Tag Archives: trois rivieres

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 – IT’S ALL STARTING …

… off again around here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that medical appointments seem to come in batches . They are like London buses – you don’t see one for ages and then half a dozen all turn up at the same time.

And so this morning I had a ‘phone call from the Dialysis Centre. “Could you come in during the morning on Thursday because we’ve arranged for that scan on your implant to take place during the afternoon at 15:00?”

So at 10:00 in the forenoon I have been summoned to answer to the above, not at a Court of Law, but at the Dialysis Centre. And they will arrange the taxi at the appropriate time.

Shortly afterwards, Paris finally called me back in answer to all of the messages that I had left them. I told them about this appointment there with the neurologist on 23rd January so if they wanted to perform this blasted biopsy, could they do it round about then?

“That was why we are ringing” said the voice. “If you can tell us the contact details of your Dialysis Centre, we’ll get them to do the dialysis on the Wednesday and have the taxi bring you here straight away, giving you two days before you go back home again”.

It’s taken them long enough to come round to it, but now that they have their fingers on the pulse again, things might begin to happen.

One thing that won’t be happening is me going to bed at a respectable time. It was another late night last night.

This time though, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until the alarm sounded at 07:00, without moving a muscle or batting an eyelid at all.

It was a struggle to haul myself out of the bed but I beat all of the alarms at the correct places and had a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. I was running a small solar energy business as I did before. I was in Canada. I’d registered my business in Canada and done a little work there. I’d managed to rent someone’s front garden where I’d put a portacabin and a few other bits and pieces on there and that I used as a Head Office. When I crossed over the border between Canada and the USA I noticed that there was now a Customs office. It was inviting traders to register there. I was thinking that with the difference in tax between the USA and Canada it may well be of interest to me if I’m bringing stuff across the border. If I do that, the tax that I pay that is more will be refunded to me. If I buy stuff in Canada and take it over into the USA to sell, then I’d receive a deduction on the difference between the Canada and the USA tax. We went round there but it was closed so I thought that I’d go there again. On our way back we went past where my property was and I noticed that the house was for sale. I said to my niece to let me know when it’s sold because I couldn’t see me being allowed to stay there on the front lawn by a new owner. We stopped to have a look. The owner was outside. He buttonholed us so we went in and had a chat. No-one said anything about the property being for sale. Then it was time to leave. We had to leave downstairs through the basement so it was a case of locking all the upstairs. That gave us an opportunity to look into the rooms and we saw that work was still going on. It didn’t look as if they were ready to leave any time. The boy of the house ran back upstairs after we’d all gone down even though we’d closed all the lights and locked the doors. His father was rather short with him. The wife carried on talking to us as we walked through the house and basement and saw all of the lovely work that they were doing, turning what had been the living room into an office and the conversation carried on

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, back in 2012 and 2013 I was actively exploring the possibility of setting up a business in Canada and had even taken steps to initiate something. But like everything else, I was overwhelmed when my ill-health began.

There was also the famous Motel venture, when I had my eye on THAT PLOT OF LAND THAT WAS LEFT OVER when they finished the Trans-Labrador Highway over the Mealy Mountains in 2010, and there was also the other little plot of land left over when they built the Trans-Canada Highway and for which I actually made an offer, before being well and truly wiped out by Irving’s Petrol Stations who paid ten times what the land was worth.

Isabelle the nurse was late today. And not just late but very late. 08:50 when she finally appeared. "Sorry but I had a lot of blood tests to do this morning" she said.

No surprise there of course. People are withholding their prescriptions when her colleague is on duty because he doesn’t have “the touch” like she does.

On the subject of holidays I told her not to bother to come on New Year’s Day because I’m having a lie-in. Nevertheless she insisted on coming, but she’ll come on the midday round. The question is “will I actually be up by midday?”.

After she left I made breakfast and began the second part of ISAAC WELD’S BOOK

We aren’t many pages into it before we read something that underlines just what I was discussing the other day about the morals of the Europeans who went to North America. He tells us that the First-Nation people whom he met at Lévis opposite Québec were "{qualid and filthy in the extreme, and going about the ?treets every day in large partics, begging, pre?ented a mo?t melancholy picture of human nature; and indeed, if a traveller never ?aw any of the North American Indians, but the mo?t decent of tno?e who are in the habit of frequenting the large towns of Lower Canada, he would not be Jed to entertain an opinion greatly in their favour. The farther you a?cend up the country, and con?equently the nearer you ?ee the Indians to what they were in their original ?tate, before their manners were corrupted by intercour?e with the whites, the more do you find in their character and conduct de?erving of admiration."

If that’s not a damning indictment of the behaviour of the European settlers in Canada I don’t know what it is. But I’m convinced that Isaac Weld would have had a good relationship with the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. They have a lot in common, although he is more in tune with the First-Nation peoples of North America rather than Aunt Judy’s Magazine editor’s fairies.

Another thing he discusses, after having visited a convent in Trois Rivières and meeting a young novice, "the fair Ur?uline, who came to the Iattice, ?eemed to be one of tho?e unfortunate females that had at la?t begun to feel all the horrors of confinement, and to lament the ra?hne?s of that vow which had fecluded her for ever from the world, and from the participation of tho?e innocent plea?ures, which, for the be?t and wi?e?t of purpo?es, the beneficent Ruler of the univer?e meant that his creatures ?hould enjoy. " is "the cruelty of the cu?tom which allows, and the mi?taken zeal of a religion that encourages, an artle?s and inexperienced young creature to renounce a world, of which ?he was de?tined perhaps, to be a happy and u?eful member, for an unprofitable life of ?olitude, and unremitted Penance for ?ins never committed"

Much, much later than usual I came back in here to revise for my Welsh lesson and then to take part therein. And once more, it went quite well too.

Earlier, I’d sent off my homework and I received it back, marked “brilliant” and with a note that my tutor loved my essay on James Bond.

