Tag Archives: canadian national

Wednesday 5th October 2016 – BRRRR!

When I awoke this morning, bright and early, I went out to grab the cereal and soya milk from the back of Strider. And by heck, I wish I hadn’t!

Winter has definitely arrived, that’s for sure. Just look at this lot outside. It’s just like back home in the Auvergne isn’t it, with the hanging cloud, the cold and the freezing fog that has blanketed the Appalachian Mountains round about here on the edge of Kedgwick.

I had had a bad night last night despite just how comfortable it was in my nice big bed in my nice big room.

I’d crashed out by about 21:00 but I was tossing and turning all over the place and was really uncomfortable. Somehow I was tired and completely fast asleep and somehow I wasn’t, and I’m not sure that you’ll understand what I mean. But anyway, I was wide awake at 01:00, with the radio still playing, so I turned it off and this time I managed a decent sleep, until about 05:00

I’d been on my travels too, with the welcome return of Nerina, who hasn’t set foot in these nocturnal rambles for quite a while. We were at my house, in its usual state of papers all over the floor and we were looking for some papers that really ought to have been there but weren’t and this was all becoming far more complicated than it ought to have been. At he same time, Zero was at the kitchen sink doing the washing-up. She was being her usual cheerful self and we were discussing smoking. She said that she had tried a cigarette once, so I smacked her bottom for her.

When I sat down to breakfast I found that I had forgotten to fetch the spoon so I ended up eating my breakfast cereal with a fork and trying my best not to crash out again. I’m clearly not well at the moment.

Still, I can’t sit around here all day moping about the bad weather. I need to be moving on despite the fog. And this time, I didn’t forget to go and take a photograph of the night’s lodgings just for the record.

I’d been low on fuel too last night and there was an Irving’s next door – one of the reasons why I had stopped here – so I went off and fuelled up. I now have 97 Air miles after that – isn’t that good?

When I was on my way in the other direction 10 or so days ago, I’d stopped at the supermarket in town where I’d discovered baguettes on sale at half-price. I popped back in there on the way past this morning to see how the land lay and, sure enough, baguettes were on sale again. And so with what I had bought yesterday at Matane, that was lunch organised.

On the way through St Quentin the other day I’d noticed that there was a railway station in the town, on the old abandoned Canadian National railway line between Campbelltown and St Leonard.
There were a few railway artefacts on display outside, and so I’d pencilled the station in for a visit on the return trip and so here I am.

The little locomotive had caught my eye and I wondered if it really was a narrow-gauge locomotive that had been rescued from a mineral line somewhere. But in fact it was built in 1985 out of scrap and recycled materials by a couple of Canadian National employees from Campbelltown.

That wasn’t the only thing to catch my eye either. What do you reckon about this?

It’s a platelayers’ trolley but enclosed (a necessity given the severe winters around here) and with a petrol engine rather than a pump-action handle, which is a bit of a cheat. They were used by the track maintenance crews during their duties, which included fire-watching because sparks from the steam locomotives setting the forests alight was a real problem.

So much so that it will come as no surprise for any regular reader of this rubbish to realise that the station building here at St Quentin is not the original one. That, just like any other building here in Canada, caught fire and burnt down.

However, the most exciting exhibit here at the railway station must be this weird machine.

I’m not sure of the proper name by which this machine might be known, and I certainly have never seen one of them before, but I think that it’s magnificent and I definitely want one of these.

There were lots of other stuff actually inside the station, which was by the way not only a museum but the local tourist information office and the offices of the local Chamber of Commerce.

There was some kind of collection of railway wagons here too and so I went for a browse.

This caboose caught my eye – and not just because it’s a caboose but because of the message that’s on it. It reads “Dessert tout le Canada” which, crudely translated by Yours Truly (and if there’s any “crudely” involved, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”) as “serves all of Canada”.

However, that’s clearly a spelling mistake. It should read “Désert tout le Canada” which means “Abandons all of Canada” – which is certainly true these days.

This is why I have to mess around on buses and rely on Rachel to pick me up in Florenceville when there’s an abandoned Canadian National railway line that passes at the bottom of her garden and an abandoned Canadian National railway station right next door to the tyre depot.

By now the hanging clouds had gone, the sun was out and I was coming out of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a beautiful day now so I headed to St Leonard and the Saint John River to find a place to eat my butties.

I found a nice place to park up for my lunch – the car park for the Rendez-vous des Artistes in St Leonard. It was closed up so I didn’t think that anyone would mine.

What appealed to me about this place was that it had a good view over the river and right by one of the few remaining railway lines in New Brunswick. And I thought that I had heard a locomotive whistle too and so I prepared the camera, but nothing came by while I was here.

