 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
THE SAGUENAY FERRY
Now put your hands up if you don't recognise the ship just here. Regular followers of my rubbish will recognise that quite easily. It's one of the Sageunay ferries that take Highway 138 across the river just here.
But wouldn't the European Union have enormous issues with this - a RoRo ferry sailing with its bow door open. RoRo means of course "Roll on, Roll off" as I'm sure that you all know, but when the Herald of Free Enterprise set sail from Zeebrugge with its bow door open back in 1987, it immediately transformed itself from a RoRo ferry to a RoRoRo ferry - meaning of course "Roll on, Roll over, Roll off" and since then, European maritime passenger transport has been sunk by a whole raft of legislation.
The thing that surprises me, bearing in mind the litigation culture that exists in North America, is that being aware of the issues that Townsend Thoresen had over the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise, why it is that North American ferries still persist with this practice.
Not that I'm complaining, of course. Far from it. I'm merely asking the question. In fact I think that the Nanny State culture of Europe is a dreadful thing. Every day one hears of more and more Nanny-State nonsense, such as the latest ones where in order to keep people safe from harm, they are banned from watching an important football match or where firemen (and not "firefighters" chortle) are prevented from wading into a pond even though my friend Kate tells me that she was messing about in the same pond when she was a nipper and no-one took any notice. I wonder, as an aside, how embarrassing it must have been for the firemen to have stood around watching a local hero wade into the pond up to his ... errr ... knees to rescue the poor bird.
I've seen statistics - and when I remember where it was that I saw them I will post them - to show that people in Europe are most at risk when encountering motor traffic on a public highway, or at occasions where alcohol is consumed. But does any Government propose that, to keep people safe, motor traffic and alcohol should be banned? Not a bit of it.
And the reason? The taxation raised from motor traffic and alcohol is what fuels ... sorry ... Government spending. Lose the taxation from that and a huge percentage of the Government's expenditure programme is wiped out. Not to mention, of course, the personal benefits to politicians of having the motor transport and the alcohol lobbyists working on the fringes of mainstream government.
But how did we get onto this subject anyway?
So take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, for the most spectacular ferry crossing that I have ever sailed.
And while you are doing this, I made sure that I had my German tourists right where I wanted them - namely, right in front of me in the ferry queue. They can't escape me here.
First things first, though. We need to say goodbye to Baie St Catherine and the western shore of the Sauguenay where we boarded the ferry. And there would have been a time when you would have been saying much more than that too.
The Saguenay marked the traditional border between wht you might call "civilised Quebec" if you like and "The interior" back in the old days. There was nothing east of here except a string of small fishing villages conencted, in just one or two cases but not by any means all, by primitive tracks. The only connection to the outside world and maybe even to their neighbours was by the river.
Once you were across the Saguenay travelling became even more difficult that it had been upriver, as if it hadn't been difficult enough beforehand.
Lanouiller might have built his Chemin du Roy between Montreal and Quebec in the 1730s but there was nothing like that around here. People had to wait another 200 years, until the 1930s and the desperate search for raw materials following the various political crises in Europe that led to World War II, before any kind of infrastructure arrived east of the Saguenay.
Another thing that I need to deal with as a matter of importance are issues surrounding photo opportunities for the One and Only Strawberry Moose.
On a ferry this size there are bound to be willing volunteers to help him further his fame and, sure enough, the crew of the Felix-Antoine Savard, to whit Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy were only too willing to oblige
There was another passenger taking a great deal of interest in the proceedings and so yet another photo call was necessary. Strawberry Moose made quite a lot of friends on that ferry.
If you have yet to make the acquaintance of His Nibs, just let me say that he was formerly the mascot - and a very controversial mascot at that - of the students at a University in the UK that catered for mature students studying part-time.
He travelled the world being photographed in all kinds of exciting places as a way of raising funds for disadvantaged students, and the photographs of him confronting various visiting dignitaries and British Government Ministers are legend.
However, what I was doing in a University for mature students was a matter of considerable conjecture.
So now that I'm safely on board the ferry a couple of cars away from this German vehicle, my next step is to go and make an introduction. But I don't get very far as I'm sidetracked one more by something else completely.
I've been noticing quite recently a few three-wheeled motorbikes - a breed that seems to be returning to the public highways, but not one of the ones that I have seen looks anything quite like this machine. And don't you think that it's gorgeous?
I managed to grab hold of the owner to ask him a couple of questions about his machine. After all, it's not every day that you see something like this.
It's called a T-Rex ... "well, bang a gong!" - ed ... and I could just see myself Bolan along the road on one of these if I Took the plunge. Or, rather, in one of these because according to Canadian law, it's classed as a car and not a motorcycle, whatever it might look like.