After lunch I went on the hunt for music for the next radio programme. That wasn’t easy because some of it was quite obscure but in the end I managed to find what I needed. As well as that, a few gems fell into my hands too.

The trouble is that with this new program that I’m using to search and extract music, it’s not so good at finding the titles of the songs and becomes confused, so in the end I’ve switched off that option because it’s making more work than it’s saving. I’m having to do all of that by hand afterwards.

That’s probably taking more time than I’m saving with the speed of this program.

There was the break for hot chocolate of course, which was really nice. And while I was drinking it I rang up Isabelle the nurse.

Earlier in the day my faithful cleaner had stuck her head in at the door. She goes into town really early on Thursdays so if she fits my anaesthetic patches before she goes, the effect will have worn off by the time I’m plugged in. So she suggested that I telephone Isabelle and ask her if she would do it.

And so I did – and she agreed, which was nice of her. She’s much more friendly and serviable.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with stuffing and with rice and veg followed by the last of the chocolate cake. Tomorrow I’m starting on the ginger cake and I’ll tell you how it is.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed.

But when Isaac Weld was in Trois Rivières I expected him to mention the enormous sundial in the town that I SAW WHEN I WAS THERE.
There’s a story about that sundial. There was one Québecois who asked another one to tell him the time
"I don’t have a watch" replied the second
"Well, go and look at the sundial" said the first
"Don’t be silly" said the second. "It’s dark outside"
"In that case" said the first "take a torch with you"

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Thursday 26th September 2019 – HERE I AM …

… sitting on a bed in another one of these places where you don’t rent the room for the night, you buy the motel.

Last night I was dead to the world and slept right the way through the night until the alarm went off without disturbing myself once. There was the tail-end of a dream going round and round my head so I managed to dictate that – such as it was – before it disappeared completely. Nothing exciting though, unfortunately.

Having done a few things, I went upstairs to the kitchen and tried to make a coffee. Eventually, I managed to figure out the machine so that was good.

Sandra came to join me later and we had breakfast and a good chat. Then I had a shower and packed Strider ready to leave. We swapped the cars over and I headed off into the torrential rainstorm.

I was right about the turn of the cards – my wish hadn’t come true. But then I never really expected that it would. But the combination of Ottawa and the events of the past six weeks together with a music track appearing on my playlist and a “memory” about my farm all collided together at a vulnerable moment and I ended up in a deep, deep depression that has followed me around all day and won’t go away.

The weather didn’t help of course, and neither did the roadworks. It took an age to negotiate myself out of Ottawa and I must have passed the same guy on the same street corner three times until I had come to terms with the roadworks.

On the highway the rain was dreadful and the first of a long, long set of roadworks put the evil eye on just about everything. I was soaked going to the bathroom, soaked fuelling up Strider and then in Montreal amidst the major road reconstructions there I ended up being unable to join the lane that I wanted due to standing traffic. I was pushed sideways to the west and instead of going up Highway 40 and over the ferry at Sorel, I ended up on Highway 15 and over the new Champlain Bridge.

So here I was and here I stayed.

I stopped off for a coffee at Tim Horton’s at St Hyacinthe, home of many a tractor pull, and then continued through the storm.

At Quebec I misread a sign (Riviere du Loup for Trois Rivieres) and ended up going over the Laporte bridge by mistake. I had to turn round and fight the rush-hour traffic to pick up my route again.

So here I am in Montmagny and here I’m staying for the night. The Motel Centre-Ville. I’ll have a good night, a shower in the morning and then continue on my way.

So if anyone wants to contact me, don’t be shy. I have another three weeks here at least.

And who knows? This wish might even come true. You never know.

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Saturday 8th September 2018 – IT REALLY DOES COME TO SOMETHING …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… when a person living in an isolated Arctic community on a remote Island in the Far North tells you, without any prompting at all, that the British are totally out of their minds about Brexit.

But never mind that for a moment. I’m wondering what would have happened had I not had a severe attack of cramp round about 05:30 or so – the first that I’ve had for a few days. Whether I would have slept on until 06:00

However I did stay in bed until the alarm went off. No polar bears to entice us out this morning. And after the medication I went for a walk. Not without an element of some panic because I appear to have lost my woolly hat – the one that goes on my woolly head.

Not that that’s too much to worry about because I’ve lost count of the amount of things that I’ve lost already and then subsequently recovered in my room. Nevertheless it won’t be long before something goes missing completely. You can bank on that.

I took my evening walk to the bridge last night. Imagine me – in short sleeves at midnight in the High Arctic in September. Binnacle pointing to 180° – in other words, due south.

But no midnight sun last night. And that’s hardly surprising because for the morning we are swathed in fog again. This weather is really getting me down but then again what did I expect up here in the High Arctic? Some explorers have been stranded for four or five years by the capricious ice and, as we know, hundreds have failed to return.

If it were a cake-walk to come here, it wouldn’t be half the adventure that it is now, would it?

I had breakfast this morning with a couple of members of staff – Christopher the geologist and young Michael the ship’s “go’fer”. He’s excited because Pond Inlet is his home village and the captain has invited his family on board for lunch.

As for our plans today, I’ve no idea what they might be. This morning, anyway.

This afternoon we’re visiting an Inuit community – the one at Pond Inlet and that seems to be a waste of time in my opinion because not only is it not a traditional Inuit community but more of a modern resettlement town, but we arrived there on a plane the other day so we’ve been here. And there are still plenty of other places to visit.

The cynic inside me is once more wide-awake and telling me that maybe someone on board the ship has an aunt who runs the local gift shop or something like that.

But on the other hand, for the last week or so Chris Farlowe has been singing to me “Don’t Start Chasing Happiness – Let It Take You By Surprise. Don’t Go Casting Shadows …”. I suppose that I ought to be adopting a more positive outlook, even if I don’t feel much like it right now.

