A short way along Highway 138 round about kilometre 1145 is a sign inviting me to "come and visit our church - the second-oldest on the North Shore". And so I did come down here and found myself in the village of Magpie.

It probably is the second-oldest on the North Shore and yes, it does look like it too. It would certainly benefit from a good coat of paint to say the least.

And apart from the remark about its age, nothing else at all is mentioned, such as when was it built ... "1893" - ed ... or which one is in fact the oldest on the North Shore ... "I don't know either" - ed.

The cemetery was quite interesting too. Apart from, of course, the Tremblays, we had, rather unexpectedly, a couple of Molloys, some Maloneys and a few Blaneys too.

There are also a handful of wooden crosses in the cemetery, as if for one period there wasn't a stone mason anywhere around in the vicinity. Such are the perils of this kind of rural life.

I'm intrigued though about the preponderance of Irish names around here, just as I am intrigued by the fact that a magpie is a bird that is unknown in this region.

Knowing absolutely nothing about the immediate area and its history, I would speculate, on no evidence whatsoever, that one possible explanation is that an Irish ship called the Magpie was wrecked here, and the Molloys, Maloneys and Blaneys were some of the survivors, who chose to stay on in the area.

You can probably think of your own explanation.

Magpie used to be famous for its fishing fleet as it was one of the most important cod-fishing ports of the Minganie 100 years ago. Of course the cod has long-since gone and now it's simply a port for pleasure vessels and small fishing boats.

The idea of how thriving this community used to be and how times have changed can be gauged by the fact that it had its own General Store here, which lasted until 1931.

There's a belvedere down there on the point which is said to be one of the best sites on land for watching the whales passing by. As well as the whales, there's a good view of the island in the distance. That might be the Ile d'Anticosti or it might be a small offshore island.

But I can tell you what it isn't. We have long-since passed the stage where we have caught our final glimpse of the southern shore of the St Lawrence.

A short drive outside the village is another cemetery called "Magpie Cemetery" and there was another one not oo far away called "Dock Cemetery".

It never occurred to me at the time, although it did when it was too late, to go into each of the three cemeteries here in the immediate vicinity and check the dates of interment. That might have given me some idea of the timescale of the site of any setlement around here.

Nevertheless I did manage to subsequently find some further information about the place.

It's said that the first Europeans came to this area in the 15th Century - Basques, Portuguese and Bretons, so we are told, and you can tell that it was a Quebecois who told me because there was no mention of the English coming here, even though there is convincing evidence that merchants from Bristol had links with this area

Most beaver pelts traded in Europe in the early Middle Ages came from what is now Russia. However in the late 14th and 15th Centuries Bristol merchants were selling pelts that had been treated in a completely different fashion that had never been seen before. When the French traders began to deal with the natives of the St Lawrence region, the pelts that they were bringing back from Nouvelle France were found to be treated in an identical fashion

There was no mention of Cabot's voyage and so it seems like the idea of European knowledge of Canada prior to Cabot is gaining ground, especially in Quebec where the idea of denigrating anything done by the English would receive much popular support.

I just wonder why the Norse explorers haven't been given any credit for their voyages.

In 1661 this area given to Francois Bissot, whose interest was in the treatment of furs, but after the fall of Nouvelle France it became part of Newfoundland and was exploited by the Grant company.

We then had Girards from 1849 and we've seen plenty of them in the cemeteries all along the North Shore around here.

The area changed hands again in 1864 when a company from Jersey, the Boutillier Brothers, took over the concession and it was their headquarters that were out here round by where this other Magpie Cemetery is. There was even a chapel here, built in 1873.

While all this was going on, a permanent settlement started up in about 1820, the first along the Lower North Shore, with inhabitants from Barachois de Malbaie and Paspébiac, as well as some Acadians and fishermen from the Ile Madeleine.

It was not, however, destined to last and regular readers of this rubbish will not need to be told what happened in 1881.

For those of you who do however need to be told, a forest fire broke out at the back of Sheldrake and swept through the area, destroying everything with which it came in contact.

This area was badly scorched by the fire and the Boutillier Brothers were amongst those who swept away and subsequently went bankrupt. However, a few inhabitants clung on here, with the last one moving avay in 1961.

Another company in the immediate vicinity, a branch of the fishing enterprise of Robin Jones and Whitman which came here in 1866, kept on going until 1929 and it was the closure of this company that caused the decline of the village.

The riviere Magpie (and I'm surprised that they haven't Francophoned the name here in Quebec) is not as close to the village of the same name as you might think, although it was much closer to where the action was in the 19th Century of course.

And here we are treated to a thunderous roar of water cascading down the valley as you can see. I'll have to try to think of a way to have a closer look at all of this.

There's a place to park the car just a little further on and so, first things first, I need to go to inspect the industrial relics that are on display here.

These are a few bits and pieces of the old turbines and generators of a pretty primitive hydro-electrical system. When you examine them, you can see how much technology has advanced over the past 50-odd years because this equipment dates from 1959.

Ahh - this is a better view of the dam.

The river was first dammed in 1959 and its lake stretches miles back, almost to the border with Labrador. It powered two generators, each of 1MW, which is not a lot.

The dam was what they call an "isolated section" as it was not connected to the National distributing grid. One imagines that it merely distributed the power locally to the isolated communities along the shore.

Quebec Hydro took it over in 1989 and planned to connect it up to their distribution system, but it was obsolete and needed a considerable amount of money and work to bring it up to date, which was thought to be uneconomic and not cost-effective. Consequently the plant was closed down.

Today however, the plant is being refurbished and modernised and will have an output of 40.6MW. That's quite an improvement and it shows you how technology has advanced when they can produce that much today from the same water that produced only 2MW in the late 1950s.

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