Well, Baie Trinité actually, but never mind – it’s near enough.
We’ve been here before – in 2012on our mega-ramble down Highway 138 to be precise, but I’d only driven through the place without having the time to have a real poke around, and so seeing as it’s quite close to where I’m staying (a mere 37 kilometres – which is “right next door” over here on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River) I reckoned that I would come for a nosy around.
On the way out there, though, I encountered quite a beautiful lake. It’s at round about kilometre 831 and it’s called le Lac au Rat Musqué – Muskrat Lake – and I’d love to know how it is that some of these lakes and other natural landmarks earned their European names.
I didn’t take a photo of it in 2012 and I don’t know why. But there are lakes just about everywhere and I suppose that I was spoiled for choice.
First thing that you notice as you arrive in Baie Trinité is a rest area, right in the centre of what passes for the village and right by the shore. There are all of the usual facilities here, but it goes without saying that they are all closed up for the winter.
But anyway, it’s gone lunchtime, my stomach thinks that my throat has been cut and I have my butties to eat. I’ve run out of hummus but I do have some vegan cheese that I picked up in the Atlantic Superstore in Woodstock.
Baie Trinité’s claim to fame is that it is the home of the Centre National des Naufrages du Saint Laurent – the National Centre for Shipwrecks on the Saint Lawrence. This is a place that I would love to visit, but as you probably realise, it’s closed now until next season.
But one thing about it is that here you can “experience several major tragedies that have marked the history of Nouvelle France” but if anyone thinks that I’m going to experience a shipwreck at first hand just to satisfy my curiosity they are mistaken.
There have been plenty of shipwrecks along the coast as you probably know, and we’ve visited the sites of a few of them. And without any explanatory panel (which wouldn’t do you lot much good anyway because here in Quebec the Tourist Information is written in French only, just to spite the Anglophone tourists), I would say that this cannon is from a real shipwreck.
In 1690 a mariner by the name of Admiral Phips sailed up the St Lawrence in an attempt to capture Quebec from the French. He was unsuccessful, not the least of the reasons being that he lost several ships on the way up. And on Christmas Eve 1994 the remains of one of them – the Elizabeth and Mary – were found just off the headland at Baie Trinité.
And as you might also expect, just like every other village in Quebec, we have a church here, built in 1939.
I forgot to go over and see to whom it was dedicated (I’m really forgetting myself these days) but as this place is called Baie Trinité, apparently because Jacques Cartier is supposed to have visited the bay on Trinity Sunday in 1536, it’s quite possible that this could be the Church of the Holy Trinity – l’église Sainte-Trinité.
As we have said before, the beaches around here are magnificent, with all of the sand that has been deposited by glaciers as they receded at the end of the various ice ages.
I’m not a big fan of the beach here at Baie Trinité though. It’s right by the main highway and while it’s hardly the M25, you’d be surprised at the number of heavy lorries that go past here. It’s too noisy for me.
Instead, I’m going to head up the beach westwards. That’s far more sheltered behind the Tourist Information Centre and the church and where I’m less likely to be disturbed.
Except, it has to be said, by someone on a quad who decides to come for a ride out here as I’m walking along. Still, I do my best to avoid him and think pleasant thoughts instead as I take advantage of the beautiful sunshine.
All of the beaches, shores and river mouths along here are littered with rocks as you have probably noticed, and they too have been brought down here by glaciers (and latterly by rivers) from their places of origin.
Geologists can and do have hours of endless fun tracing rocks back to their original source and thus plotting the paths of glaciers and rivers during prehistory. It’s a fascinating hobby, so I’m told.
But this lump of rock on the beach is quite interesting. It caught my attention because it was glistening in the sunlight so I went over to photograph it. Unfortunately, the glistening hasn’t come out at all.
The rock is totally different from most of the others along here and to me (not that I would know very much about it) it closely resembles a lump of iron ore similar to what we saw when we tracked down the old iron mine at Gagnon last year.
There are many deposits of iron ore in the interior – Gagnon, Fire Lake, Mont Wright, Labrador and Wabush to name just five out of dozens, and it’s interesting to think that this rock might have come all the way down from there.
This river is called, rather unsurprisingly, the rivière Trinité and apparently it’s quite famous for the quality – and quantity – of the salmon that was caught in it.
It was quite popular with some first-Nation Canadians who used to live off the salmon from the river in the summer and off whales and the like from the St Lawrence during the winter. There was no reason for them to live a nomadic lifestyle.
Like most rivers out here along the North Shore, Quebec Hydro has become involved in it and has installed a little hydro-electric generating plant to serve the town and its neighbourhood.
