 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
LA MALBAIE
The road out of St Irenee is one of the steepest that I've ever seen - and that's really going some if you remember the roads out of Petite Riviere St François and Cap aux Oies , not to mention the road down to the Ile aux Coudres .
And what do we find at the top of the hill but a roundabout, or a "traffic circle" as The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav calls them. I'm not sure now why I have never taken a photo of it, despite having driven around it three times already, but it's the second one that I've now seen in Canada, the first one being at Pictou in Nova Scotia which I encountered in 2003.
I suppose that it's because photographing roundabouts in North America these days is becoming quite banal to the point of being boring. Everywhere seems to have a roundabout these days, not like back in the old days when seeing a roundabout was really something of note .
A short way further along the road to La Malbaie in May 2012 we come to another shuddering halt as Ship of the day Number ll goes sailing past us.
I couldn't quite make out the name of the ship but she would seem to be the Navios Hios, I reckon. She's a bulk carrier built in 2003 with a deadweight of about 55,000 tonnes. The Greek shipping company Navios counts her as one of its prize possessions, along with about 30 of her sisters.
Now you lot reading this might be laughing at my apparent obsession with ships, but it's all very well for you to laugh. You might see a dozen ships every day of the week come sailing past your door, but if I see a ship come sailing past my door where I live, I know that the world has serious problems.
Another thing that I ought to mention, while we are on the subject, is that having wheels on your storage boxes to help move them about might sound like a good idea in many cases but it isn't so good when you have to do an emergency stop going down a hill. I still have the ache in my back even now.
So eventually I arrive in La Malbaie, or Murray Bay as it was known for a while after the fall of Nouvelle France, and the first thing that I go to check up on is the Casino - a Monument to Mammon, or rather, a Memorial.
You may remember the painter guy whom I met at Les Eboulements in September 2011 and he told me an interesting story about the Casino. He reckons, and how true it is I really have no idea and I am not suggesting for a moment that it is, that the Casino is actually owned by Middle-Eastern interests and all the money that they win is promptly shipped out of the country back to that part of the world.
As I said, whether or not what he was suggesting is true, it isn't really the point. Long-term followers of my rubbish will recall a pet theory of mine on this score. I'm of the opinion that the British and Americans are fighting a 19th-Century war in the Middle-East and in Asia - using guns and troops and bombs. The Arabs on the other hand are fighting a 21st-Century war using finance as their principal weapon with the aim of bleeding western nations dry of ready cash, obliging them to exchange hard assets for purchases, and thus accelerating the drain.
Think about it - every time the West or the Zionists do something nasty to the Arabs, how do the Arab nations respond? Not with guns and bombs but with financial instruments - they double, or triple the price of oil. And so all of your hard-earned money flows out of your country into the Middle East. Don't just take my word for it - look at 1973, look at 1992, look at the current situation.
Anyway, so all of your money has now gone off to the Middle East. What do they do with it? Simple. They flood the banking systems of certain selected countries with it. Those banks are then awash with cash and in order to pay the Middle-Eastern investors the interest that they are due, they need to lend it out.
But if every respectable person who needs a loan for a respectable purpose has then had a loan, and there's still money left, what do the banks need to do then? They find less-than-respectable people who need loans for a less-than-respectable purpose, and lend the cash to them. These people spend the money on irrecoverable assets, usually from overseas. Buy now, pay later. Interest-free credit. Need a loan? For any puspose? Self-certify your earnings. Foreign holidays, products made in China, all that kind of thing, and it's by these means that the money leaves the country in which it has been deposited.
And once the money has all been lent out, what do the lenders do? Simple. They call in their loans. The banks don't have the money and so they try to foreclose on the borrowers. Some of the borrowers have assets like houses that can be foreclosed. Others of course don't because they have frittered the money away on impulse purchases and so the banks are in big trouble. Hence the series of financial crashes.
That's how you fight a 21st Century War, and against a naïve and innocent Western population that is thoroughly misinformed by its governments, you win every time. Ever wondered about the American obsession with credit rating? It's playing right into the hands of the overseas lenders. The more money you borrow, and the more products from overseas that you buy with someone else's money, the more of your country's capital is flooding out of your country and you are undermining your country's ability to withstand the financial attack.
The Chinese must be laughing their heads off right now. In 10 years time it will be they who will be in full control of the American economy. And what will happen then?
That's not the all of it either. Just walk around your local town and find out how many businesses, from the humble motel or the corner shop at the crossroads to the nuclear power station on the outskirts, are owned by "foreigh interests".
Yes, they've probably paid good money to the original "native" owners in order to buy it, but what have the original owners done with the money? Yes, frittered it away on a foreign car and a foreign holiday, so the money hasn't even stayed in the country. In the meantime, all of the profits made by the new foreign owners and all of the dividends earned by the new foreign investors are being shipped out of the country.
The boom times of the UK were financed by the profits made by selling off assets to foreign investors, but with no manufacturing industry remaining in the UK, all of the money was spent on foreign products. Now that there are no longer any assets to sell, the UK economy is teetering on the verge of collapse.
