In Quebec, on the way to Stoneham
Let's set off again, this time to soon close the loop in the direction of Quebec.
It will first be by stopping at Stoneham.
From Dam-en-Terre, via the 169, the vegetation is still mixed and pleasantly mixes maple, birch, spruce trees, and many other species.
Then, the altitude increases, leaves the collapse of the lake at 150 m to reach soon 800 m.
The sliver of bitumen glistening with morning dew or a night-time downpour ripples on the slopes of the Laurentians, and is no longer framed than by immense spruce forests, dense and dark like an inextricable carpet crossed however the moose, whose presence is indicated by large signs "high risk".
And the electric wires that line the road on both sides also shine like cobwebs in the morning. The high-voltage transmission track follows the same path in parallel to the south.
The heavy sky contributes to this monochrome landscape, dark as a bad omen, almost gloomy.
The air is cool, soon cold, no more than 3 to 4 ° C.
In long works still sometimes unfinished, a strip 20 to 40 m wide is cleared on either side of the road, and is delimited at the artificial edge thus created by an interminable barrier probably intended to prevent the "large fauna" does not disturb traffic.
Then among the few lakes encountered, here is one on the right where there is a certain animation, and where converge powerful pick-ups. We set off on the path that runs along the lake and heads towards a few storied houses on the slope above the shore.
The lake is called Clarence-Gagnon. The site is a meeting point for moose hunters. According to Radio-Canada, the hunt is open from here the day before our visit, therefore on September 24, and ends on October 14; even though a sign elsewhere indicates the period from August 31 to October 16. In any case, the hunt is in full swing.
The hunters have no time wasted; Suddenly, in fact, with a lot of honking blasts a pick-up on the platform of which is attached a killed moose.
Among the young population of hunters, happy as children, reigns a festive atmosphere where beer flows freely to the point of permeating the ambient atmosphere. Good-natured, they let us take some pictures of the killed animal, whose powerful torso extends from this plumed head of impressive woods. One of the hunters estimates that the animal is 4 years old.
So it was written that the only moose we will have seen during our entire stay either an original dead.
Then further on the 169, here is "the convenience store". Another beautiful Quebec word, which here means a store open at unusual hours, sometimes even all night, and where you go to help out for a particular consumer product that runs out. A bit like the Arab store in Paris, but less constrained by social regulations; it is also called "late night". How beautiful is the language used in this way?
There, on Route 169, it is more of a gas station which is also a large grocery store.
With the sky brightening a little, continuing our route south, we join the 175. Despite the altitude which reaches 900 m, the views of these short worn mountains often offer beautiful panoramas.
Beforehand, we will go along the large Jacques Cartier park, to which we will return from Stoneham.
Continuously, the 175, already with 4 lanes, becomes motorway 73 in Stoneham itself, which puts this small ski resort 20 minutes from Quebec.
so here's Stoneham, a very pretty resort; but which offers its modern and large "condo" all year round too. Here again, like the equipment, the space is remarkable, on two levels, on the slope.
In Quebec, Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury
This municipality, now called Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury, was founded by English immigrants at the end of the 18th century. Although Tewkesbury welcomes the first settlers, it stagnates at first ; Stoneham, its neighbor, occupied in 1790 takes more expansion despite the poor soil. But all in all, it was not until the 1820s and the arrival of Irish and Scottish immigrants and English driven out by the recession of the British Isles in particular because of the Continental Blockade of Napoleon, for the site to start growing.
The Protestant establishment is done especially in Stoneham, of which there remains a chapel dating from 1839, while Tewkesbury will be predominantly Catholic with the Irish and French Canadians.
The more imposing Catholic church and its beautiful presbytery will be built after the fire of a 1st church in 1911.
Stoneham is on the Rivière des Hurons which runs south towards Lac Delage with a low flow, which makes it difficult to use for floating. While Tewkesbury, on the large Jacques Cartier River just to the west, lends itself much better to logging, and allows you to reach in the same direction but further south the St-Laurent in Donnacona (named after this Indian chief at the time of Champlain), halfway between Quebec and Trois-Rivières.
Then comes to Stoneham the railroad which breaks the lock of the logging road; then there also flock Irish and French Canadians.
Both were finally united administratively in 1855.
Route 175 then the highway 73, the development of the ski resort with its 39 tracks, the decline of the timber industry, the proximity of the capital lead to making the site an almost exclusively tourist and leisure place, which the creation difficult Parc de la Jacques Cartier just to the north completes successfully.
In this season when the maple trees are starting to blaze, all the beauty of the site is displayed in splendor, around superb but sometimes too severe modern chalets, currently rather unoccupied, as well as in the pleasant undergrowth whose easy hiking trails meander. near small torrents.
A few miles away, after taking a narrow, winding and very hilly road, the terraced site of Tewkesbury Church over the Jacques Cartier River is to resurface a memory of 50 years ago . The steep slope which precedes the access precipitates the view below but becomes entangled in the cables which block the landscape. Pity.
The river, of which we can see a meander, flows in tranquil majesty; I remembered a steeper curve, a more rocky, impetuous, less docile bed. Maybe another season? In any case another time.
But the beauty of the setting is there, miraculously intact, a little emotional shock of the memory, surprisingly intact, which reappears and recognizes the frame through the thickness of the years. We had come from Quebec probably on a weekend, for a journey that seemed almost too long to us at the time, with at the end this great satisfaction, of those which are imprinted in the brain.