That over there across the Saint John River is the town of Van Buren, which is in Maine, USA. I was sitting right by the border crossing on the Canadian side of the river admiring the view and taking advantage of the beautiful weather.

And I wasn’t alone either. They say that there’s one in every village, and the one in St Leonard sought me out for a chat. He was speaking French and what with his accent and a speech impediment that he had, I couldn’t make out one word in every ten that he was uttering.

Nevertheless, we put the world to rights for half an hour and then, in the words of the reporters of the long-gone and long-lamented “News of the Screws”, I “made my excuses and left”.

Back up the hill and I hit the highway southwards, and aren’t I grateful for speed limiters and cruise control? I set the speed to 108kms and settled down for the drive back to Centreville, and it was then that I noticed in my rear-view mirror a County Mountie slowly closing up on me. But with the speed limiter I didn’t have too much to worry about in the normal run of events. He eventually passed me, having a good glance as he went by, but with the cruise control in operation he had no reason to pull me over and he eventually pulled away in front.

I was having visions of David Crosby and his
“It increases my paranoia”
“like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car”
“But I’m not giving in an inch to fear”
“‘cos I promised myself this year”
“I feel like I owe it to someone”
and reckon that it applies to me – I certainly owe it to myself, that’s for sure after all that I’ve been through this year.

I tracked down my mailbox too. And talk about a local postal service – my mailbox is about 7 or 8 kilometres from my plot of land. It’s astonishing. How I’m supposed to go and get my post in the middle of winter is totally beyond me.

But there was some really good news for me. Regular readers of this rubbish might recall that the motor insurance on Strider was cancelled about my head last year when we had the driving licence issues. There was a cheque in my mail box for the refund of the cancelled policy, minus the time on risk value, and this was not far off the total premium of the new policy. The cheque had timed out and so I took it back to the brokers in Florenceville and they wrote out a new one.

Waving that around in my sweaty little mitt, I went to the Scotia Bank and paid it in. I did a few more financial manoeuvres … “PERSONoeuvres” – ed … there, and now I reckon that I could keep on going over in Canada for a good while if necessary.

Back at the tyre depot I met up with everyone, had a coffee and a chat, and then we went back home to Rachel and Darren’s. Rachel made a lovely tea and we had a good chat, and then I crawled off to bed at some really early, ridiculous time.

This six weeks gap between treatments is evidently too much, but I’m not complaining. Despite the health issues that have now caught up properly with me, I would never otherwise have come here and I wouldn’t have missed my trip to Canada for the world.

Saturday 1st OCTOBER 2016 – I HAD NOTHING …

… like as good a night as I have had on the others that I stayed here. For some reason I couldn’t put the blankets straight on the bed and it was all very uncomfortable. That rather disappointed me. And I was wide-awake by 05:40 too – something that hasn’t happened for a good few days.

But at least I got to see the sunrise for once, and it really was beautiful. Not quite the same as it had been in Greece three years ago, but beautiful nevertheless.That cheered me up for the morning.

I’d been on my travels too. There was some kind of meeting going on – a reward, effectively, for people who had worked for quite a while at a certain company – and this involved staying at a hotel. I’d arrived and been given my key so off I went to find my room – and that took ages to find. Eventually I discovered the room and went in – to find that the bed was all heaped up any old how. And there was a suitcase in there, belonging to someone else. I went back to reception to complain, and it turned out that we were having to share rooms. I wasn’t at all impressed with this and made quite a fuss about it. Eventually the organiser, a young girl, came over to chat with me and I told her precisely what I thought. She added that the place was dirty and totally unfit for what she had planned, and so was intending not to pay them a penny for what we had – or hadn’t – received. Although that didn’t solve my problem.
From here I went as an observer to see something going on in an industrial city. Transport was the big problem here, with a huge Ship Canal that passed by somewhere in the distance and all goods had to be trans-shipped onto railway trains. Some young guy had the idea of building a feeder canal to the city so that barges could sail up the ship canal straight into the city without any unloading at all. So he engaged a firm of contractors who built it, but not how I would have finished it off because he brought it to finish a row or so behind the main street, with buildings in the way. I would have knocked down the buildings and brought the canal basin up to the main street. But then he was given the bill. he was expecting a bill of a couple of million. The bill was in fact 50 million and he started to have a major panic about how was he ever going to pay it off and as yet no freight had actually sailed up his canal.

I was alone again at breakfast but ended up having a really good chat with mine host. But soon enough I was back in my room resting. I’m dismayed at just how easy I’m becoming tired these days, but it can’t be helped, I suppose. At least I’m here.

When lunchtime approached I hit the road, and headed off westwards to Franquelin. That’s a village on the coast halfway towards Baie Comeau. It’s situated at the base of a steep valley and it was where I had my run-in with the farces of law and order the other day.

