Tag Archives: baie comeau

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 – HAVING SURVIVED …

… last night’s motel I woke up to the coldest day of the journey so far (Labrador excluded of course).

It’s minus 1°C as I leave the motel and I’m now in winter gear – thick jacket, hat and gloves.

I’m just amazed at how quickly winter has arrived here.

So off for a quick tour of Dalhousie and its neighbouring town, Campbelltown, where the predominant language spoken here is, as you might expect, … errrr … French, even though this is New Brunswick.

And crossing the head of Chaleur Bay into Quebec, the predominant language in the town in which you arrive is … errrr … Mikmac.

Strawberry Moose and I had the pleasure of being introduced to the new tribal chief, the old one having just won the world’s tea-drinking championship, he died in his teepee.
“I am Chief Sitting Duck” said the chief
“How” I replied
“How” replied Strawberry Moose.
“And this is my favourite squaw Minnimama”
“How” I replied
“How” replied Strawberry Moose
“I bought her for two buffalo skins” said the chief
“How” I replied
“Never mind how” said Strawberry Moose. “Where?”

And so then along the north bank of the Baie de Chaleur, or the south shore of the Gaspe Peninsula, depending upon how you look at it.

The first European to set foot here was Jacques Cartier in his epic voyage of 1534 (although if he did indeed set his foot in everywhere that he is supposed to have set his foot he would never have had time to have written about it)

This north bank (or south shore) is really beautiful and you can’t move along it without tripping over a motel ir a guest house. There are thousands of them.

And quite right too – it is one of the most scenic parts of whatever passes for the Canadian Riviera and well worth the visit, and it’s not all that often that you hear me say that.

Highlight of today’s part of the voyage has to be the town of Perce, and this was where I was headed.

Cartier also had a landfall here and this time there would seem to be no doubt at all about this – he describes perfectly the offshore island with the hole through the middle, and it truly is spectacular, so I’m not surprised that he remarked upon it.

I’m now in a motel in the town of Gaspe – the eastern-most town on the peninsula.

Gaspe is quite a historic place, a well-known former port but, alas, with everything demolished in the 1970s and much of it not yet rebuilt, as modern ships are far too big to use the new port.

And I have realised that tomorrow, if I can get a place on the late evening ferry to Baie Comeau from Matane, this will be my last night south of the St Lawrence.

That is rather a depressing thought, you know.

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Sunday 31st October 2010 – I ATTENDED HALLOWEEN TODAY

First time ever that I have done something as North-American as this.

After what can only be described as a leisurely brunch (with my “never ever call me before midday on Sunday” I would fit in so well here) we all sat down at the table and started pumpkin-carving.

First job was to top and then to empty 15 or so pumpkins and that led to seeds and flesh everywhere. Darren had a pile of images and so we photocopied them and used them as templates for the carving.

We sellotaped them to the pumpkins, pricked out the patterns and then joined up the dots with a small knife. And considering that I’d never ever done it before, my group of bats, my witch and my “screaming skull” came out quite well, and I was so impressed. Little Amber even did a freehand carving of Strawberry Moose (you can see him modelling for his portrait) and that was pretty impressive too.

Darren’s friend George took a few pumpkins down to the gate and I set the rest up in the living room and put tea lights in them so that I could photograph them.

On a long exposure (which counteracted the flickering of the flame) the image came out really well and the effect is pretty good.

After Hannah and I had lined the drive with flaming pumpkins Rachel and I took Zoe, Amber and Amber’s friend (and Strawberry Moose who had donned a tutu and a bumble bee headgear for the occasion) out trick-or-treating.

It was all terribly tacky as you might expect but it was also fun and you can’t spend a Halloween amongst a family here in North America and not participate in the entertainment.

And tomorrow I’m moving on. My time here is up. I’ll be driving to Bathurst where my journey started in 2003 and heading north from there. The idea is to go around the shore of Northern New Brunswick and then round the Gaspe peninsula to Matane and then take the ferry over to Baie Comeau, where the adventure really began, and that will be the Great Circle route completed.