One positive outlook is the fact that we have seen yet another candidate for Ship Of The Day. It’s useful having an AIS beacon reader on board, so I was able to discover that she is the MV Golden Brilliant.

She’s a bulk carrier of 41500 tonnes, built in 2013 and registered in Hong Kong. She left Gijon in Spain on 26th August and is en route for Rotterdam, and taking a major deviation to a stop called “Camni” in the fleet database – clearly some port that doesn’t have an AIS logger.

Its AIS track puts it up here anyway, so it’s the correct ship, and someone in the crew tells me that there’s a mine out here – the Mary River Iron Ore Mine.

This would seem to place Camni at Milne Port Inlet, 71°53’N 80°55’W, so that seems to fit the bill.

Although I didn’t take too much interest in many of the proceedings today, there was a brief class giving some kind of outline of the Inuit language, so I wandered in for a lesson. It’s really quite simple and some kind of, I suppose, shorthand symbols for the syllables, of which there are probably in the region of 60 – 20 consonants each with three vowel sounds, ee, ah and ooh. And every word is made up of one or more symbols, with various accents to emphasise or detract the sound.

That took us nicely up to our arrival in Pond Inlet. We had a discussion about the town and were given a slide show of the town with the various buildings that might be important.

Pond Inlet is situated at 72’42” north. It loses the sun in mid-November, and you have to wait until February until it comes back.

It was named by John Ross in 1818 for John Pond, the Astronomer Royal of the period.

And good-oh! It’s the village brocante this afternoon. How exciting! Mind you, the cynic inside me won’t be at all surprised if this has been arranged because one of the locals has heard that a cruise ship is coming in with a pile of gullible tourists and the rest of the villagers have a load of rubbish that’s awaiting disposal.

What was this about adopting a more-positive outlook?

The most important, certainly for Strawberry Moose, is the fact that Pond Inlet is the home of the most Northerly Tim Horton’s in the whole world.

If that’s not a good destination for him to make a public appearance then I don’t know what is.

Lunch was taken with the couple who seem to be quite interested in me, the fools. It was nice of them to ask me over to sit with them. I don’t understand my popularity these days.

But only with certain people. I am definitely persona non grata elsewhere, something that is entirely my own fault. It’s a desperate shame, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk.

We all piled aboard the zodiacs and headed out to the town. There was some kind of ad-hoc immigration control in place on the beach but of course none of that prevented His Nibs from gaining a foothold ashore.

An Inuit lady called Joanna was there to give us a guided tour of the town, not that there was an awful lot to see.

The first thing that caught my eye was all of the shipping containers all over the place. In that respect it’s very much like South-Western Newfoundland where the bodies off the old Newfoundland Railway wagons were auctioned off and now litter the countryside just about everywhere.

True garden-shed engineering.

And I had quite a laugh at the bus stop too. As if you really need a bus around a community of about 1600 people. Especially when there are so many cars all around the place. That was also something that astonished me.

It is however the time that Arctic cotton is in flower and that’s a useful commodity out here. It’s really a bunch of flowery seeds rather similar to how a dandelion works, and they are used here to make wicks for qulliqs – the soapstone oil lamps – and similar things.

The Catholic Church was quite interesting, if not tragic. It’s apparently the northernmost Catholic church in the world and a comparatively recent construction too. It will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish who will recall the almost-inevitable fate of most buildings out here in Canada.

What is the tragic part is that when it went up, it took with it the Catholic priest, Father Guy-Mary Rousselière who was probably the greatest of all of the anthropological and archaeological amateurs in this region, along with almost every single item of his work. All that remains was whatever he had managed to publish during his lifetime.

We were shown a sled that was built up on another larger one and which was built up on a third even larger. It was even covered in. The idea is that in the winter the father of the family would tow it behind his skidoo and if he kept on going at full tilt he could leap over small crevasses in the ice and the sled with all of the kids inside wouldn’t ground out.

There’s an RCMP post here too and it has at one time held as many as 21 detainees at one time. This must be a record for a small town like this.

Another asset of the community, now long-closed and replaced, is the Hudson’s Bay outlet. It’s now being used for mechanical repairs and is guarded by a couple of large dogs who have clearly seen better days.

All of the stuff littered around in the wooden crates is the stuff that has come up in the recent sea-lift.

The biggest employer in the town is the Canadian Government and they have some offices here. These ones here are the offices of the Canadian National Parks Service for the Sirmilk region, which is where we are right now.

There are several traditional habits that are still carried on here. The mothers still carry their babies with them in the hoods of their parkhas and it was quite amusing to see the tourists surrounding one of the aforementioned in an attempt to persuade her to allow them to photograph mummy and offspring.

I’m not sure where the quad fitted in with the traditional habits though.

One of the attractions of the town is the half-built sod house that is used to explain to visitors how the original inhabitants of the area lived. Today, they use 4×2 wood to build the frame for the sealskin roof, but in the past they used whalebone.

Lying around were some bones from a bow-head whale, the type of bones that would have been used in the olden days before wood became available.

They were brewing up too and making bannock. The latter isn’t for me, seeing as they use lard in the peparation, and a new kettle of water hadn’t boiled yet. But I was discussing Labrador Tea with Joanna and she, ferreting around in the box, came up with a teabag of Labrador Tea. And I shall be trying that tomorrow.

Of course, Strawberry Moose had to have a photo opportunity at the sod house, didn’t he?

There’s an Anglican Church in the community too and Joanna was regaling us with tales of the religious wars that used to go on here as each church tried to pinch the other church’s congregation.

One of the guys with her told us a story about how the boats have “evolved” over the years. Up until almost maybe 50 or 60 years ago, the Inuit umiak, made by a company in Trois-Rivières, would be quite common. But people slowly moved over to more modern “European” boats made of industrial materials.

