 | CANADA - |
| CANADA - |
CENTRAL CHICOUTIMI
From my parking place on the edge of Chicoutimi I headed off on foot into town. This is the main shopping street, the rue Racine. It is built high on the river bank, with the aim, one imagines, of avoiding the floods that probably happened frequently here in late Spring and early Summer prior to all of the water management programmes.
Having said that, in July 1996 the lower town was devastated by the worst floods that anyone can remember. This was not however caused by melting snow, but an astonishing torrential downpour.
Returning to the shops, one of the ones that caught my eye was a bookshop (as you might expect). It had several books that interested me, all of them talking about the history of the Saguenay, but at $20 or was it $30 each, I declined. That was a shame. They would have made excellent bedside reading.
One of the things that has taken me by surprise is the size of Chicoutimi. It's a good deal bigger than you might think.
In fact, there are about 67,000 people living here and that makes it a massive urban area. Even the city of Trois Rivieres , one which we visit frequently on our travels, can only muster about 50,000 inhabitants.
And one thing that will not have escaped you, from looking at the photograph, is that the weather has closed in again. It's quite ironic really, for it was round about Chicoutimi that the weather changed when we were on our way in.
You don't really need me to make any comment about this, do you? Anyone who has followed my journeys over eny length of time will know immediately what I think about all of this without being told.
I do however have to say ... "ohh dear" - ed ... that when I travelled in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, I noticed soldiers on every street corner watching the population and making copious notes of what everyone was doing.
When I asked some Soviet Government Official why they had the soldiers doing all of this kind of thing, I was told "it's in the interest of National Security"
Anyone my age will recall our Governments and politicians scoffing at this idea, telling us how Communism was a bad thing, about how it oppressed their citizens, and how we in the West lived in a free country.
The West spent 45 years doing everything within its power to destroy Communism, and then what happened? We don't have soldiers on every street corner watching the population and making copious notes of what everyone is doing, we have security cameras doing precisely that. And we have Governments and politicians that spy on their citizens much more pervasively than anything that the Communists ever did.
And when you ask anyone in authority why they are doing this kind of thing, you receive exactly the same answer. "It's in the interest of National Security"
I'm waiting for someone important in Western Government to stand up and freely admit that maybe the Communists had a point.
Abandoning yet another good rant for a moment, let's continue our walk around the city. And this impressive building on the rue Price Est at the head of the rue Labrecque has caught my eye. "Is it anything of religious significance?" I ask myself, seeing as how it has a cross up there on top.
It's either that or a hospital, or something like that, so if you know what it is, to let me know and I shall be extremely grateful.
This next building just goes to show that if people put their minds to it, they can design and build modern buildings with a kind of class and style that will give credit to any architect and any city.
This building is the Québec Government's Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Art et cetera et cetera. So chapeau to the Québec Government. Credit where credit is due. And if they can do it, why can't any other city anywhere else?
However, never mind the extra mile. The Quebec Government should, in my opinion, gone the extra half-inch and also done the bits in between the windows in stone, even if it were just to face them off with real stone.
Still, never mind. This is so much better and quite refreshing to see when compared with your typical concrete monstrosity. Can you imagine Brussels and the Quartier Européen looking as nice as this?
It was round about here that I passed over what looked like a dirt alleyway running between two rows of buildings. It was the kind of alleyway that had "railway" written all over it, but I didn't pay any special significance to it at that particular moment.
That was because my eyes were riveted on this building here, and don't you think that this building is magnificent? It's Art-Deco and built in stone, and what would anyone want want more than that?
It is in fact the Town Hall of Chicoutimi and was built in 1932. The town can be proud of that, all right, and I have to say that it would be a credit to any town in the whole wide world.
It would certainly figure somewhere high up on the list of the Hundred Most Beautiful Buildings That I Have Ever Seen. It reminds me of typical Norman "castle and keep" architecture, or even a miniature pre-Gothic cathedral
.
