CANADA ST LAWRENCE NORTH SHORE

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Having said goodbye to the remains of the arboriduc at Sault-au-Moutons, we rejoin our vehicle.

Our route along Highway 138 takes us past a shop called the Quincaillerie Tremblay - Tremblay's Hardware Store. We did mention that Tremblay is the archetypical Quebecois surname, such as Smith in England, Murphy in Ireland and Dupont in France.

And there is also a sign just here to tell me that the road that we are on - Highway 138, is called the Route des Baleines - the "Route of Whales". That's "Whales" with an "H", by the way - we haven't travelled that far east yet.

All that I can say is that we are going to have a Whale of a time along here.

I was told in some advertising stuff that I had seen somewhere that the town of Portneuf-sur-Mer is the epitome of beauty and tranquility, and it will seduce me by its warm welcome and the splendour of its landscape.

So when I arrived here in 2010 after my visit to Sault-au-Mouton, I found major construction work in progress, every road in the place dug up, and not a soul about. Do they have a Trades Descriptions Act in Canada?

At least I can show you a photo to prove what I've been saying about the lack of immeubles and batiments here in Quebec. If you want to see the mayor, you have to go to the Edifice Municipal.

Assuming, of course, that you can negotiate all of the roadworks here. Moving around the town was almost impossible.

When I came here in 2010 I remember this square as being all in pieces and under repair, and when I came back here in 2012 it wasn't all that much better then. I coudn't see what all of the fuss was about.

I'll take you this year to see the simple church which, I believe, is dedicated to Saint Anne. She was the grandmother of Jesus and the patron Saint of mariners.

You can see our Edifice Municipal to the left in the background.

Next stop in the town this year was the cemetery - right in the dead centre of the town of course. We'll go looking for Tremblays as it seems to be quite a common surname around here.

Well, there's quite a collection of Tremblays here, including a Miss Tremblay who married a Mr Girard and of her children, one son died at 31, the second at 41 and the third one died at 25 years of age. That's rather sad, isn't it?

But then, losing offspring was unfortunately quite a common thing. The mortality rate was a lot higher back in those days.

And there was a woman in Crewe, my home town, who had a few sons and they all served together on the same ship in the Royal Navy. The ship was sunk during the war and she lost the whole lot at one fell swoop.

The principal street in Portneuf-sur-Mer is called rue Principale, and if you need a translation into English for that, it is "Main Street".

And as I'm driving around the place (because in 2012 I can drive around it a little better than I could 18 months previously) I'm struck by all of the things around here that seem to be Monseigneur Bouchard this and Monseigneur Bouchard that.

Just who was Monseigneur Bouchard when he was at home, if he ever was?

The answer to that is that Joseph Hidola Mederic Bouchard came here in 1922 to serve with a religious mission that was here, becoming parish priest in 1925 and administering to his flock until his death in 1962.

So for those of you who are following your Sat-Navs and, having visited the town, are looking to rejoin Highway 138 at the earliest possibility, this is what you'll find. Because this is where the The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav that I have brought me - right up a gum tree.

So what you need to do is to retace your steps and look for a sign.

The saddest part of all of this is that I remember doing exactly the same thing in 2010. You would think that I would have learnt.

Down there, you can see where the old road would have formerly brought you to. I didn't have much time to have a good look around down there when I drove past in 2010 and in May 2012 I seem to have been sidetracked when I passed by.

Fir that reason I couldn't tell you took much about it - whether there was a ferry there in the past or whether there was a bridge. Whatever it might have been, I reckoned that it would have been more interesting than travelling on the modern road.

However, things were different in 2015. When I came along the north shore of the St Lawrence I'd set aside plenty of time to catch up on what I had missed. With my curiosity having been aroused about what there was to see at the end of the dead end in Portneuf, I took a drive down here.

My route took me through a campsite and up to the river and here I am. At least I know where the other end of the road comes out. The steel barrier that stopped me back in 2010 and 2012 is up at the top of the hill over there.

But I still can't work out whether it was a ferry or a bridge that was here before they built the by-pass. It does look very ferry-ish to me.

And here's a photo of the St Lawrence from where I was. This was a good place to stop and eat my butty and to have a little relax. And with one thing leading to another (and once you get started, you've no idea how many other things there are) and I had a crash-out for half an hour. too

And in the background, just offshore, is a sandbank.You can actually see it better in the photo that I took from up on top in 2010. This sandbank bears a much better resemblance to the mythical sandbank that I saw from the air in 2011 . When I return home, I'll have to check with the aerial photo that I took, and see what I think.

Which I did, and it looked encouraging. But then I found an even better candidate further on

When I was on my way out to Labrador in October 2010, coming towards me on the road near Forestville and heading in the direction of Quebec was one of these mobile houses, the kind that can be picked up and taken away on trailers for delivery elsewhere.

And on the way back from the ferry at Godbout in November 2011 I encountered another one - the one that you see here - in more-or-less the same spot but going on the opposite direction towards Baie-Comeau.

This of course does beg the question. Why didn't the owners simply swap houses?

We arrive in Forestville and why the town is of interest to me is, well, not actually the town, which is situated on a ridge at the top of the flood plain, but what there is here along the shore of the St Lawrence.

There's a few things that I want specifically to see that have brought me down here, and the stunning view of the little bay here, the river and the far shore away in the distance is quite simply an added bonus.

Even more of an added bonus was a fine example of a Canadian Marching Woman. This is a strange Canadian phenomenon which anyone who has ever visited Canada cannot have failed to notice, and one day I'll take a video of one such example to show everyone else exactly what I mean.

You've probably noticed throughout our 2012 visit to date that there are no leaves as yet on the trees.