And now the race was on as everyone tried to out-do his neighbour with e bigger, better, more powerful boat.

But the problem was that the smaller and lighter the boat, the easier it is to haul it out of the water in the freeze when the Inuit were on their travels. But with the bigger, heavier boats, they can’t and they are losing countless modern, heavy and expensive boats being crushed in the ice.

There’s quite a big school here in the settlement, and it flies the Nunavut flag. There’s a red inukshuk on it that divides the flag into two – one half white and the other half yellow. I was unable to discover if the colours have any significance.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me complaining about the price of goods in Labrador but it has nothing on the price of goods here.

When you start to see a pack of toilet rolls, €2:49 in your average LIDL, on sale here at $36:99 you’ll understand the difficulty of supplying a remote community out here in the Arctic with just one sea-lift per year and the rest of the time flying it in by air from Ottawa or wherever. And this is just one example of countless similar prices.

But some other people don’t have the same issues. Pond Inlet is home to the world’s most northerly Tim Horton’s, and I unveiled His Nibs in here for a photo session. In no time at all we were surrounded by other locals who wished for a photo opportunity with himself. And I can’t say that I blame them.

What was depressing about all of this was the ship’s kitchen staff all congregating in a corner eating a bought pizza. What does that tell you about the cooking on-board?

I was told that there’s a scenic viewpoint here too and so I wandered that way to see. The North Pole is a mere 1932 kms from here and this may well be the closest that I shall ever be to it, unless things change dramatically.

It might also be the closest that His Nibs gets to it too, so he needs to have yet another photo opportunity too.

My reverie up here was broken by the sound of an aeroplane. Another Air Tindi plane has come in to land and presumably unload whatever it is that it’s bringing.

From here I went for a walk around the town (I decided to miss out on the brocante) and had a few chats with the very friendly locals. The number of times that someone stopped me to offer me a lift was incredible.

And it was here that I met my very vocal local yokel. He was renovating the old ice-hockey arena and had indeed been responsible for building the new one.

We discussed all kinds of things here and there, including the effects of a temperature of -50°C on engine and hydraulic oil and the monstrous folly of Brexit. I did also express my dismay that a cruise ship on a regular route around the High Arctic was manned … "PERSONNED" – ed … by Filipinos and Indonesians and the like, and not Inuit.

His opinion, which I simply relate without making any comment at all, was that the Inuit wouldn’t do the work, and he cited several examples from his own experience.

I carried on with my walk, found the health centre and the school (again) and ended up at the new arena so I nipped inside for a look. In the Community Centre there was an exhibition of Arctic sports so I stopped for a while to watch, but I was roasting in there so I went out for a walk.

At the Library and Information Centre a little girl fell in love with Strawberry Moose so her mother agreed that she could be photographed with him – provided that she could join in the fun too.

And why not?

A few other locals took photos of him too, and someone produced the Centre’s own mascot, a seal, who also wanted to join in the fun.

By now it was time to return to the ship so down we went, passed through Immigration which was now Emigration and sped back to the ship, having to do a U-turn as two of the passengers had forgotten their lifebelts.

I had a shower and washed some clothes, and then waited for the call for tomorrow’s briefing. But in the meantime crashed out and so I missed the first 10 minutes, of presumably all of the important stuff.

Tea was a riot though. The waiters were horribly confused and I’m still not totally convinced that I received what I ordered. And my table companions for today were extremely garrulous, which was very pleasant.

Later tonight, there was an impromptu concert. There’s a folk singer-musician, Sherman Downey, on board and one night he’d overheard another passenger playing the piano. A girl could also sing reasonably well so they had been rehearsing informally and decided to give a concert. I’d been asked but obviously with no bass on board it was rather difficult.

The surprise of the night was that we found another girl vocalist – Natalie who does the yoga. And while it was rather hit-and-miss, she had all of the emotion and it looked and sounded quite good. One photo that I took of her came out really well and really captured the emotion of the moment.

And if that wasn’t enough, we discovered a mouth-organ player in the crowd so by the end of the night we were all rocking away, and quite right too.

We have an elderly blind lady on board, and she had asked for a special request. So when they played it, I went over to her and invited her to dance. We did a kind of jazzed-up waltz which fitted the music, which is just as well because it’s the only dance that I know.

At one point we must have hit the open sea in the Davis Straight because we were swaying around quite considerably. It certainly added a certain something to the dancing.

My midnight ramble was once more taken in a tee-shirt (much to the astonishment of Tiffany wrapped up on the deck as if in a cocoon) and we are heading out at 4° on the binnacle. That’s definitely north, so if all goes according to plan we might be pushing on.

I hope so, because these continual delays are really getting on my nerves.

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Tuesday 19th September 2017 – HAVING BEEN …

… out like a light during the evening, I found it difficult to drop off to sleep last night. Long after midnight and I was still trying to drop off.

When I finally did drop off, it was a difficult night with tossing and turning and all of that, and it was a struggle to leave the bed when the alarm went off.

But leave the bed I did and after breakfast and a little work on the laptop, I was out on the road by 09:30.

First disappointment was at the docks. There were a couple of big ships in there but there were road works, the bridge across the canal was out of order and, try as I might, I couldn’t find my way out there.

In the end I gave it up as a bad job and headed out of town.

tracel de cap rouge quebec canada september septembre 2017First stop has of course to be our famous Tracel de Cap Rouge out on the edge of town.

Tracel is of course a French word and it’s where the English word “trestle” come from.

And this is probably the most magnificent trestle railway bridge in the whole of North America, even if it is made of iron and not of wood.

cap rouge quebec canada september septembre 2017Cap Rouge is said to be the site of the first permanent settlement in North America.

In an effort to establish themselves in the New World in competition with the Spanish And Portuguese, the French sent colonists here in 1541.