This isn’t the modern road into the village by the way. The steep drop to the concrete bridge over the river looks fairly modern to me, and the village is canted off to the side alongside the river. This could well therefore be a previous incarnation of Highway 138 from a bygone time.

Looking back in the direction from which the road comes, you can see the road snaking along the side of the river. There is a bridge across the river way in the distance and I was musing to myself that this was the way that the road crossed the river back in the olden days. I was tempted to go for a look but there was a huge hole in the middle of the road where the local council was doing some work.

And another thing that you will notice is that autumn has arrived. The leaves on the trees are turning. It’s the best time of the year to come to Canada, as I have said before.

My landlord and I had discussed old vehicles, and he had told me that here in Franquelin there were a couple of old first-generation snowmobiles. I was half-hoping to see an early Bombarider such as the one that we saw at Goose Bay back in 2010.

I was rather disappointed not to see one of those, but I wasn’t disappointed to see this machine. I’m not sure of the make or model of this machine and it doesn’t appear to be as antique as I was hoping to find, but it’s certainly unusual and quite rare enough these days. I’d have gone over to have a look at it but the gates were all locked up and there were people around.

No such problems with this machine. This was parked up at the side of the town’s workshop in full view.

Anyone of my age will have seen one of these before. In Europe this would be a piste-basher, used on the ski slopes for flattening down the snow and also for transporting goods and supplies about.

It is a Skidozer 302, made apparently by the Bombardier company, and probably dates from the 1970s, not that I would know very much about it, and I would gladly learn more if anyone would care to communicate with me.

Back on the modern main highway and there’s a small pull-in at the side of the road just here, with a couple of tables. This is where I stopped for lunch, with the lovely view along the coast back in the direction that had travelled.

I had company for part of the time – a woman walking her dog came over for a chat, and someone in a nearby house was playing music so loud that it probably vould have been heard in Montreal.

And the bread that I had bought yesterday in Baié-Trinité was totally disgusting.I shan’t be shopping there again.

I drove on towards Baie Comeau and nipped down to Alcoa’s wharf to see if there was anything moored there.

I was in luck, because we did have a ship here. The Federal Nakagawa it is, a bulk carrier of 20,000 tons on her way from Jamaica to Toledo in the USA, on the Great Lakes via half a dozen or so ports along the St Lawrence.

I thought that she might have been the CSL ship that I had encountered on the St Lawrence while I was on the ferry from Matane the other day, but she didn’t arrive here until the 29th, and so she’s ruled out.

usually, in the bay there are half a dozen ships queueing up to unload, but there were none today. But in the main port is the Africaborg, a ship of the Wagenborg Line. She’s not as big as she looks, being of only 12,000 tons and built in 2007. She’s come here from Ulsan in Korea, from where she set sail on 27th August.

Long-term readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were here in 2010 there was also a Wagenborg ship here in the docks but I can’t now remember the name of that ship

Apart from seeing the Africaborg in the docks, I had an interesting walk around the harbour here at Baie Comeau. Winter is approaching and there was something of a rush to remove boats from the water.

I had a very good time watching them try to load up a diesel-powered yacht onto a yacht trailer, and that was very interesting to see. It might be a surprise to you but I’ve never seen this done before so I was quite keen to watch them do it. But while I was watching them, I had an interruption.

My friend Rhys from South Carolina was on the phone. It’s the first time this year that I’ve heard his dulcet tones so I was quite keen to speak to him.

And while Rhys and I were busy chatting about his bus (he’s converting a redundant school bus into a mobile home) and the solar energy system that he’s installing in it, I was busy watching them remove the yacht. It was quite an art to drive (because it was using diesel propulsion) in between the stakes of the trailer and winch itself tightly onto the cradle so that they could pull the boat out of the water with the lorry and park it up for the winter.

And as our conversation rambled on, they pulled the yacht clear of the water and a couple of guys there gave it a thorough inspection.

And then they reversed the trailer back down into the water, slackened off the tethering ropes, re-positioned the yacht so that, presumably, it fitted better on the cradle, re-tightened the tethering ropes and pulled it out of the water again.

This time it passed its inspection and they towed it off around to the hardstanding at the side where, presumably, it will over-winter.

By now, the battery was flat in my telephone and I’d lost contact with Rhys, so I went off on the prowl to the other side of the docks, with a certain aim in my mind.

Baie Comeau is famous for having a small isolated railway network which presumably transports wood and pulp about. It’s not as isolated as people might think though, because there’s a rail ferry over to Matane where it connects with the Canadian National railway network (or such of it that remains after the decimation of the country’s rail network in the 1980s).

There are some railway sidings on the dockside and a couple of old diesel locomotives that move the railway wagons around. This is one of them. It’s SOPOR 4998, a General Motors GP38, one of the very last built and dating from November 1971.

