 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
HAVRE ST PIERRE
Last night was spent nowhere really exciting. I'm behind a hedge down a dirt road not too far from the River Ainsley, somewhere round about kilometre-marker 1205 on Highway 138.
It was rather chiily during the evening and so I slipped into bed, fully clothed, in order to watch a film on the computer and to warm myself up before I started to write up my notes of the previous day's adventure, but it didn't quite happen like that.
After tucking up in bed, the next thing that I remember was that it was 06:30 in the morning and the compouter battery was flat, I was fully clothed, sweating in bed and it was a glorious warm sunny morning outside.
I remember nothing whatsoever about the night - I must have been out like a light.
I had a quick breakfast and a coffee and then hit the road early, with the intention of charging up the battery on the computer as I drive along. I'll find a decent place along the route where I can stop and write up the notes.
Not too far along the route as I approach Havre St Pierre, what do I find but a railway track? That was unexpected.
And to make life even more exciting, the red lights are flashing. That means that there's a train coming and so I prepare the camera and wait for the train.
After 10 minutes of this I become bored and leave the car to go for a wander around. No train coming, of course, but there was a group of guys working on the line with one of these track tamper things, and because it was so early in the morning, they weren't keeping a lookout for road traffic.
I had quite a chat with them about the railway line. Apparently it's a private mineral line that goes 40 kilometres into the interior to a company-owned mine.
It seems that I'm going to be having a long wait to see a train because they told me that it's a "service on demand" and the trains run something like once every Preston Guild. Still, it's exciting all the same.
A short distance further on, there's a right turn off Highway 138 to go into the town of Havre St Pierre, but there's a sign telling me that the town of Natashquan is 151 kilometres further on down the Highway.
Is that the first time I've seen Natashquan mentioned on a sign? ... "No it isn't. We saw Natasquan mentioned on a road sign at Sept-Iles" - ed.
First thing that we encounter along our road to the town centre is a small office belonging to Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto is one of the world's largest mining corporations and so its presence here will explain a lot about the mine and the railway line.
But I'm not interested in the mining company - well, not for the moment anyway.
My attention is focused on the machinery here, such as this Bo-Bo diesel locomotive parked up outside. It's signwritten to indicate that it's been working for the QiT Fer et Titane company - Iron and Titanium, that is.
For once, my Jane's Train Recognition Guide
This probably means that it was the locomotive that Noah used to pull the Ark down from the top of Mount Ararat, or maybe the QiT purchased it from Egypt after the Pharoahs had finished building the pyramids.
If you know more about this locomotive than I do, please .
As for the QiT, that represents the Quebec Iron and Titanium company, which is now part of Rio Tinto. The company's mine, a huge open-cast hole in the ground, is at lac Tio and is said to be the largest source of ilmenite in the world with known reserves for at least 50 years.
Ilmenite is the ore from which iton-titanium oxide, chemical symbol FeTiO3 is extracted. Bearing that in mind, one can therefore understand how lac Tio was given its name.
Over 2000 people are employed by the company, of which about 300 are based here. They send the ore to the compan's smelter at Sorel-Tracy, and so that must be the one that we keep on encountering further upriver near the nuclear power station.
And this will become significant in a short while.
These two lorries - now these are much more like it. The smaller one, a Euclid, looks all of the 1940s to me I would take that home to Europe with me tomorrow if I could. It is simply beautiful.
Anyone who has ever read the adventure books, such as The Land God Gave to Cain
Knowing nothing whatever about Euclid trucks, I contacted Barry Merritt of the British company Marton Dump Truck UK, and he told me everything that I wanted to know.
The larger truck is a Terex, an R45 model B10LD. It's powered by a General Motors 16V-71n diesel engine with an Allison CLBT-5960 automatic transmission. Barry forgot to tell me the driver's name though.
As for the smaller truck, it's a Euclid Model R15 B7FD 15-ton truck powered by a Cummins engine and with a Fuller manual gearbox. Not that I would know anything about it, but it would probably be something like a six-speed crash box with no synchromesh and you would have to be a real man to drive one of these.
I wasn't too far out at all with the date either. Barry reckons that it's from approximately 1950, and it is something of a collector's item. Well, I would collect it tomorrow, given half a chance and given the means of bringing it home. I think that it's gorgeous.
So thank you, Barry Merritt and the Marton Dump Truck UK company.
As for the Terex though, I've encountered some of their stuff before when I was on that army base, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, in 2005 . Mind you, their medium tractor 82-30M looks nothing like this.