The church was built in 1957. It is close to an old house colorful, with a donkey-shaped roof presents a worn patina which has the charm of authenticity, even if we do not really know what it owes to the lack of maintenance or to a deliberate desire to "look old". Here too, the overhead cables spoil the view.
The road on the right, which is a very long cul-de-sac, leads to the shore of the Jacques Cartier, between beautiful meadows with dense grass like a thick carpet, perfectly delimited by well-kept fences, and farms flirtatious. With a real rustic appearance, very pleasant.
How to imagine in this well-ordered, organized world, which seems so functional, also charming rural and bucolic than that of our campaigns in temperate climates, that soon white death, the icy coat that will erase everything?
In Quebec, the Jacques Cartier park
Now the park of the (river) Jacques Cartier, the one where the great river from the North passes.
The beautiful and fairly regular trough glacial valley, well worn, about 500 m deep, is the backbone of this park for about 40 km north-south.
If we can say that the St.Lawrence is an immense estuary open even as far as Quebec, if the Saguenay flows between the heights of a deep and wild fjord, the Jacques Cartier river is for its part a royal road. , singular and sumptuous through the Laurentian Mountains.
In this season, it is sometimes a torrent, other times it forms reaches of perfect calm.
But the creation of the park is still considered by its promoters-founders as resulting from a confrontation, called in its time the " battle de la Jacques Cartier "by journalists.
The river was originally the ground for fishing and hunting of the natives, who called it "the river that comes from afar" (about 170 km in length), as well for the Hurons Wendats than for the Ilnuatsh Montagnais of Lac St-Jean who brought their skins there south to Stadacona, future Quebec. They called the river " Lahdaweoole " or " Lackdaweole ".
It is named in 1632 by Champlain " the River of the Sturgeons & the Salmon ", then it is by there that one says that the Jesuits left on mission towards the lake St-Jean to transport goods and domestic animals from 1673 to 1703 to their mission in Métabetchouan, guided first by the Hurons then by the Innu (Montagnais) who then took over. But no trace of these winter trips seems to have been found yet.
Then from the 2nd half of the 18th century until ... 1975 (!!), the exploitation of the forests of the plateaus takes over, and the river transports the logs by floating to the sawmills in the South.
In 1895 the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve is created for fishing, hunting and leisure, without the site being "sanctuary". It is a success that grows even more with the creation of roads to Lac St-Jean. Thus, we speak of the "Club Caché", a fishing club from the end of the 19th century, whose name does not conceal some clandestine club. but resumes that of the Cachée river, a small tributary of the Jacques Cartier in the Park.
In the 20th century, the industrialization of the country continued with the construction of all kinds of hydroelectric dams. And it was in 1972 that Hydro-Québec, already powerful 50 years ago , considered harnessing the river with a large dam (Champigny project) which would flood the valley.
The reaction of the population opposing this eco-destructive project is immediately radical and manifests itself in the creation of the CCJC (Committee for the Conservation of Jacques Cartier). Under pressure, the project was finally abandoned in 1981, at the same time as the Jacques Cartier National Park , 671 km², was created, accessible to the public for recreation and education, while scrupulously preserving the natural environment.
Today the Park is a remarkable success. Bravo to the ecologists before the hour !!
Our visit materializes that day with a hike on the Eperon trail, a mountain at the confluence between the Jacques Cartier and the Rivière à l'Epaule. Mount so steep (474 m) in certain points that he gave his name to the path; previously, it was called Mont de l'Epaule, because of the river, but perhaps also because of its deltoid relief?
Well took us to start "upside down" of the arrows, by the slope which rises rather slowly, above the river l'Epaule, which you can hear for a long time rumbling until you gradually move away from it and cross the high ridge of the undergrowth on the Jacques Cartier side. The end of the loop in our direction is indeed particularly steep, arranged in ladders and wooden terraces, before returning to the valley.
forward!
The shoulder is on the right
forward!
on my way
and here is the Jacques Cartier in majesty
almost back to the starting point
We can imagine what our efforts would have been if we had started the loop in this direction. Let us leave that to younger hearts, which by the way were not lacking that day.
on my way
During this tonic walk, we meet a reckless squirrel curious about our passage, which plays with us a kind of hide-and-seek, circling around the thick trunk of a fir tree as we move, then which flees as it does. had come.
By car, we continue along the road along the Jacques Cartier, up to its confluence with the Sautauriski river, upstream.
Perfect calm, a dark and agile animal flees in the thick undergrowth.
In the natural reach, long canoes are moored; they are "rabaskas" (above an illustration by Frances Anne Hopkins from 1879), with which it is possible to travel part of the river; a dream that we will not have time to realize.
The word rabaska is a Quebecois modification of the Amerindian word "Athapaskaw " , common to the languages of the A lgonquins. and C ris . It meant " grass and reeds here and there ".
A rabaska is about 10 m long, by 1.5 m wide, and can hold up to 10 men.
It was a fast and robust boat, but with a high draft, so it ran aground in the rapids. The rowers of bow had to jump into the water quickly to clear the boat.
It was the preferred means for travel, trade in hides, supplies, exploration.
The euphoria of the journey in the crisp air, the contemplation of these sumptuous perfectly preserved landscapes, the purity of the light are a quiet fascination from which it is difficult to tear yourself away.
Carpe diem, because tomorrow will be maybe worse; but we want to suffer the worst, as long as it's like this one.
