At Lac St-Jean, if I say "ouananiche" ...
The local inland sea here is Lac St-Jean, all things considered when compared to the Great Lakes of the south on the border (there is easily a factor of 10 between ours and the other immense neighboring lakes; see the overlay opposite on Lake Superior).
Its largest dimension is roughly 45 km west-east and its smallest north-south about 33 km.
We have seen that it is the permanent reservoir supplying the Saguenay basin, and that the dams built at Dam-en-Terre and Alma have further extended its depth and area compared to its original dimensions after the last ice age, leaving then to provoke the "tragedy of Saguenay".
His shoals, when we observe them from the heights of Val-Jalbert (below, forcing the contrasts a little) appear clear.
And already the Innu who lived there, those of the "Porc-Epic" nation called him Piékouakami, the "flat lake" : 11m of average depth and 63m at its maximum.
The vast low plateau (100 to 180 m altitude on average) surrounding the lake, especially to the west is fertile. Alluvial soil from the Laflamme Sea from the last ice age, it is considered by some to be " an oasis of fertility " in the middle of the Canadian Shield, meanwhile much less generous.
In this second In the fortnight of September, large fields of cereals are harvested there. The only reliefs here are only the sharp needle of the steeples and the silos for fodder that stand Farmers. Farms sometimes proudly display the name of the founding ancestor, perhaps all the more brilliant and ... arrogant as the rooting is still recent and success at the rendezvous; thus "the farm of Clan Gagnon", on the edge of road 169, with no less than 6 immense silos; in fact, it is now a huge dairy farm that is visit.
Others, more humble, bear the name of the site or the local geological feature.
Whether they are threatening, whether they are basking under the clear sky, or even whether they veil it with a beautiful thickness, the clouds above these vast grounds stretch out and give a glimpse of the immense spaces of Western Canada where they come from and where they are formed; they seldom take in our hexagon this pace, which remembers here the crossed continent.
Rude and free call of a limitless sky.
Each year sees the "International Crossing of Lac St-Jean" take place in July, on July 23 in 2016, from North to South over 32 km, where the competitors reach Roberval.
Even having only traveled the southern rim, the lake is festooned with villages important names with well-known names whose origin is not what we think at first glance.
Thus Chambord and Roberval , two large towns.
Under the July Monarchy, the name of the first comes from that of the pretender to the throne of France Henri d'Artois comte de Chambord (the other Chambord, over there in France), when it was founded here in 1845.
The second, founded in 1859, carries the name of the first lieutenant general of the countries of Canada in the 16th century, Jean-François de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval (Carcassonne 1500 - Paris 1561), ... which was not a scale. A Huguenot whose yoke Jacques Cartier found it difficult to bear.
The year in Europe Napoleon III will take a famous drop in Sedan against the Prussians (1870), here, a huge fire ravages the boreal forest around the lake ; in the following years, the blueberry (also called blueberry or lingonberry) grows spontaneously and successfully on these scorched lands, taking advantage of the minerals from the ashes and becomes a flourishing production.
So much so that the inhabitants of the lake are colloquially called "bleuets", rather than "jeannois" (inhabitants of Lac St-Jean). The spontaneous fire is also considered here, in these vastnesses of forests, as a benefit which renews the flora. The cornflower is a transitional flora after the fire.
Its shores were already difficult to reach 50 years ago because of private summer constructions which prohibited access. With also the precise memory of transistors which diffused to full pot the "tubes" US of the time, soon resumed on the Old Continent.
They seem to be even more barred today, even if our passage at the beginning of autumn does not lend itself to intense frequentation, and suggests some easy access.
On the way, crossing the villages, or discreetly seen at the edge of the lake, superb scattered houses, sometimes as beautiful as old parsonages, display an apparent prosperity, bordering on barns of more austere picturesque farms.
The summer period also sees many fishermen come to practice their favorite passion on the lake. The lake salmon, salmon fresh water sedentary here, called his name Innu "landlocked" (which means "little misplaced salmon" which the English prefer "salmon prisoner land", landlocked salmon). Landlocked salmon is today the emblem of the region.
Certainly we fish in the Métabetchouan river, which we cross when leaving Alma before the Clan Gagnon farm to the west. But is it a river or a lake? Not far in any case from the ancient mission of the Jesuits established there towards the end of the 17th century.
In any case, the surface on the morning of our first pass is so perfectly calm that it is an absolute mirror, like a precise dream, accessible. A fleeting privilege, since our next passages will only see water bristling with ripples.
