 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
GODBOUT - WEST
If you are still waiting in the queue for the ferry across the St Lawrence River to Matane and came with us on our walk in the hills to the east of Godbout yesterday, then today we are going to walk in the other direction, towards the west,
The first thing that we notice is a sign directing us to the cemetery, and so this is where we'll start.
I had a good nosey around at some of the graves, as I always like to do in places like this, and this lady seems to be the very first inhabitant of the cemetery. She died in 1880, aged 27.
There was a gap of a good few years between her and the next-oldest grave that I could find. Maybe there weren?t too many people living around here in those days.
On the other hand, there could be quite a few graves in here that don't have headstones.
That point of view might well be borne out by presence of this object. It's some kind of stele here in the cemetery giving a list of names of people who are interred in here and whose last resting places would seem to be lost. It's a shame that so many names haven't been remembered too.
But this stele was clearly erected in the olden days when the original inhabitants were still being referred to as Indians rather than First-Nation Canadians.
While we admire the grave of the LeDuc family, which must surely be unique in the annals of cemetery folklore in that there doesn't seem to be anyone buried in it, let me tell you that it's an error to believe that the word Indian when applied to people in Canada refers to the belief that this area might have been the Indies or the Indian sub-continent and the inhabitants as being from that area.
Jacques Cartier knew full well that it was nothing to do with the Indies. He'd worked out pretty quickly that the St Lawrence River was not the fabled North-West Passage
The word Indian when applied here in Nouvelle France is an English-language corruption of the word Indigène which is the French word for native inhabitant.
Godbout has a small school here, and also a very impressive church with a presbytery. It dates from about 1908 and much to my surprise, its predecessor of 1840 didn?t actually burn down like everywhere else in Quebec but managed to survive until it was demolished at the end of 1903
I forgot to have a close look at the statue to see who she was. As you know if you have been a regular reader of this rubbish, the different saints are identified by the object with which they are depicted. This might be Saint Mary ? but then on the other hand it might not.
While you admire the view across the St Lawrence to Matane from across the road opposite the church, let me tell you that this thing about saints and the objects with which they are depicted does actually have a point, especially in catholic countries.
Back in the days before universal education, the average rural dweller was unable to read. Signposts giving directions were therefore quite pointless, and yet people still had to travel and find their way about when they were travelling around.
Consequently, there would be the statue of a saint erected at important crossroads, identified by the objects with which they are usually depicted and which everyone would know from a very early age, and that's how directions would be given
"turn left at Saint Anne"
"straight on past St Jerome"
"and then left at Saint Michael"
You can see how the idea works.
I was told that this cairn marks the site of the original trading post of the Domaine du Roy - the official trading company that exploited the natural resources of the area, such as pelts, forestry and maritime products, during the days of Nouvelle France.
The first recorded trader to come to this area arrived sometime after 1662 but before 1670, when his presence was noted by the Jesuits who arrived here in that latter year. The trader came to Nouvelle France from Normandy as a small child in 1640 and was called Nicolas Godbout. It was from him that the village took its name.
The Compagnie du Nord-Ouest took over the operation of the trading post in 1788 and it passed to the Hudsons Bay Company in 1808. Operations ceased in 1859.
Down at the end of the road is a kind of pleasure park. It's called the Parc Intergenerationnelle and must be a paradise for holidaymakers, especially young children with all of the attractions that are available.
I myself would have made a bee-line for the pirate ship. This is an ideal place for the extreme youth of the village to hang out. Not only that, but many British people would find themselves at home here, for having voted for the Brexit they will soon find themselves all at sea.
And as for the adults who didn't vote in favour of the Brexit, there are plenty of things for them do here too. So much so that when my friend Liz saw the photo, she asked me if this place was a playground or a gymnasium. It can quite easily be both, without any trouble at all.
I was keen to go over and have a look, and maybe a play on the apparatus but I'd wasted so much time already and I had plenty of other things to do. And you lot might even have a ferry to catch so we can't afford to hang around.
At the side of the park is the second of the two rivers here at Godbout. This is the bigger of the two, called (as you might expect) the Riviere Godbout, and nicknamed (as you might equally expect) the Grande Riviere.
According to mine host, it's a famous salmon river and some good fish have been taken out of it. And if any of the photos that I have seen of some of the fish that are said to have been taken out of here are anything to go by, he is not mistaken either.
