 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
SHELDRAKE and RIVIERE-AU-TONNERRE
The town of Sheldrake proudly announces itself as "the first village in Minganie"
But never mind that for a moment. My interest has been caught by the bridge - a magnificent bow-girder bridge - and it's the first real bridge that I have seen for some considerable time. This has cheered me up as you can imagine.
Usually, as you have probably noticed, the bridges around here are mundane, banal pre-stressed concrete affairs with no soul or personality. You could never ever say that about a proper bow-girder bridge.
One thing for which Sheldrake is quite famous is its myes communes, commonly known as clams in the English language.
Out there on the mudflats of the river are quite a number of people digging away, presumably looking for the aforementioned, even though they are a couple of weeks too early for the best part of the season.
And I do hope that the tide is going out while those people are out there, because otherwise they are going to have rather a nasty surprise. When I came back this way a few days later, the tide was in and those mudflats were under Heaven alone knows how many fathoms of water.
What for me is quite astonishing is that every now and again, there are a few signs of agriculture along the coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Only a few though because you have seen from the photos what the soil mostly looks like around here.
Basically, there isn't any - it's all sand from the rocks that have been ground together while being caught up in a glacier during one of the many Ice Ages that have affected the area.
But this looks like a glorious hayfield and that over there looks like a decent barn. The winter can't be all that devastating around here then if there are signs of agriculture like this.
And don't forget - when we were in Montreal in 2013 we did see a railway wagon lettered with the words Alaskan Agriculture. If they can clearly do it there, then they should be able to do it here too.
It seems that this morning I've been forgetting to make a note of the kilometre-markers, so I can't tell you where these interesting objects are along the road. That's what they are here for and I ought to be paying much more attention.
No need for a kilometre-marker here at this place though. We've arrived at Riviere-au Tonnerre which is one of the more-important settlements along the North Shore.
It's said to be the wintering point for many of the fishing boats that work out of small bays and river mouths along the neighbouring shore. It's not something that you see every day, a dry dock in a place like this either.
Which reminds me. Where does a ship go when it it not feeling too well?
It goes to the doc(k)s, of course.
I'll get my coat.
Fuel is available here - there is a petrol station. And if you are travelling westwards towards Sept-Iles, there's a sign telling is that the next fuel in that direction is 110 kilometres away.
That totally surprises me for, if you remember, when we were at Sept-Iles yesterday evening, and at the last petrol station in town, there was a sign up there informing us that the next fuel is ... errr ... 100 kilometres away in this direction.
The difference must be due to the rotation of the earth, I suppose.
You saw in the previous photo that the church here in Riviere au Tonnerre looks quite attractive. It matches the village which is also quite nice and attractive.
But I didn't think much of this sign there that is here on the side of the church.
What did Jesus say about forgiving people for their sins?
What about turning people away from the inn and making them lodge in a stable (or the barn just a handful of miles outside the town)?
Didn't St Paul say something along the lines of "be not afraid to entertain strangers for thereby, some have entertained angels unawares"?
It's this kind of thing that really annoys me about the Church. It's nothing but blatant hypocrisy. It's things like this that make a mockery of the teachings of the early Christians. The Church has transformed them into meaningless, empty rhetoric.
It's always useful to visit the local cemetery of these towns and villages along here in order to see what there is to see. And apart from the obilgatory collection of Tremblays, there wasn't much else of anything important.
One thing that I did notice and which I've seen on several graves here (and in other cemeteries too) is the phrase epoux (or epouse) de feu. That's a phrase that I've not encountered before.
The one thing that immediately sprung to my mind is that it was a way of saying what in the UK in the mid-20th Century would have been called a "spouse at Common Law". Although in a staunch Francophone Catholic region such as this I reckoned that if people had been living "at Common Law" with someone else, they would hardly advertise the fact for the whole region to see.
Having made suitable enquiries however, an epoux (or epouse) de feu is nothing more than a widow or widower.
Down at the harbour of Riviere au Tonnerre there is another collection of these orange marker boards - three boards to be precise.
When we were at Portneuf and a few other places along our route a whole lifetime ago, I reckoned that they were sighting boards for the entrance to the harbour - you line the three up when you are out in the Gulf and you have a perfect entrance path.
If you were to do that here though, you would have something of a nasty surpise. The 1st one is on a prominent promontory and you would run slap-bang aground if you were to try it.
Still, I can't see what else they might be used for - there must be some kind of manoeuvre ... PERSONoeuvre! - ed ... or sequence that involves lining them up somehow.
I would have asked one of these guys about it but they were far too busy unloading their catch to involve themselves in idle chatter.
I did learn that they were catching crabs these days and believe it or not, there really were crabs in those baskets. Not like the whelks and scallops that I saw them unloading at Pinsent's Arm in Labrador in 2010.
No, there's nothing at all wrong with my eyesight.
There's no longer a fish-processing plant here at Riviere-au-Tonnerre, or Thunder River as it was called before the mass Francophonie of this part of Canada.
The guys on the wharf told me that the crabs go straight into the refrigerated lorry that was parked up here on the quayside out of shot at the top of that ramp to the left and are whisked off to the processing plant down the road at Havre St Pierre.
So as I leapt into the Dodge to continue on my way, I noticed that there was another crab boat was coming in. It's all happening here today, isn't it?
Never mind the old "shrimp boat's a'coming, there's dancing tonight". Whatever would they do in Riviere au Tonnerre to celebrate a couple of boatloads of crabs?
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