I decided this morning that I would have a proper breakfast (of sorts) and so I called into the local Tim Hortons for coffee and bagels. And then promptly dropped the whole lot on the floor, followed by the laptop.

Still, at least it amused the patrons of the establishment.

I was up early after my rather late night last night and did a pile of paperwork in something of a vain attempt to catch up and then hit the road for Rimouski and breakfast. At least they gave me some more bagels and coffee. And someone with whom I was chatting confirmed that the serving wench there asked me 7 times if I really didn’t want butter on them.

I’d never had a proper look at Rimouski before and so I had a little drive around. It’s a typical seaside town with beaches, plenty of motels and amusements – just the place to come for a fortnight if only the river were warmer, because the St Lawrence is a really cold river.

But I was here at Rimouski for other reasons. As Austin Powers once famously said to Basil Exposition, “what’s long, hard and full of seamen?”.

There’s a small maritime museum here at Rimouski and the pride of place goes to the old Canadian submarine Onondaga. I’ve always said that you would never ever get me into a submarine, and at the price that they wanted for a visit, nothing was ever likely to change.

There’s quite a little complex of buildings here and the old port facilities when this area was a major port for all of the coast-hopper ferries that started from here.

Much of this traffic has been replaced by road now and what is left departs from the quayside in the town and so this area is redundant. But there are quite a few maritime souvenirs left to visit and it’s a nice place to walk around and to eat your butties

But it was the new pavilion that I had come here to see – or, rather, it was the contents of the new pavilion.

On the evening of 28th May 1914 the Canadian Pacific transatlantic liner Empress of Ireland set out from Quebec on her way to Liverpool. She stopped off at Rimouski to drop off her river pilot and then set off full ahead for Liverpool.

Just a couple of kilometres out of Rimouski she sighted the collier Storstad and then each ship became enveloped in a fog bank.

What happened after that has never been adequately explained, but it’s suspected that some of the portholes were open and the collision rolled the ship so that the water poured in.

The net result was that the liner took the Storstad full-on in the beam and sank within 14 minutes, taking 1012 passengers with her. And they all lie right underneath where that white buoy lies.

It’s the greatest marine tragedy every to hit Canada and one of the largest losses of life of any marine accident in peacetime. Remember that the Titanic lost 1507 passengers, but she was 4 times as big, and this disaster took place right within sight of shore.

Quite a lot of the ship has been salvaged since her wreck was rediscovered in the early 1960s. Some of it is displayed in the museum (and this was what I came to see). Very much more of it is held in private hands, which is a shame.

But what is even more disgraceful in my opinion, even though I know for a fact that many others, including the museum staff, disagree with me, is that much of it, including one of the massive brass propeller screws, has been sold for scrap. $5,300 the salvors were paid for the propeller and that just goes to show that some people have absolutely no sense of history.

In fact the looting of the wreck became so blatant (there was talk that one team was planning to use dynamite on the hull to make an easier entry into the bowels of the ship) that the authorities “nationalised” the wreck and placed it out of bounds to salvors, although private divers can visit it.

And hence the buoy – to moor your ship and to display the “statutory notice” about looting.

The disaster took place just off the headland of St Luce and there’s a modern Celtic cross on the headland there that clearly relates to the disaster.

In the cemetery however is a concrete and stone cross dated 1920 looking out over the headland to the sea. There’s no plaque to say to what it relates but the date and its position would seem to be significant as being an early memorial to the disaster.

It’s hard to understand how it was that the notion of the earth being flat persisted as long as it did amongst the powerful classes.

While I was sweeping the horizon looking to see what I could see, I noticed a few peculiar shapes and so I photographed them with the telephoto lens at its fullest extent and enlarged the image to see what I could see.

It turns out that it’s the superstructure of a ship, way across the other side of the St Lawrence. The ship is at such a long distance away that the hull has been lost due to the curvature of the earth.

As for the town of St Luce, it’s another seaside resort but much smaller than Rimouski. It’s quite a quaint little place, another small town where I would be quite happy to pass a week or two relaxing in the peace and quiet.

But the shore of the St Lawrence is really beautiful around here with all of the beaches. It’s a shame though that it’s on the south shore and so it doesn’t catch the sun as much as the north shore. And the north shore is a good 5° colder so it’s not as pleasant for sunbathing.

I’ve had a couple of really exciting and involved chats with a couple of people today and we’ve really put the world to rights.

However, it’s made the time pass really quickly and as a result the sun is disappearing rapidly. We’re having a glorious sunset but none of this is helping me find a place to stay.

And while I’m dithering, the temperature has dropped rapidly too and it’s freezing. But I’ve found a type of chalet motel place with cooking facilities and while it’s a little more than I would be happy paying, it’s got absolutely everything and I can cook myself a really hot meal. And so I’m saving there too.

And talking to the proprietor’s wife, she’s a vegan too and gives me a huge bowl of home-made vegan vegetable soup. And that’s the most delicious thing that I’ve eaten for ages.