And SOPOR? It’s the Societe Du Port Ferroviaire De Baie-Comeau.

I’ve actually been looking in the past for the dock from where the rail ferries leave, and I managed to track it down today, narrowly avoiding being squidged by a line of cars coming off the car ferry that had arrived a few minutes ago.

I couldn’t go over for a closer inspection because it’s all fenced off. But that’s it just over there, neatly hidden behind the installations for the car ferry. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a ship here, but you can’t have everything

In fact, the port of Baie Comeau is nothing like as busy as it used to be before Highway 138 along the north shore was completed in the 1960s. In those days it was the base for all kinds of goelettes, the boats that used to sail from village to village along the coast transporting supplies, ferrying people about, and returning with the output of the crafts carried on in the various villages.

Nowadays, there’s not even one coastal boat that calls here.

I mentioned wood and pulp just now, didn’t I? Baie Comeau owes its existence, like most of the towns on the North Shore, to forest products and the town was created almost from nothing in the 1930s when they began to exploit the timber in the interior of the region to make newsprint.

It was someone called Colonel Robert McCormick, who was the publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper in the USA who created the Quebec North Shore Paper Company to exploit the timber resources of the area for wood-pulp for his journals, and this is the modern pulp mill.

I went off to the shops, which are situated a couple of miles outside the town for a reason that seems totally bizarre to me. I arrived just in time to be thrown out of Walmart which, for reasons known only to itself, closes early on Saturdays. The other supermarkets have more realistic opening hours so the Maxi at the other end of the mall was where I did my shopping.

And why is shopping in North America so boring?

Well, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops you’ve seen a mall.

I’ll get my coat.

Heading back to town again, I went to play “hunt the railway line”.

I had visions of it disappearing way into the wilderness where trains would come back laden with lumber, but it seems to peter out here in the middle of the big industrial estate and I’ve no idea why. I went off to see if I could see anything else that might be railway-related, but there was nothing at all. I shall have to make certain enquiries at a later date in this respect. it wasn’t ‘arf disappointing.

But anyway, by now it was going dark and it was teatime. Seeing as how Godbout is so isolated and I’m never likely to be able to find my Sunday night pizza anywhere in the vicinity, I decided that I would have a Saturday night pizza from the restaurant at the traffic lights.

I ate it in the darkness on the way out of town. It was totally overpriced and totally disgusting but beggars can’t be choosers at moments like this. It was after all the only place in town.

Once I’d organised that, I headed off back to my little room in Godbout.

And here’s something else over which we can ponder.

These are the roadworks on the bridge over the river at Godbout and I know that I’ve mentioned them before. But on the way back tonight (I was coming in the opposite direction) we had some really weird goings-on. The lights on my side were on red so I waited, and a red pickup came through from the other direction, turned round and went back down again, even though the lights were against him.

And then we had a lorry coming the other way that had clearly burnt the red light because it was touch-and-go as to whether I would block him in as my light changed to green. He made it through with about a foot and half a second to spare otherwise he would have had to reverse all the way back downhill again.

And serve him right too.

Tuesday 22nd September 2015 – HERE IN THE NICE AND QUIET …

… isolation of my litle spec on the edge of the marshes I was having the best night’s sleep that I had had for quite some time.

However, as I have said before, one of the things that you need to do when you arrive somewhere to stay for the night in North America is to check the immediate area for railway lines, and I forgot to do that yesterday, didn’t I?

This isn’t the train that woke me up of course, but it is one that is very much like it, shuddering, clanking and blowing just about 100 yards away from my quiet little spec

When I did finally heave myself out of my stinking pit this morning, this is the beautiful view that greeted me. I’m shrouded in a fog rolling in off the head of the Bay of Fundy, something that many Ancient Mariners would tell you all about.

I’m shrouded in condensation too inside the truck cap – or at least, the truck cap is. I’m going to have to do something about this in the long term because as the weather cools down even more, the condensation will become worse and worse

I’ve had a little play around inside the back of Strider too and I’ve made piles of extra room. I can actually move around in there now, as well as unfold my chair and sit down. What with that and my little fold-up table, I’m really comfortable in there now. Next trick is going to be a solar panel on the roof and a battery inside so that I can run some lights in there and a little inverter to power a couple of things like my slow cooker.

I still have a couple of plans about the bed too and I shall put them into practice given a nice afternoon and a quiet spot in which to work.

That’s Strider way down there, in the spot where I parked for the night. And beyond it is the head of the Bay of Fundy. I’m actually standing on the ramparts of Fort Beausejour and you can see why the French chose this site for the building of their fort.

We’re on the southern shore of the narrowest part of the isthmus of Chignecto, on the edge of the Tantramar Marshes – and you may remember if you were with us on our voyage in October 2010 we went to Fort Gaspereaux, on the northern shore of the isthmus.