However scurvy and what has been enigmatically described as “deteriorating relations with the natives” led to the surviving settlers being recalled to France.

cap rouge quebec canada september septembre 2017There was a road – the Chemin du Roy – which was the first public highway in Nouvelle France, running between Quebec and Montreal.

I spent a good while over the years tracing its original route although much has been lost to modernisation and coastal erosion.

I never found an original plan of the route, but my assumption is that the road hugged the coast around here, somewhere along the line of tbat footpath.

chemin du roy quebec canada september septembre 2017Like I said, coastal erosion did for a lot of the original route.

You can see here where the official sign (which don’t necessarily follow the route, but never mind) points off to the right, but there’s a nice straight road ahead.

That disappears off down there and comes to a sudden stop at the bank in the bend of a river.

chemin du roy neuville quebec canada september septembre 2017Yes, don’t count on the official signs.

The Chemin du Roy is signposted to follow the highway which is to the left of the photo just here

But when you see the orientation of this traditional Quebec cottage and the pathway that passes in front of it, it’s easy to imagine where the original trace of the Chemin might have been.

football ground neuville quebec canada september septembre 2017One of the things that we do when we are driving around is to look for proper football pitches.

They are quite common these days but when I first started coming to Canada they were few and far between.

This is the first one that I ever noticed – in Neuville – and access to photograph it was always difficult. But today, for some reason, it wasn’t a problem to go down there and photograph it properly.

A little earlier I talked about road alignments along the Chemin du Roy.

possible trace of chemin du roy donnacona quebec canada september septembre 2017The area around Donnacona has been badly hit by coastal erosion and so tracing the original route is quite difficult.

But seeing a house orientated in this fashion with the trace of a track running past the front of a house, it’s easy to imagine where the original course might have been.

And here we had a moment of excitement.

As I pulled up here, I noticed an old guy peeking out at me from his window across the road. And he walked out onto his porch for a closer look.

“Are you having a problem with this?” I shouted across to him. He turned tail and walked back into his house.

rue du station portneuf quebec canada september septembre 2017When you see on an old map a street called “rue du Station”, you have to go to investigate … “well, one of us does” – ed.

I wasn’t expecting much because if you think that the Beeching cuts in the UK were severe, they were absolutely nothing compared to what happened to the railway network in Canada.

There are a few freight lines still operating, but passenger service outside the major cities has gone more-or-less completely. There’s nothing here in the former “rue du Station” to indicate what might have been a railway station.

bombardier auto-neige quebec canada september septembre 2017But this is much more like it, isn’t it?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen one of these before in 2010 when we were in Goose Bay.

And here’s another one – a Bombardier “Auto-Neige” from the late 1930s, I reckon.

It’s for sale too, and if I had room in my suitcase this would be coming back to Europe with me because I think that it’s gorgeous.

ile richelieu deschambault quebec canada september septembre 2017On the two occasions that I’ve been to Deschambault I’ve been soaked with rain and I’ve never been able to photograph the town properly.

One of the places that I came here today to look for was the Ile Richelieu. The navigable channel up the St Lawrence is quite narrow here and there are rocks and rapids and the island was the icing on the cake for any defensive force.

The French built a fort out there on the island to control the passage upriver but a combination of a rolling fog, a very high tide and a strong wind enabled a British fleet to slip by and on to Montreal before the French could bring their guns into action.

hotel de ville deschambault quebec canada september septembre 2017Deschambault regularly appears in lists of the most beautiful villages in Quebec and it’s a listing that isn’t undeserved. That building over there is, believe it or not, the Town Hall

It’s not the only building in the place that’s in that particular “North American ante-bellum” style. The convent (every town worth its salt in Quebec has to have its convent) is also in the same style.

chemin du roy moulin de la chevrotiere quebec canada september septembre 2017In our quest to fill out the missing gaps in the Chemin du Roy I’d seen an old track away by the Moulin de la Chevrotiere that would correspond with what I knew about the original trace of the route

I went to have a look, and I could identify ditches that resembled those that Becancour and Lanouiller – the architects – had specified for the sides of the road, and the stones of the type that they had specified to be placed in the marshy parts of the roadway.

hydro quebec post grondines canada september septembre 2017We are told that at Grondines there’s a huge submarine electric cable that runs underneath the St Lawrence

This takes electricity from the Lower St Lawrence hydro plants (such as the Manic and Outardes complexes) over and into the USA.

There’s no visible trace of the cable from what I’ve been able to find, but this “Hydro Quebec” transmission post just outside the town might give us a clue as to where the cable might disappear into the earth.

windmill grondines quebec canada september septembre 2017If the village of Grondines has any claim to fame, it might be for its windmill.

When a Peace Treaty was signed with the Iroquois and the land was subsequently parcelled out to the local gentry – the Seigneurie System – one of the duties of the Seigneur was to provide a mill for the peasantry to grind their corn.

A water mill wouldn’t be much good on a slow-flowing river because the river would be frozen up for four months per year.

A great many windmills were thus erected by some of the Seigneurs, several of which survive today.

I arrive at Trois Rivieres just in time to be caught in the rush-hour traffic. And seeing as there are major roadworks in the town I reckon that I lose a good hour of my time.

gilles villeneuve museum bertheirville quebec canada september septembre 2017I have to hit the Highway instead and arrive in Berthierville just as the light is starting to go.

Berthierville was the home of Formula One racing driver Gilles Villeneuve and it’s another place that I’ve always managed to miss while I’ve been out and about on my travels.

But today I make a determined effort and actually manage to track it down this year.

notre dame des champs repentigny quebec canada september septembre 2017One last thing to do, and that’s in Repentigny down the road.

That’s to track down the hideously modern Church of Our Lady of the Fields – Notre Dame des Champs.

I’ve absolutely no idea what the designer of the church – Roger D’Astous – must have been smoking when he was drawing up the plans, but he’s managed to produce something that is so hideous that it’s almost attractive.