The guys up the road repairing the railway line told me that it was a freight line, and so I was quite surprised to see this collection of passenger rolling stock parked up in the yard at the back of the office.
The silver carriage over there has "Virginia Railway Express" written on the side of it. The "Virginia Railway Express", is the company that provides rail services to commuters from Northern Virginia travelling to Washington DC., so it's come quite a long way to reach here.
And not by rail either.
I went over to peer through the fence at the carriage because something had caught my eye. And sure enough, the carriage seems to be fitted with outboard disc brakes. I can't say that I've noticed that before on any other railway carriage.
There's some kind of label on the side of this carriage - "Le Niapiskau" - and also the QiT logo. There are people on board too who look as if they are cleaning the inside. Are they going somewhere? It's a shame that I'm somewhat pressed for time.
A few days ago, I mentioned that I was surprised that most of the cars that I'd been seeing were just normal, ordinary saloon cars.
That's certainly not the case here. We're finding more and more 4x4 trucks around here, and big ones too like Rams and F150s. Conditions must be deteriorating from this point onwards.
Mind you, it was only until comparatively recently that Havre St Pierre was the terminus of Highway 138. Beyond here, there wasn't much at all in the way of infrastructure until November 1996 when the Highway was extended to Natashquan.
In the centre of the town, I found that I had company.
It was kicking-out at the Quebec universities a couple of days ago and as I was pulling up on the quayside to park, this bus drifted in to town. It's probably doing the navette - the shuttle bus up and down the North Shore for the students who live around here. There's no other way of them getting to University from what I have seen.
Well, there is, as I was to find out later. But more of that anon when we discuss the Forgotten Coast.
Like the ship that was feeling poorly, I had come here to go to the doc(k)s - and for a couple of reasons too.
While I was taking a photograph of the port installations, some guy came out of his office which was on stlits in the carpark and shouted something at me, gesticulating wildly from the top of the steps.
Thinking that I might be doing something dreadfully illegal - because these days with all of this security nonsense you have no idea just how paranoid western people have become - I went over to see what he wanted of me.
And as I drew closer (and I'm not much good at art so it was a terrible likeness of closer) I could hear him say
"Behind you! Look behind you!" - well actually he didn't - he said
"Derriere vous! Regardez - derriere vous!". We're in Quebec, remember.
And so I turned round and regardé derrière moi and what did I see? Only an enormous whale cavorting to itself in and around the port installations.
I duly expressed my appreciation to the aforementioned person. It was nice of him to draw my attention to the whale but I was just a little put out that he instantly recognised me as a tourist. That kind of thing hardly makes my day, as I'm sure you understand.
I know next-to-nothing about natural history and so I've no idea what kind of whale he might be. If you do know, please . I shall be grateful.
I can tell you one thing about him though, and that is that judging by the jet of air that he's emitting, he's had a good helping of baked beans for breakfast.
I'm surprised that the whale clearly has no inhibitions about strutting his stuff so close to what is a busy harbour. It probably enjoys the audience and the company. I was half-expecting him to perform a couple of somersaults
Talking of busy harbours, I was here the following night (but I'm displaying the photos in place order rather than date order for the sake of continuity) and there was this enormous ship just leaving the quayside.
It had evidently taken on board a load of ilmenite at the wharf and so would be on its way to Sorel-Tracy to unload.
Of course, the whale wasn't here performing.
The ship is painted in the colours of the Canadian Shipping Lines and she's called the Oakglen. That immediately rang a few bells with me.
And after pondering for a little while - yes! I was right! We have seen her before. Here she is in all her glory, moored up at Sorel-Tracy by the foundry there 12 days ago, presumably unloading a previous load of ilmenite.
What a small world!
Now that the coach from Laval University has cleared off, I can have a look at this interesting building that is just across the road from where I've parked.
It's the Place des Artisans which is something like a co-operative where the local artisans can meet and hold expositions and exhibitions, all that kind of thing.
And I'd love to know more about the building in which it's situated. That looks interesting enough on its own.
You'll notice the church in the background. That dates from as recently as 1962 and replaced one from 1867 that was demolished the previous year. We aren't told that the earlier church had suffered a conflagration, and if it had managed to survive without suffering a serious fire, it would be something quite unique here in Quebec.
Behind it are the satellite dishes for telecommunication purposes. No wonder that there was such a good mobile phone reception here. It's the best that I've encountered along the North Shore, and not before time too.
There's a bar next to the Place des Artisans and so I enquired of a passing yokel whether he knew if there was internet access there.
Not only was he a local yokel but a very vocal local yokel and he told me that there was public free wi-fi access in the tourism pavilion right behind me.