What happened in the 1980s and 1990s was like burning down the house to keep warm. All these programmes of privatisation of National assets and selling off of capital are just a one-time shot-in-the-arm and when the assets are gone, they are gone.
Actually we already have a few classic examples to show you what might happen in the future. The Germans spent 70 years trying to conquer the world by force. In the latter stages of World War II they hit on the idea of economic control and began to bleed the occupied territories dry. By the late 1950s they had nailed all of Europe and headed out overseas where they collided with the Japanese who had been doing the same thing in Asia.
By the time you reached the mid-70s with the Arabs joining in with the oil wars, Western economies were in freefall and they have never recovered. All that is happening now is that the rest of the developing world is hanging around the coffin driving the final nails in.
Anyway, I digress. And not for the last time either. I'm supposed to be discussing the Casino. All I can say about that is that when I was a kid I was brought up to believe that gambling was shameful and wicked, and no-one ever mentioned it. These days, you can't go anywhere without tripping over a gambling advert and people are quite shameless in admitting that they are hooked.
I despair of the modern world.
And so abandoning yet another good rant, let's return to our visit of La Malbaie
I had driven past La Malbaie during my little visit of 2001 but, enticing as the town looked, I didn't really have the time to stop there. It was high on my list of places to visit on a subsequent occasion, and such an opportunity presented itself in 2010.
If you've been following closely my adventures, you'll remember that I've been talking at great length - "no surprise here" ...ed - about Rodolphe Forget's railway line
It was in fact just here, on the edge of the towh, that I encountered it for the first time, back in 2010 on my way to Labrador
Due to the seasonal issues (it was actually mid-October) I didn't stop to have a closer look and to photograph it, but on the way back in early November in the middle of a driving rainstorm, I did take some time out to have a brief inspection and to take a couple of photographs.
At the time, it was effectively out of use apart from, so I was led to believe, the odd freight train but in 2011 a company called Le Massif de Charlevoix began to run tourist trains along the line and if you visited our page about Rodolphe Forget and his home, Gil-Mont in St Irenee, you would have seen one.
I sent a mail to the company to ask for some information about the trains but no-one ever replied. So if anyone from the company does happen to read this, please .
Leaving the railway behind right now and continuing along our little journey only this time advancing the clock forward to September 2011, we rounded the headland just outside the town and were confronted with this nice view.
Everywhere looks nice in the sunshine as you know but this place would look gorgeous in a rainstorm, as I can relate with my visit here in November 2010.
But believe it or not, I forgot to go to look at the cross that you see in the background. What I do know is that this area was visited by Jacques Cartier on his legendary voyages up and down the St Lawrence in 1534 and 1535, and it is known that he came ashore here. I also know from visits to other places that it became the custom to erect crosses to commemorate his landfalls, and the one I visited out on the Gaspé last year looked exactly like that one there.
In 2012 however I did have some time to spare and so I went in search of the aforementioned, and here I found it, right in the dead centre of the town. For it isn't a Cartier cross as I thought, but in fact a marker indicating the location of the local cemetery.
I have to say that I wasn't particularly impressed with the idea of radio aerials and the like on top of the cross. It doesn't really go with the peace and dignity of the place.
But then, not much does. On the way up to the cemetery I encountered a little old man tottering back down the hill towards the town. Apparently he had been to a funeral here but he hadn't been able to keep up with the mourners for the return journey.
"How old are you anyway?" I enquired.
"104" he proudly replied.
"Well," I said. "It's hardly worth your while going home."
Having said that, however, I'm glad that I came up here because the view across the town and over the river to the southern shore is exceptional, not that the inhabitants here where I am standing are in much of a position to appreciate it.
I would have appreciated it more had there been something in the way of sunlight, but with it being early May there aren't any leaves to block the view. You can't have everything.
While I am out on this side of the town, I remember that I have something of a personal errand to run. This involves leaving the town on this side and driving a way back along Highway 138 in the direction of Québec City. And "oh dear" - just near the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill we have a fender-bender right in front of me. And as I head off along the Highway I encounter all of the ner-ners heading my way, and in something of a hurry too. Strange. That accident didn't look all that bad to me.
Anyway - this personal errand. Back in France one of the projects upon which I am working is the history of the Tacot d'Allier, the narrow-gauge railway network that meandered through the countryside in the Département of the Allier. It was described as being a system of lignes de chemin de fer de l'interêt local - in other words "railway lines of interest to the local inhabitants". And when I drove through Malbaie in November 2010 I saw a sign referring to the Rehabilitation des chemins de fer de l'interêt local au Québec.
Thinking that this little piece of publicity might be something of a coincidence too good to miss, I would have stopped for a good nosey but we were in the middle of a major snowstorm at the time and I didn't want to lose time that might be better spent negotiating the Cap Tourmente. I therefore resolved to come back another time for a better look, and there was a gap in my itin ...itinin ... itininin ... timetable in September 2011.