By now I’m running extremely late and there’s no chance of reaching Montreal tonight. But there’s a motel down the road that’s very tired and very shabby – and also very cheap.

They do me an excellent deal on the room, which is very good news, and I celebrate by having a shower and washing my clothes.

Pasta, mushrooms and tomato sauce make a nice meal, and then I crash out while working on the laptop.

I’m definitely beginning to feel the pace now.

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Thursday 13th March 2014 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve not been in too much of a hurry to leave my bed.

I put that down to still being awake at 03:45 this morning, and so getting up at … errr … 10:20 is not too unreasonable.

I’ve hardly done any work either – well – not that kind of work anyway. The house remains practically untouched. But noticing when I went downstairs that the batteries were aleady fully-charged, and at 12:30 there was 50.5 amps going into the dump load and the wires were pretty warm, that called for action. I plugged an extension cable into the overcharge circuit and wired the 12-volt fridge in. That calmed everything down a little. The water still got hot (68°C) but the wires stayed cool-ish and the fridge worked.

I’ll leave it like that until I fix up the new batteries that will replace the existing creaky ones and then I’ll wire in the fridge into the permanent circuit for the summer.

I threw out some food and veg peelings that I had forgotten to deal with before I left here (some of them could have walked to the compost bin on their own) and then unloaded part of Caliburn. For lunch I went to fetch the bread – to find that the boulanger had forgotten to come on Tuesday, and that was really the only reason why I had rushed home.

I had to go down the road to the Intermarché at Pionsat to buy a baguette.

GRRRR!

This afternoon I updated the Trois Rivieres pages of my Canada website

. I took a pile more photos of the town when I was there last year and so they needed to be added on and the commentary written. I’ve also reviewed a few subsequent pages of my drive down the Chemin du Roy

and that has spawned a couple of new pages too.

So I’ve not been idle.

But I do realise now why I try not to work on the computer between 19:00 and 21:00. I get so carried away with what I’m doing that I forget to make tea and I end up going hungry.

And it’s 5 years since my dear friend Liz departed. I can’t believe that it’s been so long. I hope that she is sleeping peacefully. My abiding memory is just before she went for her operation, she was making out a list of names.
“Are these the people that I need to contact to let them know your news?” I asked.
“Ohh no” she replied. “If it all goes wrong, this is a list of the people I’m going to come back to haunt”.

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Saturday 31st August 2013 – I’M NOT SURE WHAT HAPPENED …

… last night but I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds at about 18:30 and that was the last thing that I remember until about 07:00 the following morning.

Well, not quite. I had another exciting dream again, which shows you just how comfortable I am inside this Dodge at night. I had exchanged Caliburn for Terry’e van and another car (as if I am ever likely to exchange Caliburn for anything, but never mind). On my way back to work after Friday lunchtime, I parked the van in a narrow alley near to work, a place with high brick walls all around. I decided that I didn’t want to stay here because I’d be stuck in the traffic for leaving, but I couldn’t move the van from its position. Driving out is not the szme angle as reversing in, of course.

overnight parking service area highway 40 lavaltrie quebec canadaAnyway, a nearby truck starting up his motor shattered my reverie otherwise I would still be there now, so calm and peaceful was my little neck of the woods at this transport café that is, would you believe, actually on the central reservation of the motorway.

And after a visit to the cleanest beichstuhl that I have ever seen in a transport café and breakfast of coffee and bagels with strawberry jam and maple syrup I sat down and brought up to date all of my notes and photos in a marathon session

vestiges chemin du roy quebec canadaOnce I’d organised that, I spent half an hour reading a book – making the most of a quiet morning, and then set off in search of the vestiges of the Chemin du Roy. There are loads of remains of this road, which has been constantly rebuilt over the 300 years of its existence, due to floods, erosion, avalanches, earthquakes, attacks by Iroquois, bridge collapses, fires and the like, some of these vestiges being signposted and some not so and open to speculation.

I’m quite enjoying spotting suggestive-looking earthworks and depressions, and trying to link them up into a consistent route and one day I’m sure that I’ll have the route traced out as much as is possible.
Lunch stop was at Trois Rivières, one of my favourite cities in Canada although far from the nicest of course. I was here at the same time as the Labour Day weekend celebrations and there was a lot going on, circuses, street performers, a local market, and the whole place was heaving with people and was quite exciting.

police transport T3 mobile electric scooter trois rivières quebec canadaNot as exciting though as looking at the local police on their new modes of transport. These are called T3 Mobiles, electric powered, with disc brakes and can travel at seppds of up to 30kph – and much better than a pushbike as I was reliably informed because, as you might have guessed, I went up to the coppers and asked them about them. No point in being here and not satisfying your curiosity.

I had a wander around the town in the afternoon and visited a few more bits that I had missed. I’ll have to pad out my Trois Rivieres pages even more now, and that will keep me out of mischief for a while.

As it grew dark I headed for the highway to a transport café that I had seen and I shall dig myself in here for the night. Hopefully not for the morning though – I’ve lots to do.

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Wednesday 11th July 2012 – I WAS OUT …

bussieres pionsat puy de dome france… this afternoon.

You may remember a few days ago that Marianne and I went to do a recce of Bussieres to see what was going on there.

In this series of walks that she is doing around the villages that make up the canton of Pionsat, today was the day that she was doing the public walk around the village and so, as usual, I went along to hold her coat and keep her out of mischief.

bussieres pionsat puy de dome franceAs I’ve said on numerous occasions … “and you’ll say again” – ed … the church is the focal point of every village, and this is where we all met up.

I mentioned previously that the original building of the church has been expanded on several occasions, but as it is on a very constrained, the expansion has taken place in all kinds of directions and so its shape does not conform to what one would expect to see of a more traditional church layout.

sundial church bussieres pionsat puy de dome franceAlthough the church might not be as interesting as the one that we saw last week at St Maurice près Pionsat, it does have a feature that is quite unusual – a sundial.