I headed off to the river, but the climb down the bank to the sandy beach was quite something. The steps down to the water stopped half-way down and I had something of an undignified scramble the rest of the way.
There is a reason for this, as the people whom you can see on the right-hand edge of the photograph explained to me. Apparently there has been something of a storm that has eroded away a good part of the banks of the river, hence the beach that should have been right underneath the bottom of the steps has been washed away.
However, it's quite good news for these young people. They told me that they are archaeologists and that apparently some kind of considerable cache of seashells was uncovered by the storm.
They seem to think that there's a possibility that it might be an old Innu rubbish dump and so they were busy excavating it in the hope of finding Innu artefacts and whatever else might be buried in the cache of shells. They hadn't been there long so nothing of any great interest had been discovered as yet.
I did mention that the rivière Godbout is quite a famous salmon river, but it may come as some surprise to you to learn that until comparatively modern times, the locals here did not have the right (either by licence or otherwise) to fish in it.
The Provincial Government of Lower Canada (as Quebec was called in those days) wasted no opportunity in maximising the income-generating opportunities of the natural resources of the Province.
When the Hudson's Bay Company withdrew in 1859, the fishing rights in the river from its confluence with the St Lawrence to five miles upstream were leased to the Fraser-Molson Sports Club. The locals had to fish off-shore in the St Lawrence.
And this is nothing unusual either. You'll encounter many other similar cases as you look further into the histories of many of the salmon rivers.on the Côte-Nord.
The sediment that comes down the river is caught by the current of the St Lawrence River which is quite slow-moving at this point. As a result there's quite a magnificent pair of sandspits stretching out into the river.
I've told you before where the sand comes from. But in case you have forgotten, it's actually the debris or dust that is created when boulders have rubbed against each other as they have been caught up and transported by glaciers during the various ice ages.
When the glaciers melted or receded, the slow-moving rivers that were formed did not have the velocity to carry away the rocks and sand, so they deposited the sand on the ground.
As a result, rivers in the sub-arctic regions of the world have some of the most magnificent beaches on earth, and those of Godbout are amongst the best that I have ever encountered. And the sunshine certainly brings out the best in them.
Had the wind dropped, I would have been quite happy to have sat down here with my book to relax for a while by the sea and indeed I did have such an idea in mind if I could have found a sheltered corner.
However Brain of Britain had to knock that idea on the head, for he had discovered that he had forgotten to bring his booK with him.
This piece of wood lying here half-buried on the beach caught my attention and so I went over for a closer inpspection.
What had drawn my attention to it was that there was a good deal of what looked like worked joints in it - the kind that a carpenter might make if he had been using the wood as part of a construction project.
And that wasn't all either. There were some huge nails and metal pegs sticking out of where the joints are. This made me wonder whether this wood had been part of a shipwreck or an abandoned boat. That kind of thing wouldn't surprise me at all.
We continue our walk along the beach and we find ourselves approaching the village again. You can see the church over there on the left and the cemetery that we visited earlier is behind it down at the end of a long lane.
On the right where you see the heaps of stones and rocks, that's the car park for the ferry and if you've come with us on our walk around while you've been waiting for your ferry to arrive, as we had to do in 2014, then you'll need to head back there and wait for the ferry to take us across the river..
Those of you who came with me in 2010 have about 58 kilometres to drive westwards to Baie-Comeau - so you'll need to go to this page and read from bottom to top.
Those of you who accompanied me in May 2012 to our icebraker at Natasquan have about 175 kilometres to drive to Sept-Iles and there's no possibility that you'll arrive there tonight unless you fancy doing half of the journey in the dark.
You need to go to the next page , reading from top to bottom as usual to follow the route along and see what we discovered on the way.
Those of us on our 2016 voyage are heading back to my digs, for I'm staying on for a few days. And our route takes us past this delightful little house. I couldn't tell from here whether it was really built of stone or whether it's just an excellent cladding, but it's certainly impressive.
It has a tin roof too, and that's an excellent idea I reckon. Most roofs in North America are shingle roofs - a kind of tile made from high-quality roofing felt - but they decay after about 20 years and need replacing.
A really good galvanised metal roof will last a good deal longerand has the advantage that as soon as the sun shines onto it, all of the snow slides straight off, as I have discovered to my cost back home on several occasions.
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