Dear Friends this is the last entry for a while...and a very short one. I am on my way ‘home’ whatever that word means. I came to Quebec City and environs to re-visit my time here in the 80s.....changes everywhere of course But it is a most magical place to visit even if not to live. We went to the market on the Old Port, full of local products, charcuterie, patisserie poissonerie etcetera. And we went to a vernissage at the Musee des Beaux Arts.....such chic women of all ages and the men, well they looked liked regular canucks. And I spent good times with friends I made when I lived here in the 80s. We cycled to Cap Rouge and visited the Maison Leon Provancher, he was the father of the Flore Canadienne and did many other natural history investigations. Then I boarded the train for Moncton, New Brunswick on a Sunday evening and woke up to the glory of the Matapedia Valley and eventually Prince Edward Island. It is May 10th and I’m back with good friends and very familiar places
I’ll post again when I depart for Australia in August.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Toronto to Quebec City via Saguenay April 28th to May 5th
To Montreal, from Toronto, along the shore of Lake Ontario and then into the St Lawrence Lowlands of eastern Ontario. We have left the huge rivers of the west and I am now in the St Lawrence Basin The five great lakes are fed by rivers in Ontario, Quebec, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa from these US states what doesn’t flow in the Great Lakes Basin goes to the Mississippi. For me the land encompassed by watersheds is so much more evocative than that bounded by political and administrative lines. I am also musing on the term river, “riviere” in French but not the St Lawrence which in French is a “fleuve” a much mightier being for which there is no word in English
I have one night in Montreal and decide to treat myself to a room at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. As the rain clears and the evening sun comes out I am rewarded with a view from the 12th floor pad of the basilica, Mary Queen of the World which is a copy of St Peters in Rome a tad smaller but quite impressive against its back drop of skyscrapers and a distant view of the St Lawrence. I open the window and hear the bells chanting “Yesterday” after all it is the 50th anniversary of John and Yoko’s bed in at this hotel. Their suite is available ....at a price.
The next day I descend by elevator to the station and shop for breakfast and lunch in Les Halles de Gare, a veritable tour of world cuisines. Then onto the train for Jonquiere and another treat of changing landscapes.
We loop around the Island of Montreal and eventually leave the city at Pointe Aux Trembles. At first we are in typical St Lawrence lowlands and things look further ahead than they did yesterday around Toronto. Some fields are already planted and the day and the landscape seem very inviting in the sun. After Joliette, where quite a few people get on, we leave the lowlands and head towards the Mauricie. Farmland and lots of hardwood woodlots, many are sugar bushes and the bright blue sap lines are very visible. The maples and birches are in flower giving the grey woods of winter a reddish and yellow hue, it is a subtle change in the landscape before the big shift to green. We pass waterfalls and hiking trails and I want to be out walking in the spring woods. Into Shawinigan for a short stop, the town where the first hydro electricity plant was established and the first to have electric street lighting in Canada.
After Shawinigan, we begin to leave the farmland and sugar bush for wilderness, after Riviere a Pierre it is swollen white water rivers, waterfalls cliffs, and the occasional cluster of cabins, accessible only by train or all terrain vehicle. We descend to Chambord on the shores of Lac St Jean, an inland sea. We travel east then along the Saguenay to Jonquiere where the Moisans meet me with bells on. We do a quick tour of the area of Chicoutimi that was washed out by the flash flood of 1996 and see the little white house that became the image of this flood on TV and in newspapers across the country It is now a museum but alas closed until later in May. (http://www.museedufjord.com/inondations/saguenay_eng/impacts_chicoutimi_eng.htm)
The next day we visit the ruins of the pulp mill in Chicoutimi, a magnificent site with a museum also not open.
Chicoutimi is the urban centre of this region known as Saguenay/Lac St Jean. It is beautifully situated at the junction of the Chicoutimi and Saguenay rivers The town obviously values its past, there is a University and I have a sense that it is rich culturally as well, lots of artists, musicians and theatre but friends tell me that the current mayor doesn’t value history and culture and is doing much to undo the quality of life in the Saguenay.