Fort Beausejour was built in 1750 under the orders of the French Governor the Marquis de la Jonquière, and with these two forts, the French could bottle up the isthmus.

Nothing could pass by here without the French knowing about it and so quite naturally they became prime targets for the British Army during the mid-18th Century. The British under Robert Monckton laid seige to Fort Beausejour in June 1755 and it fell after 13 days. Fort Gaspereaux fell a couple of days later and that was the end of French rule in Acadia.

The British had built a fort – Fort Lawrence – in Nova Scotia across the marshes from Fort Beausejour in order to put pressure on the French fort.

The fort didn’t last very long – the British preferred to occupy Fort Beausejour once they had captured it – and so there is nothing left of Fort Lawrence. But the site is well-known in the area and so I went for a wander over there for a look. And while there is nothing of the fort left to see, there’s a splendid view across the marshes to Fort Beausejour

But that’s not the best view of Fort Beausejour by any means. From the offices of the Nova Scotia Tourist Board’s information office, the view of the fort is even more spectacular. You can see its five-star pointed design and it earthen walls quite clearly from here with a good telephoto lens.

In fact, such is the dominance of the site where I am standing over the surrounding area that I’m surprised that the British hadn’t occupied and fortified this point instead. I know that this is the point that I would have chosen.

From up here on this eminence, there’s another good view – this time of an object that is just as spectacular as the fort, even though it’s much less well-known.

Right in the centre of the image, surrounded by cows, is the dock that was intended to the the entrance to the Chignecto Ship Railway and had this been built, it would have been a really impressive structure.

As I said, this is the narrowest part of the isthmus and if ships could find a way across it, they would save hundred of miles and several days, as well as avoid many of the risks of shipwreck, as they sailed between the Gulf of St Lawrence and the eastern seaboard of North America.

The plan was for the ships to sail into the dock, to be raised up by a hydraulic ramp and loaded onto railway wagons, and then transported by train across the isthmus to the other side – to the dock near Tidnish that we visited in October 2010.

Unfortunately the works on the southern side of the isthmus are on private property and not able to be visited, but what we are looking at here are the earthworks that would have carried the track bed of the railway, which were completed for several miles.

Why this all went wrong was that the same technology that enabled the construction of the engineering works of the railway also enabled shipbuilders to build bigger and bigger ships – and so the railway quickly became clear that the railway would be inadequate for the task, and funds could not be raised to rebuild it to larger dimensions.

After lunch I set off down the Trans-Canada Highway through the mountains towards Antigonish. Hannah is at St F-X University there and I hadn’t seen much of her while I’ve been over here so I went to visst her.

We went out for a meal and a chat for a couple of hours, and then I hit the road again. There’s a big Irvings truck stop down at the Canso Strait and while I’m not a big fan of truck stops these days for sleeping purposes, it’s the nest place that I can think of to settle down for the night.

At least all of the facilities are there.

Friday 29th August 2014 – THE FAMILY PILE …

… 300 Draper Avenue, used to be over there on that site, just to the right of the streetlight in the foreground

And how can I say that with such confidence?

The answer is that I have spent a very exciting morning in the company of a very helpful archivist from the Public Records Department in Montreal.

And now I know the reason why the address has been so hard to trace too. There has indeed been a renumbering of the houses in Montreal (which I suspected) in the late 1920s, but even this wouldn’t explain the difficulty.

But the fact that my great-grandfather was a bricklayer and the houses behind it weren’t built until shortly after World War One gives us another clue.

Speaking to a very old woman whom I encountered in the street and who had lived here all her life confirmed the rest.

The archives showed that Lot 300 in Draper Avenue (the address that I had for him was 300 Draper Avenue) was subdivided into numerous different sublots all owned by the same person, and there was no official trace of his being there. Hence, we assume that he and his family were not proprietors or licensed tenants, but casual itinerant tenants (as you might expect with bricklayers living next to construction sites) – hence the sublots being all in one name (the owner of the site)

And then the lady told me that prior to the modern building here, there was a big row of shops with a pile of apartments on top. And there we are. All we need now to confirm is that the apartments had their entrance round the side that you can see, in Draper Avenue, and there we are.

I’m not sure how I’m going to do that though.

Another one of my illusions was shattered today.

Here I am on the riverfront going to eat my butty at lunchtime and clattering along come locomotive 7229, power car 200 and then locomotive 7083 of the Canadian National Railways. First time that I’ve ever seen a train along here.

Now I’ve always believed, and I’ve proved this by measurement, that Nort American trains are about a quarter of a mile long per locomotive, but all of this lot were pulling just 15 tankers. How much of a disillusionment is that?