The region boasts two remarkable sites, and which really are when you discover them, in two very different registers, one relating to the country's fauna, the other to its history at the beginning of the 20th century.
These are the St-Félicien Zoo and the former industrial site of Val-Jalbert.
And then what became of those who 50 years ago , we called here again " the savages ", not so much in a pejorative tone, but because thus had been called by the first French arrivals, the natives of the country, Native American? Let us note in passing this origin (p 58 of the work " Les Ursulines de Québec "): " Marie de l'Incarnation and her companions constantly speak of Savages and Savages, a technical term in the 17th century to designate those who live in the woods, without fixed habitation, inhabitants of forests or forest regions (de silva , "sauve" in Old French, which can be found in many place names ). "
Just a moment before, among the original curiosities that line the shores of the lake, we meet this shop along the road, whose name cannot fail to arouse curiosity, due to the merger of two estates. usually well separated: a "charcuterie-chocolate factory".
This beautiful boutique celebrates its 20 years of existence that year. But don't wait to find chocolate filled with sausage or parsley ham with cocoa nuggets, no. It is quite simply the association in the same shop of these two activities, part of which is reserved for the charcuterie and the other for the chocolate factory, in a harmony without false note. Maybe a "convenience store" that specializes?
In Quebec, memory in Val-Jalbert
Almost halfway on route 169 between Chambord and Roberval, on an abrupt height, the Belle Province wanted to maintain the memory of its country and bear witness to the talent, the stubbornness of his men by restoring an industrial pulp production site built over the passage of a high waterfall. It's Val-Jalbert.
The scale of the site, spread over at least two plateaus, its configuration on the course of the Ouiatchouan river which tumbles down the small mountain in two superb and powerful successive leaps dominating Lake St-Jean, a remarkable shortcut of industrial and social history Québécoise, illustrated by the short and flourishing village life from 1901 to 1929, give the place an exceptional intensity.
As elsewhere, for example to Jacques Cartier , it is necessary to underline the efforts of the Belle Province to exalt some parts of its history while participating intelligently in the safeguard of the sites and the flora, all this in a context which often comes up against the opposition of great interests.
But first, a view of the hydrography of the region.
Val_Jalbert the village
Commissioners Lake
Bouchette Lake
The Ouiatchouan River, fed by Commissioners Lake in the South then Lake Bouchette, spawns an uneven passage in the shield, zigzags, crosses rapids, to finally reach the powerful rapid of Maligne Falls (49 meters high).
Then, much slower than the pitounes of ancient times, we descend the maze of perfectly constructed and well-maintained wooden planks where platforms and flights of steps follow one another, to the factory plateau below, after 400 easy steps.
It is also an opportunity to contemplate the lower forest and the lake in its majesty.
Ouiatchouan Lake
The solid factory building is still there, at the foot of the Ouiatchoua n waterfall. It's there that the wood was sawn and transformed into pulp.
To do this, a penstock whose diameter went from top to bottom from 9 to 7 m actuated turbines driven by the pressure of the water rushing down the 81 m in height.
At the same time, the energy of the roaring fall animated the machines and created the necessary electricity.
The Malignant Fall
The Ouiatchouan fall
Arrived with the colorful little train on the plateau of the old pulp factory, we make the lazy choice to reach this fall by taking the cable car. Up there, you still have to walk a plank path to get there. The spectacle of the enormous rapid foaming with power, which hardly hesitates to become a fall is grandiose.
The cut logs were transported from the lakes upstream, accumulated in the float reservoir just above, before tumbling down to the plant below.
Restored, fitted out, highlighting the old imposing machines aligned along the high walls of the immense volume, the factory is part of this almost living museum of Val-Jalbert, a real open-air museum that takes over the very remains of the original industrial village.
Catering areas have been set up in the middle without altering the whole.
Below, on the side of the waterfall, educational presentations make it possible to understand and illustrate the history of the factory and the manufacture of pulp and paper pulp. A show projecting animations and short pieces of film on the walls of the large hall of ancient turbines tells the story of the place and of the Compagnie du Pulpe, often with humor, always with passion. But the sound system is not enough to make all the texts understandable, when the characters who have marked the life of the village parade and speak.
Outside, the vast plateau at the bottom of which remains an old restored building offers an imposing and sumptuous panorama of the factory and the fall.