We’ve seen a sundial on a religious building before – but on a monastery in Trois Rivières in Quebec, Canada. And I do recall telling you the story about the two Québécois discussing it
“what’s the time?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a watch”
“Well go outside and look at the sundial”
“Don’t be silly. It’s dark outside”
“Well take a blasted torch with you!”

bussieres pionsat puy de dome franceThe claim to fame of Bussières does not lie in its church, but rather unusually in its village school, and you saw a good photo of that last time.

In the 1920s there was a controversial system of education introduced in France by someone by the name of Célestin Freinet. He didn’t believe in a structured, rigid system of teaching but more in a form of “learning by doing” in a kind of anarchic way.

His system was highlighted in a film called L’École Buissonnière – a title that is a pun on the French way of saying “playing truant” and in several novels such as Le Voleur d’Innocence by René Frégni.

One of the disciples of Célestin Freinet was the teacher at the village school here, Marcel Mercier. And he was apparently quite well-known throughout Europe for his efforts in the Freinet method of education.

st maurice pres pionsat puy de dome franceWhile you admire the view across the valley with the zoom lens over to St Maurice près Pionsat, I’ll tell you that during the period 1938-1941 Mercier sent out all of the children to interview all of the elderly people in Bussières.

He encouraged the children to write down everything that they heard. The result was a book entitled Notre Petite Commune – “Our Little Home Town” – and it’s something of a classic of French social study for the first half of the 20th Century – although it’s been long out of print.

The biggest surprise however was that one of the people on the walk had actually been a schoolboy under Marcel Mercier, had participated in the project and, furthermore, whipped out from his rucksack a copy of the book!

Of course, Marianne was in her element and it promptly disappeared into her own rucksack. A promise to return it in very early course was made, once a hastily-arranged appointment at the photocopiers had been met.

Our former schoolboy friend still thought very highly of Mercier and told us that he had also written at least one novel that had become quite famous, but the name of which he had completely forgotten.

bussieres pionsat puy de dome franceBussières is another one of these isolated villages that has been decimated by a desertion of its population. In the 1840s it could rustle up almost 800 inhabitants but today, it’s a nice, round 100 people.

This building here formerly played an important role in the history of the village, but when I came to write up my notes I found that its former purpose had completely gone out of my head – just like everything else has.

Something to do with taxation – maybe the hated gabelle, or salt tax. I dunno now. I shall have to check with Marianne

Mind you, there is a reason that things have gone out of my mind. And that is that today I’ve given so many people a piece of it that I don’t think that I have any left.

Mindless, you might say.

Firstly, the courier company to whom I entrusted 6 parcels over 4 weeks ago still has three of them in its warehouse. They didn’t know where the other 3 were, but nothing has been forwarded on.

So I’m surprised that I still have a phone connection this evening, seeing the amount of heat that was generated while I was … errr … discussing the issue with them.

Secondly, the phone that I purchased four weeks ago has still not arrived despite the “24-hour guaranteed delivery”.

It seems that the courier company won’t deliver it here as “the address is inadequate” – which translated into English, means that the driver is too lazy to step out of the van and look for the name on one of the five mailboxes here.

I had them on the phone today too and once more I was surprised that the wire didn’t melt. But then again they had just seen the review that I had posted on their Amazon page – trust Amazon to remind me to review my “purchase” this morning.

At the Intermarche I went in for a loaf of bread. That took seconds but going through the checkout took half an hour as a stagiare – a summer student who had been left on her own at the tills tried her best to deal with a queue of 20 people.

At the petrol station I bought a bottle of gas – my first for 15 months seeing as I have a decent woodstove that I cooked on all through the winter. Last year the gas cost €25 – this year it’s €36, and I had a few things to say about that too.

All in all, I was glad to go out and about.

Better news at the Post Office, though. I’ve sent back the Nikon D5000
camera for repair – downloaded all of the instructions and the address label and so on.

When I sent the old Pentax K100D back last year it cost me an arm and a leg to post it, but when I handed over the parcel and label and enquired about the price, I was told that it was “carriage-paid”.

Well, good old Nikon, hey? Let’s see what happens about that.

But returning to our gas bottle for just a moment. 15 months or so that I’ve had my new woodstove – costing €270. The wood burnt in it has cost me nothing.

With the gas bottles, I was getting through one every three weeks when I was running the heating – and probably a darn sight more when the temperature dropped minus 16°C.

By my reckoning, running the heat from November until mid-March is about 20 weeks. Say, 7 gas bottles at €36 a time – €252. One more period with the fire on and it’s paid for itself already.

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Wednesday 26th October 2011 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was up early this morning and I managed to have a really good go at the website this morning. I’ve left Trois Rivieres and arrived at Cap-de-la-Madeleine where I’m having a good wander around the pilgrimage site.

Absolutely fascinating and full of the most unexpected irony. 

pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo this afternoon I was up the wall on the ladder, and in the wind too, chiselling out the old sand-and-clay mortar from the top of the wall. There was so much that came out that I had to do two large mixes of mortar and that still wasn’t enough to do that bit.

And it was exciting up there for several reasons.

  1. I was carried away with what I was doing and it wasn’t until it suddenly went dark that I realised just how late it was. 19:05 when I knocked off this evening.
  2. there was all kinds of noise going on in the brush in the field next door and all of a sudden two wild boar shot out and ran across the field. The first wild boar that I have seen properly here as well. They are bigger and heavier than I expected and the earth moves when they run. They have a hell of a speed as well. And the racket that they make is astonishing. I was really surprised.
    You’re probably wondering why I didn’t take a photo of them, and indeed I would have, except that I was up the top of the ladder and the camera was down below. After all, it’s difficult enough trying to manipulate a bucket of water and a paintbrush, a hand brush, a bucket full of stones, a trowel and a hawk full of lime mortar when you are up the top of a ladder, never mind a camera as well.