This evening I went for another random ramble. I took the Metro to the Jean Talon station and then walked along rue Jean Talon for miles down to the Parc Metro Station.

Down here I encountered the Marché Jean Talon, which is the major fruit and vegetable market of the city. And this is a fascinating place – I can tell you that. I had a really good browse around in here, but refrained from joining the throngs who were sifting through the rubbish bins (it was at the end of the day) salvaging the dumped fruit. All kinds and classes of people were doing it – there seems to be no social stigma at all

Having found some vegan cheese earlier in the day, I could stop for a pizza. And it as here that we almost had a disaster, for I left my dictaphone behind. My faith in human nature was restored as it was still there, even though there was someone sitting at my table, when I returned 15 minutes later to look for it.

The Parc Metro Station is situated on the site of a former Canadian Pacific railway line and the old Canadian Pacific station is still standing (which is a surprise to me, having encountered so much official vandalism in North America) so I went to look for it before I caught my train

Here it is – and isn’t it wonderful? A nice collection of columns and so on, reflecting what a magnificent pile it is. It really must have been quite something in the Roaring 20s

And floodlit too, which is even better. I’m glad to see that it’s being taken care of because, anywhere else, it would have long-since been demolished to make way for glass-and-concrete offices, the fate that befell the magnificent Broad Street Station in London.

Mind you, its survival is probably not unconnected with its modern use as a trendy high-class upmarket clothes shop. They would want something of a flagship site and this would suit them fine.

The manager kindly allowed me to photograph the interior, and you can see just what a splendid railway station it really must have been.

But all of this meant that I had a 20 minute wait for the bus at DuCollege Metro Sation. I’d hit the driver’s break-time yet again hadn’t I?

Still, it was a very pleasant, warm evening so it wasn’t a real hardship, especially with some good music to listen to. I’m glad that I had found my *.mp3 player.

And I found an even better bus stop at which to alight too – it’s much nearer the passage under the motorway.

Finally – I’ve bought another toy. Well – I haven’t, I’ve reserved it and I’ll pick it up on Monday as I need a car to pick it up. More of this anon.

Sunday 4th September 2011 – TRAVELLING TO MY NEW HOME

Here is where I spent last night.

I drove all around the town of Cabano and the local area last night but there wasn’t anywhere convenient to park up, so the back of the car park of the Metro supermarket had to do. I spent most of the night dying for a slash, freezing cold and I was awoken by a text message at 5:09.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

and haven’t I had some good luck here?

I fully believe that if I’m using someone’s facilities, it’s only polite to show my gratitude in a positive way and so with the supermarket being open this morning, I went in to do some shopping.

And just look at this! Real vegan cheese! And here in Quebec too. I consequently stocked up with a good supply of this for the next few weeks. This will go nicely on my salad butties, won’t it?

Cabano is situated at the head of Lake Temiscouata, which is the at the headwaters of the Saint John River system.

Back in the old days this was the site of a portage – people travelling between Lower Canada and Acadia made use of waterways as much as possible but there were places where they needed to leave one waterway and carry their equipment (a portage) overland to the next waterway. Cabano was one such place.

You don’t need any guesses to be able to tell what this might have been at one time. And when you see a street called rue de la Gare– “Station Street”, your suspicions are confirmed.

In the 1980s Canada out-Beechinged Beeching when it came to savaging the railway network and east of the city of Quebec the railway network was all-but wiped out. The line between the St Lawrence and Edmundston, which followed the old routz of the coureurs de bois was one that was obliterated.

To see more of Cabano, because there is plenty to see, you need to go here.

When I came by here the first time that I came to Canada, I saw a sign to a town called, rather enigmatically, St Louis du Ha! Ha! – complete with exclamation marks.

I didn’t have the time to go to check it out, but I took some time out today to go for a look, to make sure that I wasn’t imagining it. And here I am. It certainly exists, and that is confirmed by Canada Post.

Despite the rain, I go for a wander around the town and I’m immediately sidetracked by a load of fire engines.

It turns out that today is the the 39th Annual Tournament of the Fire Brigades of East Quebec, a series of competitions for who has the prettiest fire engine and so on, and I’ve stumbled right into the middle of it.

Whatever next? I’ll probably find a tractor pull or something.

From here, my journey takes me southwards into the hills – or the Appalachian Mountains to be precise – along the Route des Beaux Lieux.

And had it not been for the depressing weather, the lieux would have been exceedingly beaux. As it was, I wasn’t complaining at all. That’s the town of St Eusèbe up there on that crest, and it was every bit as beautiful as it looks from down here.

The Route des Beaux Lieux takes me to some beautiful places such as the town of Packingham just down there.

But you can see that this road has really earned its name. Even in the miserable weather that I was having today, it was all quite pretty around here. In the sunshine (if ever they have sunshine all around here) this must be a beautiful road to drive. I’ve made a mental note to come back here again and see for myself.