There wasn’t very much by the way of detail to tell me anything about it but although it’s not a very big drop the force of the water makes it quite powerful so I imagine that there’s enough power here to run the village and its surroundings.
“But what about the salmon?” I hear you say. After all, it’s quite a famous salmon fishing river and one time the fishing rights were owned by a club in Quebec, although control was soon wrestled back by the villagers.
In fact, when they built the barrage they also built a kind of fish ladder at the side of it so that the salmon could move upstream and downstream . I haven’t heard whether or not it’s as successful and whether the fish are a snumerous as before.
Meanwhile, I’m back on the beach again heading east. Right over there is the fish-processing plant that we visited when we were here in 2012.
Formerly, it was the forest products that provided the major source of employment in the village. It was quite a hive of industry, with a log flume and even a small railway network, but the 1960s put an end to all of that and the economy collapsed.
Nowadays, it’s fishing and the fish processing plant that provide most of the employment opportunities around here.
One thing that Baie Trinité does have going for it is that it has a fuel station and convenience store, and you can see it peering through the trees over there, left of centre.
I went in there for a wander around and to my great surprise they sold bread. Baguettes too, albeit frozen ones that need to be thawed out before I can use them. But it’s good news for me – it’s a round trip of just 78 kms for the bread instead of 116 kms.
Out on the western side of the village is the Pointe-à-Poulin. I tried to reach there in 2012 as you may remember but was blocked by the snow.
No such problems this year though. In fact I made it all the way down to the Anse de Sable – Sandy Cove – and not only that, I was chased all the way down the road by three Dodge Caravans full of people and that made me wonder what on earth was going on. It seems to be a popular spot this year and so I shall have to make enquiries as to why they are here.
They all went over there to have a play on that big rock, that looked as if it might have been a plaque of volcanic lava. I went over to have a chat to them to see what was going on.
It appears that they were High-School students who were out on a field trip along the North Shore of the St Lawrence – and that made me wonder whether the young archaeologists whom I had seen at Godbout the other day excavating part of that cache of seashells were from the same group.
But anyway, I left them all to it and went for a wander right out to the farthest extremity of the Point.
Or at least, what I thought was the farthest extremity of the Point because each time that I came to what I thought was the farthest extremity of the Point, there was another Point around the corner. I’d heard of a similar phenomenon in mountaineering when people climbed up to what they considered to be the summit, only to find another summit further on.
having realised that I was likely to be out here all night at this rate, I turned round and retraced my steps somewhat, turning my attention to the rocks just offshore.
I went for a clamber about and a closer inspection thereof. I noticed that the rocks were not rocks at all but nice, black, smooth and shiny, so it seemed to me that these might also be plaques of lava.
You might be wondering about the likelihood of volcanic activity around the St Lawrence, but it does appear to be a recorded fact.
The St Lawrence River valley is situated more-or-less along a geological fault line and there is evidence of techtonic plate movement along here as well as some evidence of prehistoric volcanic eruptions. Coming across outcrops of lava, and even lava fused into airgaps in other rocks, is by no means unusual.
But talking of techtonic plate movement, there have been several earthquakes recorded along the St Lawrence in recent years – a score of 5 on the Richter Scale is not unknown. But this pales into insignificance when considered against the events of 1663
Many of you will remember the discussion that we had when we were at Les Eboulements. We mentioned that in that year there had been as many as 33 earthquakes along the St Lawrence, the largest of which caused an entire mountainside to slide into the river.
So leaving the lava beds for now and greeting the students, who seemed to be having endless amounts of fun, I walked right back around the bay to the other end – the end closest to Baie Trinité.
I was hoping to see a shipwreck or two, or the remains of a shipwreck maybe, but I was completely out of luck.But it really was a beautiful beach and I had quite enjoyed my time out here. Given a few more degrees of temperature and bit less wind, I could quite happily have stretched out on one of the lava beds.
Anyway, I called it a day and leapt into Strider to take me back home.
But halfway down the road before I reached Highway 138, I came to a shuddering halt along the side of the road. That was because the view of the bay that I saw as I rounded a bend was quite stunning. Now this is the kind of beach upon which I could quite happily recline in the evening sun, except of course that the sun is setting behind the trees on the left.
And in any case, I was feeling quite tired by now so I was quite keen to return home to my little room.
I made myself a coffee and retired to my room for a repose and relax before I made tea. Baked potatoes, beans and hotdogs with mustard as usual (it was a good idea to buy that bag of spuds and those tins of beans) was on the menu. And then having done the washing-up, I retired foe the night.
I was pretty exhausted after my long walk around the beach. But at least I have my bread for tomorrow.
And you have 2105 words to read tonight. Serves you all right.