Tonight I made a curry and seeing as I have no courgette left I used tinned mushroom and tinned chick peas. And it didn’t half come out well too. And there’s enough for another two days as well. Ohhh the luxury!

So tomorrow I’ll be back up the wall. And quite right too.

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Friday 21st October 2011 – TODAY WAS ….

… a quiet day or at least it should have been. But Terry and Rob came round to fix Lieneke’s barn and no-one can sleep through the kind of racket that those two are capable of producing.

But what about last night,hey? Temperature plummeted to -1.9°C. A minus temperature – winter is flaming well here, right enough. I’m even contemplating lighting a fire shortly if we don’t have an improvement

However, never mind that for a moment – three hours and more on the computer and my visit to Trois Rivieres is well-advanced.

Trois-Rivieres is on the north bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. It’s the oldest industrial site in North America and the newsprint capital of the world. In fact all of my visits to the area have been overwhelmed by the smell of wet paper from the pulp mills so I’ve always kept well clear. 

This year though I found myself in the town and my opinions of the place rapidly changed. The town seeps history from almost every pore and I’ve completely changed my opinion about the place.

This afternoon though I had to wait for Terry to move his van before I could get out to the post office and post that parcel. And I fell through the floor when I found out the price. I bet that it’s cheaper to fly to Canada and deliver it by hand. It makes excess baggage charges look a bargain

To the bank after that to sort out a few financial details, and then to Bill’s to fix his computer again.

This evening it’s POETS day of course and so I finished early – spending half an hour or so sorting some papers that date back to 2004. And there’s so many of them that it’s going to take a while.

Tomorrow it’s shopping and as I have so much to do it’s going to be a St Eloy les Mines quick half hour-type of shopping. And the washing is building up here and so I might visit the local launderette and sort it out.

>But I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow. I’ve finished all of my stock of Canadian vegan cheese slices and that is a catastrophe.

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Friday 2nd September 2011 – TROIS RIVIERES AND QUEBEC

quebec canadahere’s where I spent the night last night – in a lorry-weighing station about 15 miles south of Trois Rivieres. And had it not been for the workmen going past with strimmers at about 07:30, I would still be asleep there now. I was really comfortable here.

It was crowded with trucks when I arrived last night but apart from the gardeners, it was as deserted as the Mary Celeste.

pont laviolette trois rivieres quebec canadaOn my brief passage by here on the motorway on my first journey here, I first saw this bridge – the Pont Laviolette – but couldn’t stop to take a photo.

When I was here in 2010 I tried my best to find a good view of the bridge to photograph it but with not much luck. But this year, on the north bank of the river on the edge of Trois Rivieres there’s a little park here and there’s a place here where there’s a lovely view of the bridge.

trois rivieres quebec canadaFirst appearances can often be deceptive, and in Trois Rivieres that is certainly the case.

When I came here first, I wasn’t all that impressed but I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the city and that changed my point of view completely. If you would like to go on my little misguided tour of the city, you need to follow this link and you can form your own opinions.

cap de la madeleine quebec canadaThis building is quite worthy of note, because it represents an irony that has gone completely over the heads of everyone around here.

Not too far from here is a chapel and the priest here back in the mid 19th Century wanted to enlarge it. he bought a pile of stone to bring across here when the river was frozen but the river never froze. So when he decided to cancel his plans – and almost immediately, the river froze over.

This was classed as a miracle and the crowds began to flock here, and so they built a bigger church – the irony being totally lost upon them.

tracel de cap rouge viaduct quebec canadaHow about this for an impressive construction? It’s the Tracel de cap Rouge, a latticework viaduct built at the turn of the 20th Century to carry the railway line over the valley here.

The valley around here is also of interest, for it’s the site of the first French colony in North America, although the colony didn’t last all that long.

strawberry moose plains of abraham quebec canadaAfter my vicissitudes of last year, we finally made it up to the top of the Plains of Abraham on the outskirts of the city of Quebec.

The battlefield here is ringed with old cannons and field guns from various wars and Strawberry Moose took the opportunity for a photo call with a cannon that had been recovered from the river, presumably from a sunken ship.

It was not much longer after this that I had a couple of encounters with the farces of law and order. Consequently I decided to leave the city and head for the hills. But if you want to see the city of Quebec, you can follow this link.

These are just a few photos and a brief recap of my day’s travels. For a fuller account, and to see more photos, you need to follow this link.

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Thursday 1st September 2011 – I’VE BEEN SHOPPING TODAY AS WELL

I had a good night’s sleep for a change at the Howard Johnson Motel – no antics in other rooms to wake me up this time.

With there being a late check-out time, I spent a while programming the phone that I bought yesterday and catching up with another few things. Then off to Canadian Tire for a leisure battery and a small solar panel, and Home Depot for a few other bits of DiY stuff including a cheap Ryobi plus one drill and set of batteries.

I had a meeting with a couple of people afterwards where we talked wind turbines, and then off to IKEA where I bought a kiddies’ bed and found a cheap mattress in the bargain bin, plus a saucepan and one or two other things.

I hit the main road at rush hour, as you might expect, and a slow crawl took me south of the river and now it’s dark. I’m heading towards Trois Rivieres to find a place to park up and then I’ll start my real journey tomorrow.

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

motel tracy quebec canadaThis 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.

pont laviolette trois rivieres quebec canadaNext 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.

pont de quebec canadaAnd 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.

autumn colours deciduous trees quebec canadaThere’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.

highway 138 stunning view city quebec cape tourmente canadaAfter 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.

highway 138 cap tourmente quebec canada>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.

motel st simeon st lawrence river quebec canadaTonight 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.

motel st simeon st lawrence river quebec canadaJust 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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