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Saturday 23rd October 2010 – YOU WOULD THINK …

… that I would have learnt my lesson by now, but not a bit of it.

Does anyone still remember my voyage around Wyoming in 2002 and how I hardly had any sleep the first night due to having chosen, in the dark, a motel right next to a railway line?

So here I am, on the outskirts of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there’s the Canadian Pacific main line between the industrial centres of central Canada and the largest port on Canada’s eastern seaboard, and it passes right underneath my window.

My excuse, back in 2002, was that it was dark, so I’m going to have to think of a pretty good excuse for this one though as it was broad daylight when I arrived here.

But then again, at the first place (a cheap B&B), no-one answered (they had clearly heard all about me). The second place was full. The third place – I took one look at it, made my excuses and left. Yes, even I have principles and scruples even when travelling on a low budget.

And so a convenient motel with kitchen unit at $69, and that will have to do. At least I can cook some food and that will save me something.

However, this is where I spent last night and I will say now that if I can ever find better value than this bed-and breakfast for just $45 per night all-in then I shall move in permanently.

Like everyone else that I have ever encountered on any of my voyages around the Maritimes (with the exception of those people in that museum – The Rooms in St John’s), the proprietors were extremely friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.

Furthermore, although they were Anglophones, the guy here had been a copper in Québec and so was perfectly bilingual and also had some kind of empathy with the Francophone communities around here.

They moved here about 30 years ago and in that time they reckon that not a week has gone by without someone leaving the area to move elsewhere, such has been the consequence of the collapse of the economy following the decline of the fishing industry. They recounted a long, almost endless list of local businesses that had gone – the loss of the local grocery stores being the most painful and now they have to travel miles for their food supplies.

It sounded every bit as depressing as the stories that I heard when I bought my house to the Auvergne in 1997

Now I have seen some strange place-names on my travels, that’s for sure, but the one just here is definitely the one that takes the biscuit to date.

It intrigued me, why they had singled this island out for special attention by giving it this particular name. The idea that there might be drunken islands lurching around in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast here was rather a sobering thought.

But then again, maybe not. This coast is infamous for the amount of maritime accidents, collisions and sinkings of vessels and all that kind of thing, and that might explain it.

I had another leisurely drive along the coast today and nothing remarkable stood out (well, not that I am admitting to anyway) but I did encounter a mystery.

At a wharf alongside a river in a small town there was a ship (well, I think that it was a ship) that looked like it had just been raised from Full Fathom 5 after 50 years in the deeps. A rusting old hulk would have been embarrassed to have moored alongside it

So, with the silliest question being the one that is never asked, I headed off to the library. After all, librarians know everything.
“Ohhhh – that thing” she said. “They sailed it into here about 4 years ago ….”
“4? Or 40?”
“Definitely 4 or so. And it sailed in from Newfoundland” She replied. “And when it docked the people aboard ‘scattered like rats’ and they were gone. The police searched the ship thinking that there might be drugs aboard but they found nothing at all”

“So what’s it doing moored up there?”
“No-one knows” she replied. “But it’s a private wharf and as long as the mooring is paid the owner of the wharf doesn’t care about it”
“So who’s paying the mooring fees?” – I mean, you have to ask the question.
“Now there’s a good question” she repled.
And good question as it might be, she didn’t give me any answer.

What has taken my by surprise just here is that I came this way in the winter of 2003 when I was quite ill, and I made no comment whatsoever about the railway museum at Musquodoboit. Was it not here then? I ask myself. How would I not notice a railway museum? I really must have been ill.

Another thing that has taken me by surprise here is that for once in a provincial Canadian railway museum there is actually a locomotive. I mean it’s not actually a locomotive in the same category as a Pacific 4-6-2 or a Garrett articulated 2-8-8-2, but it’s here and not being turned into a thousand baked bean tins and that’s something, I suppose.