And probably a power point too, which was far more interesting seeing as how the laptop battery was as yet far from being charged, so I consequently toddled off there instead, even if it meant no coffee.
So having ascertained that he was indeed correct and that it had everything that I required, including the power point, I went back to the Dodge to make myself a coffee and then dug myself in at the tourism pavilion for a long seige.
It's been a good few days since I've had internet access and I had a huge pile of images and notes to upload, and piles of e-mails to check.
The view out of the back window of the tourism pavilion was quite interesting too. The town seems to be quite modern in places, even though there hasn't been a major fire since 1926 and there's quite a nice marina for pleasure yachts too.
Not very much in the way of visitors though. It's still early in the season and despite the misleading impression that you might gain from the weather, the Gulf of St Lawrence is still iced up further out and that will inhibit access.
I'd no idea that it would take me so long to do what I had to do, but eventually I managed to resume my journey.
And this signpost here just outside the town was quite interesting. It showed the sections of Highway 138 all the way to the end of the line some little way beyong Natashquan, and the purpose of the traffic light indication is that a light will flash red when the relevant section of the road is closed by adverse weather.
It's the kind of thing that you see on mountain passes and the like. Anyway, at least it informs me that my next stop is at Baie-Johan-Beetz, whoever Johan Beetz was when he was at home, if he ever was.
No, Baie-Johan-Beetz is not my next stop.
There's another one of these belvederes a couple of kilometres out of the town and from here there's an excellent view back towards Havre St Pierre. I reckon that this will be as good a place as any for us to stop, eat our butties (we spent hours in Havre St Pierre - I even made myself a second mug of coffee) and admire the view while I tell you all about the town.
It seems that with all of the excitement down at the harbour I have overlooked to do so.
This is not the same photograph as the previous one by the way. This was taken the following day when I had to return here to withdraw a pile of money - but more of that anon.
So returning to our moutons as the French say, if you are looking on any old maps for Havre-St-Pierre you will probably find that it won't be mentioned. You might find a place called Eskimo Point, because that is, apparently, the name of the sandspit out there and this was the name by which the town in the bay was known until 1927, although the Post Office had changed its name to St Peter's Harbour in 1924.
The area owed its original name to the fact that when Europeans first came here they noted the presence of an Inuit settlement.
As far as written history goes, the earliest mention of the area in contemporary journals was in 1631 when the concession was awarded to a certain Jacques de Lalande Gayon and Louis Jolliet. Some of this concession was ceded to Francois Bissot de la Riviere in 1661 and remained nominally in the hands of the Bissot family until 1791 when it passed into the hands of William Grant, Peter Stuart and Thomas Dunn.
In 1803 the concession was leased by the North West Company and on 21st June 1821 when that company merged with the Hudsons Bay Company, that latter company took over.
The system of concessions (the Seigneuries) was abolished on 18th December 1854 and in May 1857 a goelette brought the first recorded European settlers, Acadians from Georgia in the USA who had come via the Ile de la Madeleine, to the area, quickly followed by others.
A small chapel, dedicated to St Peter (it was the Day of St Peter, 29th June, that the first mass was celebrated here, back in 1857), was opened in 1860 and the parish registers were begun, although the parish was not formally created until 1872. In 1867 the chapel was replaced by a church. The Post Office was opened in 1872 and led to the creation of the Municipality.
By 1923 there were 975 people living here, but it was the discovery of the ilmenite in 1941 and its exploitation, which is claimed to be Canada's only titanium mine and which began at the end of the decade, that gave the impetus to growth. By 1990 there were more than 3,300 people living here. Although the population has slightly declined in recent years, a further population growth is under way, for reasons that I'll go into a little later.
I was surprised to learn that the mine is not the largest employer in the area. That honour goes to the local hospital, apparently the only one on the Lower North Shore east of Sept-Iles. The mine does, however, probably hold the record for the number and length of labour disputes, mostly concerning pension rights.
Havre St Pierre is the administrative centre of the Minganie, and until the creation of Baie-Comeau in the 1930s it was the largest town on the Lower North Shore.
So there you are. You now know all that I know about Havre St Pierre, except that I didn't mention that in 1926 we had a major fire that destroyed part of the town. This is the kind of thing in Eastern Canada that you take for granted.
As F E Smith, the future Lord Birkenhead, once said to a judge who had told him "thank you for that lengthy explanation Mr Smith, but I'm still none the wiser".
"Well, m'lud, you may be none the wiser, but you are certainly better-informed".
And I think that on that note, we had better hit the road.
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