CANADA |
FRANQUELIN
We have to travel quite some distance out of Baie Comeau before we come to the first settlement of any significance after leaving Baie-Comeau. This is the little town of Franquelin, home to about 350 people and is famous for its molluscs.
It's a village that grew up around the forestry industry and took its name from a certain Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin. He was Royal Hydrographer to King Louis XIV and he drew up the first contoured map of the St Lawrence.
There's a small pull-in at the side of the road just here, with a couple of benches and a table. There's a beautiful view along here looking along the St Lawrence River towards the east, and so this is where I decided to stop for lunch.
I was not alone either, for I had company for part of the time. This woman who was walking her dog along the street came over for a chat. Not only that, someone in a nearby house was playing music so loud that it probably could have been heard in Montreal.
I needed a break too for I'd just had an ... errr ... experience. The road into Franquelin is down a very steep hill where it's very difficult to keep to the speed limit. And right at the bottom is a 50kph speed limit.
Just after the speed limit is a little alley and standing in the alley was yet another County Mountie - this time a Kojak with a Kodak. After he had flashed me, he hopped into his car and came roaring down the road. And when he overtook me, instead of stopping me, he roared off after the pick-up that was in front of me.
Phew!
That's twice in five minutes that I've had a narrow squeak with the farces of Law and Order. Someone up there must love me right now.
There's a little lake just down to the left as you exit the village towards the east. I thought at first that it might have been an arm of the St Lawrence cut off by the bridge upon the top of which this modern road runs towards the east. In fact, it's actually the mouth of the rivière Franquelin
Seeing as how the main road and bridge out eastwards looked quite modern, I wondered if the road that ran off inland down by the side of the river might have been an old trace of Highway 138. And so I resolved to follow it.
It headed off out of the town and from a point on a small rise at the back of the town, there was a really good view back across the town, with the church right in the middle of the photograph.
Carrying on my little walk out of the town, you can see the road snaking along the side of the river. It's now signposted as a snowmobile track but I shouldn't really be surprised to learn that it might have been at one time a course of Highway 138.
There is a bridge across the river way in the distance and I was musing to myself that this was the way that the road crossed the river back in the olden days. I was tempted to go for a look but there was a huge hole in the middle of the road where the local council was doing some work. Further progress was impossible.
And here's something else that you might have noticed, and that is that autumn has arrived. The leaves on the trees are now starting to turn into all of the beautiful colours that are so symbolic of autumn in Canada.
I've said it before ... "and you'll say it again" - ed ...autumn is the best time of the year to come to Canada. Once you've seen the autumn colours in Canada, you won't want to see any other colours anywhere else.
I'd been told by someone whom I met that here in Franquelin were a couple of old first-generation snowmobiles. I was half-hoping to see an early Bombardier such as the one that we saw at Goose Bay back in 2010 . And I struck it lucky at the Village forestier d'antan
I was rather disappointed not to see one of those, but I wasn't disappointed to see this machine. I'm not sure of the make or model of this machine and it doesn't appear to be as antique as I was hoping to find, but it's certainly unusual and quite rare enough these days.
And that wasn't everything either. Here underneath some kind of lean-to were a couple of machines that looked even older. From the range at which I was stanging, I couldn't really see anything, and even enlarging the photograph and lightening up the colours couldn't give me any better idea.
Ordinarily I would have gone over to have a closer look at them but the gates were all locked up and there were people around. It didn't seem to be such a good idea to go clambering over fences onto provate property when there were loads of people milling around.
And so if you know anything about these machines, please .
I'd been told to look out for Franquelin's municipal workshops, because round there somewhere I would find something to my advantage.
That looked as if it might be the edifice communale - the Town Hall - over there, so I reckoned that the municipal workshops were in the building behind where the snowplough blade was standing.
But have a look at the side wall of the edifice communale just there. There's an arrow indicating that this might be a one-way street. Imagine a one-way system in a little backwater on the edge of a small town out here!
And they were right too about the finding "something to my advantage".
In contrast to the snowmobiles at the Village forestier d'antan, there were no problems about access to this machine. This was parked up at the side of the town's workshop in full view of anyone who cared to go over and have a look.
If you are of my age, you will very likely have seen one of these before. In Europe this would be nicknamed a piste-basher, used on the ski slopes for flattening down the snow and also for transporting goods and supplies about in the bad weather.
Just in case you are wondering, which I'm sure that you probably are, this is a Skidozer 302. It's apparently manufactured by the Bombardier company, and probably dates from the 1970s.
I've not been able to find out too much about them, although I did once come across one that was fitted with a Ford V8 7.5 litre petrol engine. I couldn't tell you whether that is the factory-fitted engine but a petrol engine out in the freezing cold is pretty much a certainty.
I would gladly learn more about it, so if you would care to communicate with me, then .
And so having had a good wander around the town, such as it is, and finding myself right out on the far side of town, I headed off back to the main road and where I had left my vehicle.
I forgot to make a note of the name of the saint to whom the church is dedicated but subsequent enquiry revealed that it's the Eglise Saint-Etienne
I've no idea of the age of the church but I can tell you that there wasn't very much at all here prior to the turn of the 20th Century. The very first timber concession was awarded in 1902 but exploitation didn't begin until about 15 years later and this was when formal settlement began.
Times at first were hard but a little later our good friend Colonel Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper in the USA and whom we encountered down the road at Baie Comeau became involved in the forestry operations.
His company invested an enormous sum in the infrastructure of the business, including the construction of a small port and a hydro-electric installation on the river.
This led to a kind-of golden age for the town but it wasn't to last. By the mid-1950s the timber resources were effectively exhausted and the Quebec North Shore Paper Company, McCormick's company, withdrew.
That was that for the town.
Now I'd mentioned the bridge away in the distance down what looked to be the old road, and also the hydro-electric installation somewhere up-river.
It occurred to me that if there was a road out of the town in that direction, there must be a road in from the other direction too. And in October 2016, I was in the area in a 4x4 pickup with off-road kit, big wheels and heavy-duty tyres. Therefore, to go to seek it seemed to me like a good plan.
I'd had a look on one of these internet mapping sites and worked out what might have been a possible route. There were even some waterfalls - the Thompson Falls - along there in the vicinity. They have to be worth checking out, don't they?
And so off I set accordingly.
©