I’m having to really think if I have seen another engine before at a wayside place like this, and I can’t say that I have. There was the steam locomotive that was a stationary exhibit on the waterfront at Windsor but that was about it I reckon – "it was as recently as Baie Comeau actually" …ed

And so here I am in Halifax. I’ve been here twice before, in 2001 and 2003 and on both occasions I was rather ill, and so this evening I’ve been out taking pics – after all the ones that I took on those occasions with cheap compact digitals just didn’t work out at all.

This photo is much better.

It was taken from up on the Angus MacDonald Bridge, the bridge that goes across the Straits between Halifax and Dartmouth. That’s Halifax down there, with the Canadian Navy’s Eastern seaboard base in the foreground.

It really was quite eerie walking around here in the dark retracing the steps that I had taken in my previous visits when I was trying to take pictures like this armed with nothing more than a cheap basic compact digital.

Here, with a top-of-the-range DSLR and an optional-extra zoom lens that cost a lot of money at last I’ve been able to make some of the pics look like something useful.

And if you want to see more of the photos that I took, your wish is my command

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Friday 15th October 2010 – THIS ALL STARTED AS AN ARGUMENT, YOU KNOW.

Someone had said something about the first white child born in North America being Virginia Dare in 1587. I replied that that was nonsense as there is evidence in the Norse Sagas to show that at least one child was born to the Viking settlers in Vinland.

The counter argument to that was that Newfoundland is an island – to which led the next and most logical question “and Roanoke Island is what?”.

So then we degenerated into some other discussion that terminated with “well, you can’t see the mainland from Newfoundland”.

The distance across the Straits of Belle Isle is only 18 miles at its narrowest part – less than the English Channel between the UK and France – and so that statement sounded like absolute nonsense and so I was determined to go along and see for myself, and this is how all of this started. I’ve spent 5 years planning for this

And so here I am at sea level in Red Bay on the southern shore of Labrador and in the distance are the hills of Newfoundland way across the Strait of Belle Isle.

And if you don’t believe me, just click on the image and see for yourself.

The … errrr … ship on the right of the image is the MV Bernier, a collier delivering coal to the bay in 1966 that slipped from its moorings in a November gale and ran aground on the rocks.

But I had a most amazing stroke of good fortune at Red Bay.

Red Bay was the site of a Basque whaling station in the 16th Century (and there is strong evidence to suggest that it was operational long before then – maybe even before Columbus sailed the Atlantic). Not only are there the ruins of a whale-oil distillery, but 4 sunken galleons and several small whalers, one of which has been recovered and put on display

They also rediscovered a cemetery containing the graves of basque whalers who had lost their lives jn the 16th Century, and this can be seen to the left of the Bernier.

Of course it is all closed up at this time of year but the Canadian Government has submitted it as a potential UNESCO World Heritage site and today there were some visitors from this being shown around. Of course, Yours Truly blagged his way onto the guided tour and was given the full VIP treatment.

It was truly remarkable

I forgot to take a photo of my hotel last night but this is the town in which is is situated – Mary’s Harbour.

This is a “new” town, being officially founded in the 1930s. Prior to that, everyone lived on an island called Battle Harbour but the settlement burnt down in 1930, so it was decided to create a new community for the inhabitants here on the mainland.

From here, it was to my startling discoveries at Red Bay.

And that wasn’t all either. Down the road at Point Amour is Canada’s second highest lighthouse.

It was of course closed when I got there but a lady was loading up her car and so she took some time out to explain things to me. She even told me where to go to see the remains of two ships stranded on the coast just down here.

So off I went for a wander along the coast to see for myself.

These are probably bits of HMS Raleigh, a British light cruiser that ran aground here in 1922, having swerved to avoid an iceberg in the Strait of Belle Isle. It was so well aground that it was impossible to move it and so they decided to dynamite it.

They calculated precisely the amount of explosive that they needed to split the ship into manageable portions, but totally forgot to take into account the quantity of ammunition that remained on board.

Consequently, huge portions of the ship were hurled many hundreds of yards inland where they remain to this day.

But some of the remains that you see relate to HMS Lily, a British man-o-war that had gone aground 50 years earlier. However the remains are so mixed up due to the explosion that it’s hard to tell which is which.