I cross over into New Brunswick and head for Lac Baker, which is going to be my lunch stop. Lac Baker is renowned for its municipal beach, which attract visitors from miles around, so they say.

Parked up outside the church, there’s a lovely view over the lake, although there would have been an even better one had the weather been decent enough. And it gives me an opportunity to try out my new vegan cheese, which is delicious. I’ll have some more of this.

The road from Lac baker takes me along the Saint John River to Edmundston and there on the outskirts of the town I finally find part of whatever it is of the New Brunswick rail network that survives.

This line is the main freight line that runs from Moncton up over the mountains to Edmundston and then along the Saint John River and over to Montreal. Much to my surprise, there’s actually a train moving around down there too.

Edmundston is famous for three reasons.

It has the third-largest French-speaking population outside France and Quebec
It has historically adopted a neutral position in all of the arguments that have raged around here – to such an extent that it set itself up at one time as the Republic of Madawaska
You can’t move around here without tripping over a paper mill

There are several paper mills here, one of which straddles the border with the USA and the liquid paper pulp passes over the river to the USA in a pressurised pipeline.

But look at the weather. It’s horrible and I’m not going for a walk around the town today. I’ll come back another time when the sun is shining.

Leaving Edmundston I caught up with my railway train. It’s pulled by three locomotives – two Canadian Nationals and a BC Rail – and there’s a power car in amongst the wagons, but I couldn’t see whose it was.

There’s a variety of rolling stock in there, including a wagon from the Illinois Central. Whatever is that doing in there?

Finally, the weather eases up and as it does so, the light disappears and I’m plunged into darkness. I suppose that you can’t have everything.

As I pull into Perth Andover, my arrival is celebrated by the local inhabitants with a fireworks display.

It’s Labour Day of course and the First Nation Community – Malicete, I think – here has been having a festival. The celebrations have concluded with this firework display and so, like everyone else here, I stop at the side of the road to find a good spec.

And so I arrive at my little piece of Canada. There are neighbours’ cars all over the placeand when the neighbour comes out onto the porch to see who it is who has arrived, I take the bull by the horns and go up to introduce myself.

This takes him completely by surprise.

And it’s pelting down again and we have thunder and lightning. What a way to arrive.

It’s just like my Demon King arrival in Milton Keynes.

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Saturday 2nd October 2010 – THE WEATHER CHANGED …

As you can tell from the photo here. You can also tell that I’ve found my spiritual home part II – a Home Depot. It didn’t take me long, did it?

You can see Casey over there on the left, reversed into a parking space. And here I had an unusual encounter – someone actually came over to me and asked me why I had reversed in. I replied “because I can – I’m a European”. But the real answer, as everyone knows, is so that I can make a quick getaway if I spot any of my creditors approaching.

I’ve stocked up with a pile of electrical fittings – you ought to know by now that I use North American fittings (the plugs and sockets) for my 12-volt DC domestic circuit – and a few other bits and pieces that will come in handy back home in France.

I’ve also bought a SatNav. If I’m going to be here for a lengthy period wandering around in all kinds of obscure places, I’m going to be struggling for accommodation. I’ll have a few addresses gleaned from tourist information places, but I’ll need to know how to find them. I don’t want to be driving half-way around Labrador in a snowstorm late at night. And I’d have a mobile phone too if I could – but that’s far too complicated to arrange just like that.

I’ve also had a strange but interesting encounter in a Zellers shop. Grandma, Mother and daughter aged about 18, if that, dressed in headscarves and … errr … traditional dress. remembering my unfortunate encounter back in 2002 and how it set me back a little in 2005, I went to seize the initiative and interrogate them.

Apparently they are Mennonites, and believe that man is snbordinate to God, and Woman is subordinate to Man

So now I know.

Old cars a-plenty too, far too many to post here. But this one is exciting.

If you came with me when we drove through the Utah Desert in 2002, you’ll recognise this as a Nash Rambler American. But this one isn’t as good and has no running gear. But being an estate version, this is an extremely rare version.

I went off down to the waterfront this afternoon and found my steam locomotive. It’s an old Canadian National 4-6-2 “Pacific” called “Spirit of Windsor” and being “restored” by the Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society.

But restoration here, as in the USA, consists of nothing more than slapping thick coats of gungy black paint all over the rust.

From the waterfront, there is, as you might expect, a really good view of the city of Detroit. That’s the USA across the river of course.

And I discovered all kinds of things along here too, including the remains of the old car ferry that used to cross here before the tunnel was built, although how it managed it I really don’t know given the volume of marine traffic along here.

And so back to my motel to pretty myself up ready for my meal with Katherine.