That's good news for photography of course, and why I chose to come here at this time of year - nothing to obscure the view. But it won't be long though - everything is well in bloom by now and in another 2 weeks it won't be anything like this.

But I'm intrigued by the growth here on this plant. I wonder what it is and whether it is healthy.

The first object that we need to inspect is a little hydro-electric plant on the riviere Sault au Cochon - "Leaping Pig River;" down near the water's edge. The photo of the little bay from the top of the road will have given you some idea of the steepness of the slope, and you'll see the fall of water in the background.

The supply of electricty was something that was essential down here, because we are currently, although you might not believe it, at what maybe 60 years ago was one of the most important industrial sites around here.

So, do you know what this is?

If you don't, then I'll tell you that it's an arboriduc - or rather, what's left of one because the section that passes over the roadway has been removed to allow high vehicles to pass.

And do you know what its purpose was?

That I can explain to you too. The root of duc comes from the Latin word ducere meaning "to lead" and the arbori comes from the Latin word arbor meaning "tree".

And so you have viaducs - structures that lead roads over gaps, and aquaducs - structures that lead water over gaps, and so an arboriduc is a structure that leads trees over gaps.

The principle of the arboriduc was invented by someone called JS Haines of Genoa, Nevada, USA and came to prominence during the mine wars on the Comstock Lode in the 1870s when two miners, by the name of Mackay and Fair, needed half a million feet of timber every month to shore up their deep gallery and the nearest viable forest was 15 miles away and 2,000 feet higher up in the Sierra Nevada.

The principle of the thing is that the arboriduc would have been filled with water, such as from a diverted stream in the same way that a mill-race would do, and logs are pushed into it at the top of the bank to float all the way down here to the port at the bottom of the slope.

The "log flume" ride that you have seen at many amusement parks throughout the world is actually based on the idea of the arboriduc, and the concrete stumps that we saw an hour or two ago just outside Longue Rive would be the bases of the pillars of one of these.

And, if contemporary reports are anything to go by, riding the arboriduc of Mackay and Fair would have knocked into a cocked hat anything that you would have encountered at a fairground. We are told of logs travelling at over 60mph and flying as high as 70 feet into the air.

As an aside, we have met Mackay before. He took his money from the mines on the Comstock Lode and went on to other things, including the Commercial Cable Company, some of which we encountered at Canso when we were there in 2010 .

The arboriduc was 1.5 kms long when it was complete and was built in 1942 when the port complex here was built. Its purpose was to provide a shipment point for timber to be sent to the UK during the dark days of World War II when all of the Scandinavian timber was under German control.

The commercial timber industry began here in 1845 by Edward Slevin, who employed about 100 workers. However he was beset by all kinds of difficulties and in 1849 surrendered his permits to William Price, whose enterprise became the famous Price Brothers operation.

In 1854 the logging business effectively closed down, and it was not until 1870 that the three sons of William Price recommenced the operation. They changed the name of the settlement here from Sault-au-Cochon to Forrest-ville William Grant Forrest had been here as an assistant during the initial operations, and returned to the site in 1870 as General Manager.

This phase of the operations lasted until 1895, and the site and its buildings were abandoned to the tender mercies of Mother Nature.

We mentioned the Clarke Brothers when we were at Longue-Rive. They moved their operation to here in 1937 and at its heydey there were 2,000 people employed by the timber industry here in Forestville.

On 25th July 1975 their company was sold to Reed Paper and this was the start of the modernisations and the mechanisations. When the plant was sold on to Japanese interests in 1988 there were just 200 people still here, and the plant closed down in 1992.

The scaling back of operations saw an exodus from the town. Most of the inhabitants moved away - taking their houses with them, one imagines - and today the population numbers about 3,500.

Ironically, despite all of the modernisations and mechanisations, the arboriduc was still in use right up to the end.

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That's the port over there and it still has some use. You'll notice the conveyor belt system, and that's principally for loading sand.

The sand from here has an excellent quality for making the best and strongest concrete in Canada. So much so that the concrete used to build the Confederation Bridge over to Prince Edward Island was mixed using sand from here.

There's also a ferry over to Rimouski on the southern shore but that's of a very seasonal nature so don't count on it if you plan your voyages around the fringes of the tourist season.

To pass the time back in 2010 (not that I had much to spare) I had a good chat about my adventures and my proposed trip round the Trans-Labrador Highway with the very friendly woman in the kiosk. She told me as an aside that the ferry would be stopping in a day or two's time - I'd be too late on my return trip.

And when I was here in early May 2012 I was actually a day or two early for the ferry. Its planned opening date was 10th May and so I made a pencilled note to come back here to cross the the southern shore.

But cruel and wicked fate conspired against me, as you will find out as you read further on.

Another thing that I noted was that there was some formal camping pitches down here at the beach-side. Bring your own tent or camper (or in my case, your kitted-out Dodge Grand Caravan) for just $18 per night.

But before I leave Forestville to resume my journey east, there is one thing that I want to say.

As I've been driving along the north shore of the St Lawrence, one thing that I have been noticing is that there is an enormous proportion - probably as much as 80% or so -of motor vehicles around here that are just ordinary private cars.

I wasn't expecting to see much in the way of huskies and dog-sleds, to be honest, but I was expecteing this area to be crawling with 4-wheel-drive trucks, and hefty 4-wheel-drive trucks at that.

This seems to indicate that, with the predominance of ordinary, basic saloon cars around here, there can't be too many problems with moving round here on the roads in the depths of winter.

You may remember that I was a few miles upstream from here at Tadoussac during the winter of 2001-02 and I was moving around reasonably-comfortably in a small saloon car.

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