This voyage has sent me on many trips trips down memory lane, this one happened when I saw the smokestacks of the aluminium smelter at Arvida and the terminal where the bauxite is unloaded after its voyage from Jamaica. up the Atlantic Coast, into the Gulf of St Lawrence and finally up the Saguenay
I am back in Mr Collinsons geography class at Northllerton Grammar School in 1963......learning about hydro-electricity in Canada and how it made aluminium smelters possible. I am marking the Saguenay River and Arvida on a handrawn map in my orange exercise book .
We visit the worlds first aluminium bridge and and an elegant aluminium footbridge before I board the train for Riviere a Pierre where I am met by Colleen for a leisurely drive to Quebec City.
I have one night in Montreal and decide to treat myself to a room at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. As the rain clears and the evening sun comes out I am rewarded with a view from the 12th floor pad of the basilica, Mary Queen of the World which is a copy of St Peters in Rome a tad smaller but quite impressive against its back drop of skyscrapers and a distant view of the St Lawrence. I open the window and hear the bells chanting “Yesterday” after all it is the 50th anniversary of John and Yoko’s bed in at this hotel. Their suite is available ....at a price.
The next day I descend by elevator to the station and shop for breakfast and lunch in Les Halles de Gare, a veritable tour of world cuisines. Then onto the train for Jonquiere and another treat of changing landscapes.
We loop around the Island of Montreal and eventually leave the city at Pointe Aux Trembles. At first we are in typical St Lawrence lowlands and things look further ahead than they did yesterday around Toronto. Some fields are already planted and the day and the landscape seem very inviting in the sun. After Joliette, where quite a few people get on, we leave the lowlands and head towards the Mauricie. Farmland and lots of hardwood woodlots, many are sugar bushes and the bright blue sap lines are very visible. The maples and birches are in flower giving the grey woods of winter a reddish and yellow hue, it is a subtle change in the landscape before the big shift to green. We pass waterfalls and hiking trails and I want to be out walking in the spring woods. Into Shawinigan for a short stop, the town where the first hydro electricity plant was established and the first to have electric street lighting in Canada.
After Shawinigan, we begin to leave the farmland and sugar bush for wilderness, after Riviere a Pierre it is swollen white water rivers, waterfalls cliffs, and the occasional cluster of cabins, accessible only by train or all terrain vehicle. We descend to Chambord on the shores of Lac St Jean, an inland sea. We travel east then along the Saguenay to Jonquiere where the Moisans meet me with bells on. We do a quick tour of the area of Chicoutimi that was washed out by the flash flood of 1996 and see the little white house that became the image of this flood on TV and in newspapers across the country It is now a museum but alas closed until later in May. (http://www.museedufjord.com/inondations/saguenay_eng/impacts_chicoutimi_eng.htm)
The next day we visit the ruins of the pulp mill in Chicoutimi, a magnificent site with a museum also not open.
Chicoutimi is the urban centre of this region known as Saguenay/Lac St Jean. It is beautifully situated at the junction of the Chicoutimi and Saguenay rivers The town obviously values its past, there is a University and I have a sense that it is rich culturally as well, lots of artists, musicians and theatre but friends tell me that the current mayor doesn’t value history and culture and is doing much to undo the quality of life in the Saguenay.
This voyage has sent me on many trips trips down memory lane, this one happened when I saw the smokestacks of the aluminium smelter at Arvida and the terminal where the bauxite is unloaded after its voyage from Jamaica. up the Atlantic Coast, into the Gulf of St Lawrence and finally up the Saguenay
I am back in Mr Collinsons geography class at Northllerton Grammar School in 1963......learning about hydro-electricity in Canada and how it made aluminium smelters possible. I am marking the Saguenay River and Arvida on a handrawn map in my orange exercise book .
We visit the worlds first aluminium bridge and and an elegant aluminium footbridge before I board the train for Riviere a Pierre where I am met by Colleen for a leisurely drive to Quebec City.
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