So after something of a rather lengthy detour I eventually find the sign that I was looking for. Right at the side of the railway line as it crosses Highway 138 at the back of Malbaie, on its way to Rodolphe Forget's paper mill at Clermont. It seems to be urging the authorities to reinstate the passenger service along this line and probably many others like it.
Quite right too. I've seen just how decimated the railway network is in Canada and although it's true that Canadians don't seem to be as mobile as Europeans, I can't help but think that to wipe out a whole railway network when Canada has so much electricity to power railway locomotives and there is so much pressure on oil supplies right now is a very short-sighted policy indeed.
Running trailers on the railway line like I've seen in the USA would take countless long-haul lorries off the road. They just need to travel by road for the last few miles and thus the saving on precious diesel fuel would be considerable.
And talking of electricity, I noticed as you may recall, during my flight over here in September 2011 what looked like shaved strips of land on the ground in certain places. I surmised that they might be the paths of electricity cables passing over the countryside with the undergrowth cut away underneath to stop it fouling the cables, and I seem to be right. I've just driven right past one, and I've seen for myself.
On the way back towards Malbaie along Highway 138 there is a really good view of the town from the forecourt of a car sales yard just outside the city limits or whatever they call them around here. This has to be worth a photograph even though the hackles on the back of my neck were rising as if someone was watching me closely on a close-circuit TV or, as the famous and legendary Arthur Hunnicutt
Yes, as you all know, I hate the modern 21st Century Surveillance Society with a passion. Having grown up in the Cold War and having visited the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s I remember the hoots of derision that the West used to heap upon the Eastern Bloc about how there were soldiers on every street corner spying on the population. Here in the 21st Century "Free World" we don't have soldiers on every street corner, we have spy cameras instead.
I'm waiting keenly for one of these Western politicians or generals of the Cold War to stand up and admit that maybe the Soviets had a valid point.
And as I am busy organising myself for this photograph one of those weird and unusual sports cars - the type that I photographed for Paul on my travels to New Jersey in 1999 - drove past me, and I wasn't ready with the camera.
So having "done" Malbaie I headed off eastwards once more along the Chemin du Roy in the direction of the Tadoussac Ferry. But I don't go very far
What I want to know is that how it is that I have driven along this road not once but four or five times before and each time I have somehow managed to miss this beautiful scenic turn-off. And talking of beautiful scenic turn-offs, why don't they call them "beautiful scenic turn-ons"? Is that not far more appropriate?
In 2011 I had had a slight accident with my inverter as you might recall meaning that I was going to be struggling to charge up my laptop and so on. Just over there is a branch of that well-known motor vehicle accessory shops. I did manage to find a functioning inverter there to replace the one that I sat on and broke or whatever.
And it was also on the car park of the aforementioned here at Malbaie that I handed out my first business card for my solar panel and wind turbine business. Astonishing, isn't it? Anyone who doubts the efficacity of vehicle advertising, eat your heart out etc. Those vinyl magnetic signs that I had made before I came over here - aren't they doing the business?
You can start to understand why Champlain decided to call this area "Malbaie", can't you? Compare this shot of the bay with the very first photo on this page. We've not been here an hour and yet look how far out the tide has gone.
When he first landed here the tide was right in and so he moored his ship right up close to the shore. When he came back the tide had gone out and he, his men and his ship were all stranded on the shore until the tide came back in.
Quite funny, you might think. But being not very numerous and being stranded close to shore at the risk of being visited by indignant local indigènes, I don't think that Champlain and his men were amused.
And even as we speak, the tide is going out rapidly and we start to see the mudflats upon which Champlain's ship was stranded for a few hours back in 1608. And of course that reminds me of the story about the American tourist who came here and buttonholed a local yokel
"When was it that Champlain's ship was stranded here on the mudflats"
"1608" said the local yokel - a very vocal local yokel as well.
"Damn" said the American, looking at his watch. "Just missed it".
But right over there in the distance, although you can't see it, is the Casino that we visited a little earlier.
The benefits of being out and about in periods outwith the usual tourist season is that the vegetation can quite often lend a helping hand to any photographs. Coming back along this road from my circular tour of Labrador and Newfoundland in 2010 it was early November by which time most of the leaves had fallen off the trees and so the view is so much clearer.
There was a decent view across the town from a little higher up the hill on that particular visit and so I stopped to take a photo. It was, I reckon, from this viewpoint that I had seen the view that had so enchanted me when I drove past here in the night during my voyage in 2001
But back for a moment to 2011 and our scenic turn-off - or even our scenic turn-on - and we can't leave here without a photograph of Strawberry Moose enjoying the proceedings.
For those of you who don't know about His Nibs, basically he was at one time the rather controversial mascot of a British University for mature students - although what I was doing at a university for mature students is anyone's guess, certainly not mine. Anyway, to cut a long story short ... "hooray!" - ed ... he travels the world being photographed in all kinds of exciting places and the students love to see his photos.
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