So that was my day really – and what a day it was.

And coming into Blanc Sablon there was a ferry moored in the harbour with steam up. Further enquiries revealed that it was the MV Apollo – the Newfoundland ferry, and it was leaving in half an hour so I had to get a move on if I wanted to catch it.

And so here I am in St Anthony, Newfoundland just 20 minutes away from L’Anse au Meadows and the Viking remains. Yes, I had a quick thrash through the dark right the way up Newfoundland to get here.

But what a cheesy place this B&B is – it’s furnished in the worst possible taste – all chintz and lace and nothing practical and all gone to ridiculous extremes.

It’s like something out of a bad 1920s novel and I can’t think what must have gone through the minds of the people who fitted this out. There are 7 pillows on the bed, for heaven’s sake, all laid out with military precision. One look at this place and the phrase “obsessive behaviour” sprang straight away to mind.

Still I’ll be gone tomorrow, I hope.

But that’s not definitive. There are some ominous rumblings in the distance. It seems that the ferry to Sydney, Cape Breton, may well have broken down. And the only other way off the island is back the way I came, and then to retrace my steps all the way over the Trans-Labrador Highway. And the weather has broken!

The road from Blanc-Sablon to some weirdly-named town beginning with N … "Natashquan" – ed … has not yet been built so I can’t get round to Sept Iles and then Baie-Comeau that way.

One other possibility is to have Casey shipped in a container by sea freight to wherever it is that Highway 138 begins – and when they told me how much that might cost (STARTING AT $400 – heaven alone knows what price it will finish at) I nearly fell through the floor.

But on reflection, if you think about it – the hotel at Labrador City, the one at Goose Bay, the one at Cartwright and the one at Mary’s Harbour came to almost twice that – and then there was the fuel and so on.

I shall have to look carefully into this. There’s a freighter leaving for there from Blanc Sablon next Friday.

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Monday 11th October 2010 – I’M IN LABRADOR CITY RIGHT NOW …

… in probably the most expensive hotel in which I’ve ever stayed in all my life, even when someone else was paying the bill. But that’s what everything is like around here. To give you an example, the petrol in Baie-Comeau is 108.4 cents per litre – at Manic 5 (the intermediate stop on Highway 389) just 213kms north, it was all of 132.4 cents. And a small mug of coffee cost me $1:50 instead ot the usual 50 cents.

So what I decided to do was that instead of spending three or four nights on the trail I’m going to do it in just two.

So today, I’ve driven 604 kms over some of the worst roads I’ve ever driven in the mud, rain and snow (it’s snowing outside) and a 12-hour day with 68 photos included, and here I am halfway round. And I’m exhausted too.

But the road is an adventure. The first 213 kms up to the immense barrage at the hydro-electric dam at Manic 5 (short for the Manicouagan River Dam no5) is a surfaced road and to drive this far was quite easy.

And the dam is certainly impressive too – it’s enormous and the photo can’t possibly do it any kind of justice.

As for the rest of the road, it is as you find it.

Generally speaking it’s compacted dirt but in the weather we are having just now it’s mostly mud and there are places along the trail where lorries have sunk in. It’s slippery too in the wet and I’ve had Casey across the road a couple of times when I’ve not been concentrating.

For a distance of several kilomtres through where the ghost town of Gagnon and its iron ore mine used to be, not only is the road surfaced but we even have a stretch of dual carriageway.

However, it’s not been maintained for probably 30 years since the mine closed and as a result it’s worse than parts of the dirt trail. And then once you cross the Cartier Railway line further along there just isn’t anything really – rail traffic has put paid to any pretext at keeping up the road and you have to pick your way between the potholes

But once you climb onto the Labrador Plateau you find yourself in the sub-arctic tundra. It’s totally wild up here, but beautiful and spell-binding

There are no grasses, just mosses and lichens and stunted fir trees.

And I’ve spent so much time up here admiring the view that I’ve lost the light and it’s snowing heavily again up there. I grope my way down in the dark and snow to the valley and Labrador City, and here, it’s teeming down with rain and there’s a biting wind.

