such as towns and villages, will be few and far between. Giving the mile-marker (I haven't really forgotten that we are talking kilometres here, he said parenthetically) points will be a much-more precise measurement than saying something like "about 30kms after the town of X".
However it isn't all doom and gloom down the road to Cap de Bon Desir. There are some points where there are excellent views along the coast and while I might not be lucky with the timing of my voyage, from a tourist-trap point of view, I certainly am with the foliage as there are no leaves to clutter and obstruct the view.
That's looking back towards Tadoussac in the direction from which I have been travelling today, and on every other visit down here too. The beaches along here are renowned for their quality, as we discussed on a previous page, and there's a good one just down there.
Just here is an interesting cairn that marks the spot where the Jesuit Father Laure constructed a chapel in 1723. The Jesuits were amongst the most vigorous of the Evangelising priests amongst the First-Nation Canadians and some of them, such as Brebeuf and Jogues to give just two examples of many, paid with their lives after a gruesome torture.
But it wasn't just that which caught my eye. The plaque went on to say other things to that raised a little eyebrow. It states, crudely translated by Yours Truly, that Basque whalers "from time immemorial and then the French and the Indians" came near to this place in order to hunt the whales.
I find interesting to see that it is slowly becoming more and more accepted in the mainstream to believe that between the departure of the Vikings, whenever they finally left, and the arrival of Cabot in 1497, the Basques and maybe other Europeans too had been to North America and that Columbus was not the "modern discoverer" of the continent at all.
And why put "the Indians" after the French rather than before - and before the Basques as well, if it comes to that?
Is this pre-Columbian European heritage of North America confined principally to the Province of Québec or do the other provinces do so too? From what I've seen on my travels, the Quebecois are not slow in jumping on a bandwagon in order to make a political point, especially where the British are concerned.
Accepting the Basque presence here prior to Cabot's voyage of discovery in 1497 would certainly undermine the English - and later, British - position here in North America, something that would certainly please the Quebecois
Another interesting speculation is that the Basques and the Norse might have met each other here or hereabouts. It is certainly a fact that in 1347 a Norse longship from Greenland loaded with timber "from Markland" was blown off course and ended up in Iceland. The only place from which such a load of timber could have originated is somewhere quite close to a seaway in eastern Canada.
Furthermore, remains discovered near to the mouth of the Albany River and Lake Nipigon have been identified with some certainty by some experts (but not by any means by others) as belonging to an expedition of Norse led by Pal Knutsson in 1360.
There are written records to show that the Norse were still active in Hvalsey in Greenland at least as late as 1408, and even in the deteriorating climate at the start of the Little Ice Age, there's no reason whatever to suppose that they had abandoned their voyages across the Davis Strait. They were still building houses certainly at the start of the 15th Century so would still need timber, and "Markland" would be the only place to go to fetch it.
Abandoning another good story for a while, it's time to fuel up. For that, I need to turn off on the Rue Tremblay and there's an astonishing number of those around here.
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