It's Chicoutimi's second Town Hall and its construction was part of a programme to provide work and income for the unemployed during the Great Depression.
It has to be said that if you can get the unemployed to build something like this in the wilds of backwoods Canada (we're talking about the early 1930s, remember), then what on earth is stopping anyone in any urban, metropolitan area, with all kinds of skilled labour and modern machinery within easy reach, building something as beautiful as this?
That's my three ha'porth, anyway.
Those buildings up there looked quite interesting and I wondered what they were. I mde a mental note to drive by there on my way out of Chicoutimi so that I could have a good look at them. However, would you believe that it slipped my mind completely?
Yes, you would, I suppose. It's about par for the course these days.
But one thing that you might have noticed in this, and in a couple of other photographs, is the slope just there. We're well-away from the river just here and that gentle, rounded slope up to the crest in the background is some kind of indication, in a region such of this, of glacial activity.
Generally speaking (and I stress the "generally") a river bank would be steeper and more Vee-shaped - the faster-flowing current would have more of a tendency to undermine the banks.
Ahhhh - now that's the second motor-horn that I have heard being blown in anger. And surprisingly, just like the first, it was not being blown at me. It's a big lorry too. I wonder who has upset him.
Down at the water's edge there's a big municipal car park. And this sign has caught my attention. Mobile homes are apparently not allowed on here between 08:00 and 17:00 from Mondays to Fridays.
That means that mobile homes are allowed on here at any other time and if I had known that last night, it would have saved me all of these miles and all of that time driving around looking for a place to park up. I would have been here through the night, right where everything is happening.
You may recall 10 minutes ago that I stumbled upon what looked as if it might have been an old railway track bed, but I didn't follow it up, due to being sidetracked by the Town Hall.
I now find myself in what is called the Place de la Gare - "Railway Station Square", as you can see from the sign on the building, complete with symbolic image of a railway locomotive.
And if you follow the line of the frontage away over to the right-hand edge of the photograph, you'll vaguely be able to make out the gap to which I was referring. A nice straight line the kind of which the a railway line would follow.
In my opinion, this may well explain the style of the modern building - the "retro" look of a century-old railway station - and the large car park here right by the shore of the river - a possible trans-shipment point for goods passing between the ships at the quayside behind me and the goods wagons in what would be the mashalling yard. Remenber that due to the rapids and waterfalls, maritime navigation is not possible beyond this point.
But this is the kind of thing that astonishes me about Canadian railways. We've seen other railway lines in the vicinity and having seen a sign at Chambord, we are convinced that there is a passenger rail service around part of the shore of Lac St Jean.
But here we have what is by far and away the biggest urban settlement in the area, probably one of the top ten largest towns in the Province, and they've uprooted the railway here. When you consider what it must be like to travel around the area on the roads in mid-winter, I find all of this to be quite astonishing.
Shaking my head in disbelief, I wander off back to the Dodge.
It might have crossed your mind, as it did mine for a fleeting second, that with all of the rapids and waterfalls between Chicoutimi and Lac St Jean, no-one ever thought about building a canal between them so that maritime transport could continue between the two.
The idea of a canal probably had been considered, but quite probably rapidly dismissed. It shouldn't be forgotten that this area was not developed until the second half of the 19th Century and many of the settlements and industrial plants further up around Lac St Jean date from even later than that.
By that time, we were well into the Railway Age and the railway, just like the roads today, was seen as the answer to every single transport problem, no matter how inappropriate.
Before leaving Chicoutimi, I had better fuel up again. It's hard to believe that I have used so much fuel driving around Lac St Jean.
It's not totally essential, but I remember that I struggled to find a petrol station on the eastern side of the Saguenay Fjord. Knowing my luck, if I need a petrol station further on along the road on this side of the fjord, there won't be one there either.
Here on the edge of town, I've found an Ultramar service station with fuel at 133.4 cents. That is a cheaper price than out on the St Lawrence, so it's silly not to take advantage of this. There's also coffee available. Whoopie!
©