Tomorrow I’m going to catch up on a couple of things I missed and then I’m going to do the second half – to Goose Bay.

A mere 520 kms.

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Saturday 10th October 2010 – RIGHT NOW…

… I’m sitting in a dingy motel room in Baie Comeau, a town that was built in the 1930s to handle the timber and subsequently the paper trade relating to all of the forests and so on around here.

At that time it was effectively the farthest north-eastern town (as opposed to “settlement”, of which there were plenty) in Quebec. They hadn’t yet discovered the iron ore and aluminium that led to the creation of Sept-Iles further up the coast.

>What’s interesting is that they have a rail link from here to Quebec City, would you believe?

There’s just about 10 kilometres of track on this side of the river to handle all of the paper traffic from the mill and then a rail ferry takes it across to Matane on the south shore of the St Lawrence from where it’s shipped by rail to Quebec City.

There’s quite a bit of sea traffic too. There are two huge freighters, of which this is one, anchored in the bay waiting to get in while a third one, the Australiaborg, owned by a Dutch shipping company, is currently being loaded at the dockside.

And of course there is the ferry over the St Lawrence to Matane. I’ve made a note of that for the return.

And don’t think that I’m complaining about my motel room either because I’m not. I’m on the economy budget plan as you know and a room here has only cost me $49 so I’m happy with that.

And not only that, it’s on the main road and nicely positioned for tomorrow when I head off into the interior. The Labrador Trail, Highway 389, starts just about 1km from my door and I’ll be on that tomorrow.

Talking of railways, sometime tomorrow I’ll be encountering the railway line that runs from Sept Iles up to Labrador City and all of the iron and aluminium lines in the interior. It might mean nothing to you at the moment but if you have ever read The Land God Gave to Cain by Hammond Egges, then this is the line that they were building all throughout the story, so it has some kind of literary interest.

My motel last night at St Simeon, despite being expensive, was quite comfortable and I was up and about quite early going for a little walk.

From here there’s a ferry across the St Lawrence that I sailed on in 2001, but I’m not going that way – I’m going much further along the river from here and then heading into the interior

But I’m not to be denied my ferry trip.

Back in 2001 I passed over the Saguenay River on the ferry that crosses here and I took it again this year.

But when I arrived here in 2001 it was dark and in the morning it was freezing cold so I didn’t gat to hang around too much and photograph the scenery. One of the things I had always planned to do was to come back and photograph it properly in the daylight, and here I am today.

And Strawberry Moose had a good photo opportunity today. Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the cabin Boy, the crew of the Felix-Antoine Savard, did the honours as His Nibs posed for the camera. Luckily the ferry was comparatively empty.

And as for the weather, it might be freezing but at least we have bright sunlight. It could quite easily be raining.

I’m really off the beaten track now though. As well as the St Lawrence River and the scenery, I’ve encountered my first serious waterfall.

I think that this is the Riviere Sault aux Moutons – the River Leap-Sheep ad if the sheep were leaping over that waterfall they must have been pretty good. We have a parking place and a sign, but that’s our lot. Had this been in civilisation, we would have had a fanfare and a marching band, together with coloured lights.

There are several other ferries across the St Lawrence and I went to check them out. At Forestville, where there’s a ferry over to Rimouski, I was distracted by this.

Forestville was formerly an important logging town and to move the logs down to the river, they had a log flume. This was a wooden trough filled with water and they floated the logs down to the shore in it.

If you’ve ever been on the log flume ride at any adventure park, then you’ll be pleased to know that that attraction has been based upon this idea.

So here I am at Baie Comeau. I arrived at about 14:30 today so you are probably wondering why I didn’t press on. The fact is that the next motel once I hit the Labrador Highway is 213km away at Manic 5 and the route planner that I downloaded before I went says that it ought to take me all of 8 hours to do it.

It’s an unpaved dirt road with many bends apparently and with three long single-track bridges. I reckon that I ought to plan a full day to do that and if I do get ahead of myself I can drive on to Fermont, just another 250 or so kms further on.