A modern mini-power station was built in this context just downstream of the waterfall, a discreet black block intended to integrate even more into the plant environment; today it provides electricity and in total autonomy for the entire Val-Jalbert site and its tourist activity.
The homes of the factory staff, the post office, the hotel whose ground floor housed the general store, the school and classrooms, the town hall, all the components of the village have been restored, including the cemetery. indented. The original furniture shows that during the "thirty glorious "of Val-Jalbert, comfort and modernism were the rule, even if life was regulated by the iron hand of the priest Tremblay and that of the mayor Fortin, himself a direct emanation of the Compagnie du pulpe de Chicoutimi, in the head of which we find ... the famous Mr. Dubuc.
We feel the importance of the restoration effort when we pass along the few houses that we have chosen not to put back on their feet, sagging and in ruins, submerged by vegetation, chaos of roofs and woods where we let nature take back its rights.
Bravo therefore to the Corporation of the Regional Park for these restoration achievements and the intelligent integration of elements of modernism and pedagogy which, while carefully respecting the historical reconstruction, use natural means for their operation and the pleasure of visitors.
The representation below gives an overview of the site, and locates the main buildings as well as the river and the falls.
In Quebec, the St-Félicien Wildlife Reserve
A little further west, the lake's other superb point of interest is the St-Félicien Zoo. Towards the northwestern cul-de-sac of the lake, you have to go up the Ashuapmushuan river a little which there fits between the walls of black granite and takes on the air of a rapid. The dry edges of its meanders have nothing sweet alluvium. The frame offers already in itself wild landscapes very representative of the region.
After having passed the very nice welcome, modern and educational, the zoo is divided into two well differentiated:
- a first part that you walk on wooden pontoons that surround and dominate spaces where animals live and coexist (as long as they are not mutually predatory), bypassing and exploiting the reliefs, mounds and valleys, streams, elements of local forest to showcase wildlife; the designers obviously seem to have wanted to preserve without radically transforming the topographical integrity of the chosen region.
- a second part which is much larger and which can only be crossed by a small train of wagons on tires. On a large plateau of a few hundred hectares (nearly 800 ha in total), it allows you to observe, behind the large metal sides of the wagons and on a course of 7 km, other animals freely occupying much larger spaces supposed to be representative of their original context.
The zoo is dedicated mainly since 2001 to boreal fauna (that of the sub-arctic part , so of course of the northern hemisphere), ensuring in this context North American that animals find an environment as close as possible to their natural environment. This is certainly its originality.
If in its conception it resembles that of Thoiry in the north-west of Paris, the impression of freedom and openness, the picturesque and the authenticity prevail much more widely here.
... and in the order of the least bad photos, we meet the wolverine , powerful jaw and huge, disproportionate legs. He seems to live only to eat; so you still call him greedy .
A female who sought to recover in the narrow crack of a stone a piece of meat thrown by a careful, is wounded to the blood by dint of trying. So much so that the caretaker removes the meat to prevent the animal from injuring itself.
Elsewhere, locked in spacious aviaries, or else prevented from taking off by a few feathers cut off from one wing, a few diurnal and nocturnal birds, cranes and raptors, ... whose names fly away.
Further on, on a rocky terrace flowing into a vast and deep basin, one of the walls of which is made of very thick glass, a superb polar bear, a male weighing 950 kg, waddles and walks endlessly its several dozen meters of stone, from one end to the other, from one end to the other, from one end to the other ... Then take a bath and evolve in the water with the grace of a sylph, each movement perfectly suited to swimming and movement under water.
In a nearby stream that widens with a barrage of beavers, flowing otters spin around, then dry their long, coarse hairs.
A pouting raccoon curls up in a ball in its thick wool and barely deigns to show its pointed muzzle, while small black porcupines (it is the American porcupine) climb tree trunks, just to show that they are worthy of the Native American nations that took it the name.
Close otters, beavers, serious and busy barely take the time to play.
A semi-underground access allows them to see their den, in a protective half-light behind a thick glass wall, under the shelter of the dam they have built.
There the little ones sleep and the shift workers take a well-deserved break.
In the thick grass, not far away, a very small animal, probably a rodent like the squirrel, but without the plumed tail, tastes between its front paws a berry or a piece of fruit that has been thrown at it. Tiny animal, which does not care about the presence, at a distance, of visitors.
At the foot of a small waterfall, let's change our size completely: a couple of grizzly bears are having a good time in the basin of the foot of fall while waiting for the show-feeding where the demonstrator throws them some fresh fish.
Fascinating spectacle that these enormous animals, whose size is manifested in all its dimension when they stand up.
Above all, let's see the paws, and the length of the white claws. What flesh or skin can resist it?
We can say that they are omnivorous ...
If the spectacle of the feeding is interesting, but conventional and expected, then it suffices to pass by there again in the absence of the crowd and the enthusiastic excitement of the public to see them live, play, frolic, "for us alone. ".
Fun show when the male bear takes it a feet-in-the-air bath on your back, like "pass me the soap, teddy bear!", so used to the presence of spectators, who are often very noisy, that given the impression of completely ignoring them.
Elsewhere, they are beautiful woolly goats with immaculate and thick wool, whose male head with its superbly coiled horns is the embodiment of the emblem of the American car brand "Dodge", while the females, small horns pointy look like white imps.
A speckled puma (?) Passes, felted, at the foot of a rock; on other rocks a small group of mouflons perfectly still pose like statue (again "Dodge"); an agile lynx tries to prove by "a + b" that he has the beautiful piercing eye like in a fashion ad.
On steep rocks, on one side, well isolated, a group of 4 or 5 majestic tigers (from Siberia?) take a hieratic posture, when another plays with a hollow can suspended from a tree on which he is scratching.
On the other, furry monkeys, the red face, probably northern regions (Japan?) continue with disconcerting agility.
In the Asian part where we are then, on the outskirts of a huge yurt tent, a few tired yaks rub shoulders with woolly camels whose hump swings, and a mouflon male with unremarkably oversized horns.
... and after other discoveries that would ultimately be tedious to describe here, here we are on board for the great outdoors !!!
There parade parts of tundra, typical Canadian landscapes, small lakes, ...
Beautiful deer, elk, say the astonished, hardly frightened; or pose with great elegance in the thick grass at the foot of birch trees.
Black bears and their young wander fearlessly on the path or in the undergrowth of spruce and birch trees; a large, well-isolated perimeter shows the refuge of the wolves whose sentries constantly patrol while others take a nap.
We also cross beautiful reconstructions of ancient Amerindian villages and the first settlers behind erected palisades.
Then a small herd of necessarily bearded bison is grazing peacefully; no risk of hearing here the terrible roar of the immense herds of before, that of the great plains.
In large grassy clearings, emerging from their burrows, small rodents resembling marmots play. They are "prairie dogs" because their cry resembles the bark of a dog. In fact, they are cousins of our groundhogs.
Elsewhere, it is a herd of wild goats, massive and almost non-domestic, musk oxen with long, fierce muzzles, gathered in small groups very tight as if to face the enemy. He that specialists classify in the category of "aberrant goats" (sic) is more nobly named "the animal whose fur is like a beard" by the inuits, which gives in their language " omingmak ".
We can not finally fail to look with a touch of enthusiasm the emblematic animal of Quebec, the one whose roadside signs, sometimes even mobile and luminous, indicate the possible presence and the possible danger they can present ... for motorists.
Of course, the zoo is even more diverse; impossible to be exhaustive, to cite all the species; example, facetious seals in their basin at the entrance, no less players than their brothers from the St. Lawrence over there.
Yet we will have to face the facts : no more moose than moose or of moose; we won't see any here.
Huge disappointment!!!
... and some proud native american
on the cool shores of Lac St-Jean
A few kilometers away, returning to the east, on a small projection on the south bank of the Ashuapmushuan river, here we are in the Native American village of Mashteuiatsh (named by the colonists Pointe Bleue), which the symbolic tipis made here of robust concrete signal to passers-by.
Near a sort of tourist office, a Native American wedding was held that day, in almost freezing cold ; the men and women who put on modern clothes seem insensitive to it; perhaps the orange color of the dresses marks the identity of the nation of belonging (ilnuatsh of the Montagnais from the great nation of Algonquin)?
Refrigerated, and at the invitation of the panel that welcomes us, we take refuge in the tourism building where young Amerindians answer our questions, modern and competent.
One of the craft shops to which they refer us exhibits and sells beautiful objects whose authenticity is not in doubt, but which are more aimed at connoisseurs, or the Amerindians themselves, with a whole symbolism and a somewhat hermetic requirement for the boeotians that we are, ... and rather high prices.
The other shop sells objects that better correspond to the expectations of tourists, but necessarily concedes ease and moves away from a certain ancestral truth.
However, it would also have been necessary to visit the Amerindian museum which is said to be very famous.