But since when did Reliant, or Isetta or Heinkel for that matter, make anything that looked quite like this?
They are made in a factory in Québec and I was right about it not being every day that you might see one. The annual output is just 50 machines per year, so they are quite exclusive.
I suppose that I would give quite a lot to have one of these for a summer runabout back home in France, even if it is totally impractical.
For a start, the way in is to first of all take off the steering wheel. It's rather small in there. You don't need to be a claustrophobic, and I bet that they don't sell very many of these in the USA either
Secondly, there's now luggage space at all. The owner did say that there were some paniers on the side at the back in which you can store your stuff, and they are demountable too so that you can take them into your hotel. But you've seen the amount of stuff that I have when I travel about. What use would a couple of demountable paniers be to me?
Nevertheless, I would have one of these in a heartbeat, and call it The White Swan. What else would you call a vehicle made by T-Rex?
On board ship I caught up with the German family as well, and we had something of a chat. I say "something" because these days my German ain't what it used to be.
It transpires that there is a company in Germany that organises a freight service for vehicles, sailing between Hamburg, Antwerp and Halifax as well as a few other places in between. The company handles all of the dockside formalities as well as arranging temporary motor insurance for your stay in North America.
The sailing took 14 days, so I was told, and the clients met with not a single problem. Everything worked like clockwork.
I really MUST look into this.
There was much less traffic on the ferry in May 2012 but there were still items of interest to be seen, such as this vehicle that belongs to the D-i-Y chain Home Hardware.
They might advertise that "renovation begins at Home" but it certainly doesn't at their home - at least, not in the garage. That is something of a surprise as the company does sell vehicle spare parts in the branches that I have visited.
And that had me thinking too. Apart from the exhaust pipe on my old Passat in 1998, when was the last time that I welded up a car? Probably 25 years ago at least. I would have plenty of practice if I lived over here.
So having dealt with all of the issues of importance, we can sit back and admire the view. I did tell you that this is the most spectacular ferry crossing that I have ever taken.
Up there in the doom and gloom of a mid-October evening is the Saguenay river. And while they do say that it's a river, it's more like a Norwegian Fjord than any Norwegian Fjord that I have ever seen.
In 2012 I finally had the opportunity to explore the river and one day when I have the time I'll post the notes of my tour. But if you can't wait until then, here's a little taster for you.
We're on the Felix-Antoine Savard which I reckon is the biggest of the ferries across here. You can compare the size of it by looking at one of her little sisters passing the other way. We have something of an elevated position here that enables us to look down on her.
In the background you can see, halfway up the hill, the modern road that we will be taking, travelling east towards Baie Comeau, several hundred miles away in the distance, which was our starting point for the Trans-Labrador Highway
As we watch the other ferry - It may have been the Jos Deschenes because that was certainly the one that was here when I came back four weeks later - pull in at Baie St Catherine, I do have to record the fact that on our ferry was the first time that I had ever heard a saftey message on a North American ferry.
You know the kind of message that I mean -
"Three short blasts on the siren means put on your life jackets"
"Three long blasts on the siren means make for the boat stations"
"Seven short blasts on the siren means abandon ship"
"One long blast on the siren means that the siren is stuck"
And we also had our green pictogram "depicting a small family group"- something that European ferry travellers will know only too well.
While you lot continue your goodbyes to Baie St Catherine, I'm off for a coffee because this is the first ferry that I've been on for ages where there's a waiting room and a coffee machine.
That's something else that's not usual either - something that astonishes me because North Americans are supposed to have so much more commercial drive and energy than Europeans. Here you are with a captive audience with nothing much to do while they take the ferry crossing. A cup of coffee is a good way of chiselling yet more hard-earned cash out of them and if you have a machine doing the work, the cost to you is peanuts.
Here we are at the end of our ferry crossing and the town of Tadoussac is just up the hill to the right. That is in fact the more modern part of the town - the historic part is further down towards the St Lawrence on the next bay. That's where we are going to next.
But just a little word about the return journey in 2010 on the Jos Deschenes. There was a sign up on the ship, saying "maximum load permitted 64 tons - if you (I assume that they meant your vehicle, but having seen first-hand the obesity crisis in North America, I'm not so sure) weigh more than 64 tons. Please seek assistance"
At the time that I was writing these note, the overall weight limit on a British road was 42 metric tonnes. I wonder how regularly something so much heavier than 64 tons was roaming around the Canadian highways that they were expecting to see it so often that they had to put up a sign about it.
And this might explain the state of so many Canadian highways.
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