There’s a few places to stop there as well.

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Friday 9th October 2010 – TODAY WE CROSSED THE RUBI … ERRR ….. ST LAWRENCE

This morning quite early, we said goodbye to our host of the previous evening. And as you can see, Strawberry Moose was particularly sad to depart.

And what a nice motel that was – there was even a microwave oven in the room and that made me wish that I had some proper food on board. In fact, I’ll stock up with a few bits and pieces next time I pass by one of these supermarkets just in case I find another microwave in a motel room.

Tracy, where the motel might be found, is a small port on the south bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec and you may remember that I had a good wander around there last night.

Next item of interest is this gorgeous bow-girder bridge, the Pont Laviolette that spans the St Lawrence on the outskirts of Trois Rivieres, which is on the other (north) bank of the river.

I had a good drive around to see if I could have a closer and better view of the bridge, but no such luck. However, I’ll be coming back this way and I’ll spend some time then to have a really good look around.

And while we are on the subject of bridges, what do you think about this one?

This is the legendary Pont de Quebec, built at the turn of the 2Oth Century to carry the road and the railway across the St Lawrence to the city of Quebec. It’s been the subject of two major construction failures and cost more lives than the Tay Bridge disaster did, although it was never immortalised by William McGonagall.

You can read more about the Pont de Quebec on this page.

There’s no doubt about it though, the southern shore of the St Lawrence around by the city of Quebec is absolutely beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves are falling (and it’s funny that the further north-east I travel the more the trees have lost their leaves – it’s quite remarkable).

I chose this spot to stop and eat my butty, with the St Lawrence over my left shoulder and the city of Quebec across the river.

It was something of a late lunch because I went to the Walmart just up the road to buy another SD card – they had Kodak ones on special offer – 4GB for $10 but they had sold out. And in line with my resolution of this morning, I bought a tim opener, a mixing spoon and a microwave bowl to go with the pile of pasta in tomato sauce (4 for $5) and tins of beans (99 cents each) that I bought in a food supermarket across the road in case I find another motel with a microwave.

I have to be prepared.

After my lunch I crossed over into Quebec and had a drive around. Old Quebec is really beautiful but I didn’t stop as I’m running to a tight schedule. I hope I’ll be able to fit a day into my return journey to go for a wander round. It’s just like a late medaieval European city in places and has somehow managed to escape the developer’s bulldozer.

After that I headed north-east along the north shore of the St Lawrence and this is really where the beautiful part of Canada begins.

After maybe 15 miles you abruptly leave civilisation and go right into the mountains. It is just so spectacular, as you can see in this pic taken from halfway up Cap Tourmente. The St Lawrence is down there in the valley and Quebec is on the skyline.

>And this is what it is like – all up hill and down dale all the way along the coast, with the St Lawrence never more than a mile or two away.

Here, at the top of Cap Tourmente, you can see what I’ll be encountering. The mountains, the undulating road, the deciduous trees shedding their leaves, and the possibility of encountering a moose, if the one sitting beside me wasn’t enough to be going on with.

Tonight I’m staying in St Simeon which is a ferry port across to Riviere du Loup on the southern shore where I crossed over last time I was up here. This is the view of the ferry terminal from my motel bedroom.

And what I don’t understand is that last time I struggled to find a motel and had to drive another 25 miles until I found one quite by chance.

Just now, I’ve passed 6 at Malbaie, a small town about 15 miles west of here and there’s 5 motels that I can see from my window just here. I really must have been asleep that evening.

But even now I’m not lucky. It’s quite expensive here and there is nothing – no coffee machine (although I’ve sorted that out) and no microwave either. And even worse, there’s nowhere around in the town where I can find a meal.

I’m really not having much luck, am I?

Tomorrow I’ll be driving the 4 hours up to Baie Comeau, going by the famous ferry at Tadoussac, which you will have seen from the last time I was here, and then it’s into the interior. 400-odd miles of dirt track through the interior of Quebec and then 600 or so miles through Labrador and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that’s what I call the wilderness!

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality