In Quebec, soon
North Ste-Rose
Downstream upstream, from its mouth at Baie Ste-Marguerite towards Lac St-Jean, the Ste-Marguerite river deploys its short meanders in a small barely hollow valley, at the foot of a long fold almost parallel to Saguenay on its north shore and which is only 7 to 9 km away.
For a long time, route 172 underlies the shortest route of the river in the middle of large forests of spruce and maple, sometimes crossing cultivated plateaus where high silos stand for winter hay (???) and robust and meager cereals, perhaps rye or buckwheat .
A few stops allow us to hear the rustle-rumble clear waters and yet invariably bistre.
Here they flow over a background of stones, which dot the entire width and make it a quiet torrent.
Elsewhere, the motionless surface of a natural reach merges in its perfect mirror the forest and its reverse side in a fusion of watercolor wash colors. Salmon river revealed by some roadside signs.
The road itself is deserted except for a few big, busy, furious trucks hauling cargoes of pitounes to the sawmills at full speed.
After the confluence of another small river coming from the northwest, the Ste-Marguerite river becomes even more meandering upstream. Still united, the road and the river approach the fjord from its heights.
Then the road breaks off and bends to the southwest, and leave the river to lengthen first, the vast Resimond lake, discreetly fitted out for plush leisure.
A modest crossroads and we descend to the left a small road towards the pretty village of Ste-Rose du Nord , which promotes itself as "pearl of the fjord" , nothing less, but a well-deserved qualifier.
The road crosses slopes of thick grass, as beautiful as alpine pastures where indeed a few cows graze, and leads down to a few pretty houses still venerable for some of them, a very charming hamlet on the edge of a bay of the vast river .
However, the camera is unable to capture the round and picturesque beauty of the village; or rather is it the incapacity of the photographer .
The powerful quay and its too severe and modern jetty on the water where cruise ships can dock distort this old-fashioned charm a little, but make the happiness of an old fisherman equipped like a pro, and welcome a gleaming Harley Davidson, between them the only real characters in this quiet afternoon where the village seems asleep.
Then, going up to take the 172, another short break to appreciate the calm of the Lac Bouchard , whose shores are better developed than those of Lac Résimond.
and then here is the great Saguenay and Alma
The center of the city of Chicoutimi faces us; yet it spreads out on both shores. The slope of the south bank, less abrupt than in the north, is the privileged place of more or less successful urban developments, in the middle of which stand the bell towers of the cathedral and other churches.
You get there by crossing the accessible Dubuc bridge from the north bank by a steep slope which swings sharply towards the river.
Looking west towards Alma, from the south road the north cliff of the Saguenay impresses with its dimensions and opulent constructions that seem to brave the void.
Further to the left, one sees the immense alignments surmounted by tall well aligned chimneys, it is Arvida, enormous industrial complex of aluminum production which was the most important in the world in the 1970s , now attached to Jonquière.
The imprint of the great captains of industry of the 1930s marked the region, up to the name of Arvida, not at all of Native American origin as the toponyms are often in the region, but using the first letters of the name of the President of the company ALCOA then, the American Ar thur Vi ning Da vis, whose too modest we salute ego. And then what better way to pass on to posterity, rather than relying on the one that we ourselves have engendered !!
Alma, a fairly cheerful town, is the local capital near Lac St-Jean.
Then the 172 rolls in the slope that seems to fall into the Saguenay, to take a curving course in the middle of the filling of sands, gravel, reeds and marshes fed by tides from another bay to the great river. Environment very conducive to birds, and protected as a "wildlife refuge" like there are many others in La Belle Province.
Here is St-Fulgence , which we do not enter. They say this is where they end up in their last effort water salty rising from the tides from the St. Lawrence, to mingle with the fresh waters of the Saguenay descending from Lac St-Jean.
Short break near the shore; we are north of the agglomeration of Saguenay. In this already quite urbanized area, here is a vintage car (modern reproduction of an old model or perfectly maintained original car?) In saffron color, almost in harmony with the first maple blazes.
But beforehand, we will have allowed ourselves a very pleasant little gap near Larouche where a dusty track taken by construction trucks leads us after a few waves of relief and pleasant wanderings, to the edge of a small lake in perfect calm, or well is it one of the complicated shores of Lake Kenogami where land and water become entangled, following the reliefs of the horst ?.
We dare to take a few steps on open but nevertheless private passages, without a living soul or almost, to savor the sun which floods the silvery surface of the lake.
On its shores, comfortable facilities, mowed grass, beach mattresses, passages over sparse stones, pretty wooden pontoons, express the taste for the quality of the coming Indian summer.
And which is already manifested by the festival of colors of maple trees. Hors d'oeuvre only, the fireworks of which will only take place after our departure from La Belle Province. Beginning of enchantment.
Even this variety of squirrels with a short, striped coat strikes a pose on a trunk, then disappears sharply: probably a "chipmunk" for English speakers, and here a "Swiss" or "little Swiss" because of its striped dress like the one Swiss guards from the Vatican.
While an inhabitant purrs endlessly, as if to ensure the safety of its operation, the engine of his dashing Harley Davidson, motionless on its foot.
And that round clouds play whipped egg white, and mounted in a meringue on top of spruce trees.
Alma, almost on the shores of Lac St-Jean , carefully organized the reconstruction of its construction with panels bearing the title unique in the " Gazette des Bâtisseurs " opposite its main monuments. They tell its story with a welcome educational concern, the flavor of the local anecdotes which embellish the old names, and well tinged with an assumed candor. All of this can be visited along an established and well marked course.
Where we see to what extent in the Belle Province, the past is precious, always in search of identity in the thickness of a story that is still tenuous (the anchoring of the local populations is not older than 170 to 200 years).
This is the case, for example, for its powerful St-Joseph d'Alma church with its proudly erected central bell tower, the first chapel of which was built in 1875, on the Place de la Fabrique, around which the village grows. This led the 2nd parish priest, Héraclite Lavois, to request the construction of the current church, erected between 1906 and 1908, made of black granite from the probably neighboring villages of St-Gédéon and St-Nazaire.
Then enlarged in 1924 and equipped with stained glass windows dating from 1950; in the same way are named the 3 bells Jesus, Marie, Joseph. Its presbytery, all of the same granite, was built in 1901.
The Fabrique [of parish ], a concept governed by a law of 1966, is a legal entity made up of the parish priest and churchwardens chosen from among the parishioners, with the "raison d'être" of exercising the Catholic religion in the parish. Basically, it is an association of a religious nature which manages the property and buildings, the cemetery, the donations received, according to a clear ethic (?).
This notion is contemporary with the post-colonization period, therefore much earlier than the law that does not seem to exist on this subject. only from 1966.
The photo on the left shows the central street taken between 1920 and 1933, where the alone trait of union with the present is the Coca Cola advertising panel, ... and incidentally the facade of the church.
Alma took part in the pulp adventure (with Price) and in the development of the aluminum smelter (with Alcan), which is crossed by two rivers coming from the lake, the Grande Décharge and the Petite Décharge ; we are not talking here about a dump like we call wild or public landfills, but discharge in the sense of releasing water, which can perhaps take the brutal character of a rifle discharge when the waters accumulate during the thaw.
In Quebec, Dam-en-Terre, on the shores of Lac St-Jean
The accommodation is a not very recent "condo " (for "condominium"), but a complete apartment, functional American style, where you almost get lost in pairs, equipped, still modern, comfortable in a wooden building of 2 floors. What in the tourist context, one could call a (very) vast "aparthotel" in France.
The very complete machines (washing clothes, dishes, drying, oven and 4-burner electric hob, of course the refrigerator) are North American in size, impossible to place in tight corners; thank you to the space available, which is THE constant here , in all areas.
Struggling to find a supermarket, - there are however many everywhere -, we end up being informed by a group of 3 ladies in the car, the mother and her two daughters, who spontaneously offer us to guide us with their car to the parking lot of a store. As the people of Quebec know how to generously do; there, they were obviously Amerindians , a little suspicious at first and remained very discreet and reserved.
Finally we reach our 3rd stage, at the Resort of Dam-en-Terre , whose name curiously mixes the Anglo-Saxon and the French: "dam" for dam, here perhaps of earth, even if we saw mostly concrete.
To the point that 50 years ago , a student in Laval, each time he returned to the hexagon, everything seemed cramped to me.
On this level nothing has changed, quite the contrary: the country here remains vast and semi-empty.
Thus the Saguenay Lac St-Jean region, in practice that of the Saguenay hydrographic basin, with its 96,000 km², is larger than our largest region, New Aquitaine (84,000 km²); but it only accommodates 280,000 inhabitants against 5,900,000 inhabitants for the Nlle Aquitaine (3 ha / km² for one, 70 for the other).
Our hexagon is filling up like an egg which will soon turn our countryside into a sort of natural museum and our sprawling cities of increasingly overflowing and overwhelming mega-cities.
A tonic little walk on the cycle path that crosses two dams (nicely named "Véloroute des Bleuets"), in almost total silence, allows you to see the power of the dam works, the well-regulated downstream valleys where only one flows. bottom of the torrent, and the protection of the floating tubes, probably to avoid water pollution upstream of the dam.
The maple scarlet is already exploding a little here and there, and a discreet squirrel gives us a brief visit, near some amenities, such as rest benches, from which we can see beautiful houses on the islets.
At the edge of the vast lake formed by the various dams that harness the rivers ( good Quebec use of the old French word ) - recently built by Alcan Rio Tinto, but also from 1925 for the largest, that of the "Île Maligne" power plant - and its multiple islets, and with the already fresh wind wrinkling the surface, the season turns ; but the site and its equipment let you guess everything its interest during the summer season.
Its waters fed by Lake St-Jean on the submerged course of the Grande Décharge allow the boat "La Tournée", already in dry dock on our arrival, small cruises on the lake. Even the already famous Dam-en-Terre convention and performance hall is closed.
However, the first harnessing work carried out here for the totally private account of very profit-making companies caused a few victims: in the two years after the impoundment of the Maligne Island dam in June 1926 (so the time to fill up this enormous restraint), 3,200 ha of arable land are inundated in the various parishes on the edge of the lake, and 800 owners are plundered completely unexpectedly, to the point of being deprived of their cultivable land and their drinking water reserves. Very rainy spring 1928 further aggravates the situation. It is " the tragedy of Lac St-Jean " for which the victims never obtained reparation.
An intractable Price dynasty of which William is one of the pillars opposite.
In Quebec, nostalgia for Chicoutimi,
and tomorrow at La Baie
50 years ago , without having been there physically, I knew Chicoutimi, much less the Saguenay.
We know what has become of the great agglomeration of Saguenay since 2002, encompassing Chicoutimi, Jonquière, Port Alfred, etc ...
With a very good friend from the times of youth who resides in Chicoutimi, hardly changed and which I did not however see again since all this time, it is with great pleasure that we visit this city, its immense cathedral, the stigmata of the great flood of 1996.
In fact, opposite the religious building, this " Little White House " with its sloping roof seems to be under construction and leaves its high foundations bare.
In fact, built by Elzear Gagnon in 1900, it is the only one in the neighborhood to have resisted the " great Saguenay flood "of July 1996 , after overflow of the dam just above, which for 4 days washes away or destroyed many other homes after exceptional torrential rains.
Why not make it a miracle? It is now converted into Museum.
The Bay
Baie des Ha! Ha!
A few km to the east, the forward port of La Baie has been fitted out to receive cruise passengers and welcome liners since 2008; there is something scandinavian in the modern architecture of its port which is reminiscent of that of Oslo.
The video image of a webcam provides a panorama of the port 24 hours a day in real time. And here is what it shows for example on December 22, 2016 below.
At the end of the wide and deep (11 km) ribbon of Baie des Ha! Ha !, this site naturally lent itself to becoming a privileged place for industrial ships with large draft and now large cruise ships.
It was previously called Grande Anse or Grande Baie. Its current name, which seems to incite a lot of fun, is rather Algonquin and means " place where we exchange " since the dawn of Amerindian times, long before the arrival of Europeans.
After the establishment of sawmills upon installation of the " Company of the 21 "in 1858 , and that of the railway here in 1910, Dubuc (that of the bridge) set up a chemical pulp factory in 1918 and in the process founded the village of Port Alfred, slightly set back from the bottom of the bay .
Then Alcan bought the site which had collapsed to transform in 1926 the port facilities and make it the major access to imported bauxite for aluminum plants in the West.
The federative agglomeration of La Baie was created in 1976. It was particularly affected by the "Saguenay flood" of 1996.
Winter freezes the river (see below) but an icebreaker boat maintains an access channel for bauxite ships.
Then on the thick ice of almost 1 m they say the wooden houses settle on the ice, which end up being like a village where we come to fish for fish through the thickness in which we pierce Holes. It is "ice fishing" that 50 years ago I thought we called "fishing for small channel fish".
December 22, 2016 at 8:04 am
February 18, 2017 around 12 p.m.