And you can see why I feel quite at home here too. It reminds me very much of Liverpool, or my garden anywhere that I have ever lived. There have always been a few cars parked up on bricks in my drive of course.

Katherine and I found an Indian restaurant where there was a running buffet – all you can eat for … errrr …$6.99 a head. And it was the best Indian meal that I have ever eaten outside Stoke on Trent. After that it was to Tim Horton’s for coffee along with dozens of other people – what a way to spend a Saturday night!

Friday 1st October 2010 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY

The aim was to go to see Lake St Clair, the “forgotten lake” of the Great Lakes network. But I didn’t get far

I mentioned yesterday that the whole of this area seems to be littered with interesting cars from a bygone era, most of them awaiting some care and attention. This car, dating from the early 1930s I reckon (not that I would know) that I found in Deerbrook was in surprisingly good condition for an unrestored model.

I saw dozens like this – spoilt for choice.

On the shores of the Lake, making maximum use of the telephoto lens, I can give you all a good view of the city of Detroit, probably 15 miles away across the water.

And you can tell the kind of weather that we were having, just by looking at the waves. There was quite a vicious wind blowing around here. No wonder that wind turbines are so popular in Ontario, although I bet that there won’t be so many in the USA. No businessman there can control the supply of wind.

I’ve found the River Thames – but not the one in London (UK, not Ontario) but the one that flows into Lake St Clair. and much to my excitement (I’m funny that way) it has a lighthouse too.

The Thames River lighthouse here in the town of Lakeshore dates from about 1838 (that’s the date that the first keeper was appointed) with a grant of £1000 from the Government of Upper Canada.

Its claim to fame was that the family that supplied the keepers of the lighthouse from its inception until as recently as 1950 claimed direct descent from Jacques Cartier.

The whole area is now classed as a Conservation Area, and you can see why from this photo because it really was a pleasant place to be, especially in the sun.

And while I was walking around, admiring the view of the lighthouse and the lake, I fell in with a fisherman. He told me that this is one of the best places in the world to catch muskies, which apparently are fish that bear a close resemblance to pike.

He (the fisherman, not the fish) comes from Hamilton – that’s Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, not Hamilton Ontario, although you never would have guessed judging by his accent.

My journey took me to the small town of Wallaceburg. I can’t go any further than this unfortunately as the Great Satan is just up the road and I shall be visiting here in a couple of days time.

Wallaceburg was formerly a major industrial centre, renowned for its glass, and was also the birthplace of what became more famous as the Lee-Enfield rifle.

The story goes that the industry here in the town and the agriculture of the neighbouring rural area were so important that lakers struggled all the way up the Sydenham River to here in order to load up.

Beautiful as views of the town might be, it’s only skin-deep because the southern shore of the river is nothing like the previous photo. It’s not always a railway line that divides the poor from the rich, despite whatever Tracy Chapman might have to say on the subject.

But then Wallaceburg is no longer master of its own budget, having been absorbed into the the municipality of Chatham-Dover.

I mentioned the agricultural produce of the area. Heading back to Windsor down the main highway, I drove through the Southern Ontario prairie.

It’s flat, as flat as the eye can see for miles around in all directions with not a single hill to relieve the monotony. The roads are totally straight and run for miles, and you are just surrounded by corn.

But while I was busy doing something else, I actually saw a diesel train and even more surprising, it was pulling four or five passenger carriages. Now as I was busy I didn’t get the chance to photograph it but the fact of it being a passenger train was totally surprising.

There are two railway lines into Windsor by the way, one from the Canadian Pacific and the other from the Canadian National. Now I could understand that if they served different townships on their way but they run parallel to each other just a mile or two apart which seems a strange thing to me – it’s just duplicating resources and bringing no benefits to anyone.

I also encountered the Taj Mahal – in actual fact the Gurdwara Khalsa Prakash Sikh temple somewhere between Tecumseh and Windsor.

There’s quite a large Sikh community in Canada, about 1.5% of the population, and like most non-white populations in North America they have suffered considerable discrimination, particularly in the early years of their arrival 100 or so years ago.

Immigration received a further impetus in the 1980s as Canada welcomed Sikhs fleeing from persecution in India, but this has led to a number of “incidents” taking place between the Asian communities in Canada, culminating in the attack on Air India Flight 182, widely credited to Sikh extremists.

But now I’m back in Windsor, in a really delightful evening. The weather is beautiful, very windy but hardly a cloud in the sky. I’ve been lucky with the weather so far but the locals think that it might break in a few days.

Tomorrow, depending on what time I wake up, I’ll go for another wander around. I’ve seen a steam locomotive on a plinth and that must be worth a photo. Tomorrow night Katherine and I are out a-dining. Doubtless Strawberry Moose will want to come too.

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EPIC HALL

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