TROIS RIVIERES

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The leading employer in the town these days is the pulp and paper industry. Trois Rivières seems to be crawling with Paper Mills although it's a far cry from the heady days of 1854 when someone with clearly nothing else better to do counted 80 sawmills in the town.

One of the largest pulp mills seems to be this one just here along the banks of the river. Of course, no visit to Trois Rivières is complete without a photo of a pulp mill seeing as how at one time the town proudly called itself "La Capitale Mondiale de Production du Papier Journal" - the newspaper paper capital of the world.

I once actually met a Québecois who owned a paper shop here in Trois Rivières - but it blew away in a gale.

I'll get my coat.

But before we leave my excellent spec on this landing stage in the St Lawrence River we need to take a photo downstream, eastwards in the direction of Québec and the St Lawrence Estuary. You can see how the river widens out just here.

You will also notice the town further downriver on the left or nothern bank of the river. I shall be off down there in a minute to do a lap or two around the town before I head off further downstream later on today.

So we have a photo of the paper mill, but I still want to have a drive down there to see what I see of the industrial activity of the place. Who knows? We might stumble across a couple of privately-owned railway engines. Stranger things have happened.

Instead, I stumble across what is probably a good candidate for the world's largest pile of sawdust. It's probably destined for the manufacture of chipboard or fuel pellets, I imagine, unless they intend to turn in into wood pulp or paper. That's a realistic option as well.

There are several ways to drive into any large town. There's the usual main road straight into the centre or else you can meander into the town via the back streets. The actress once famously said to the bishop that it's always better round the back, and I concur wholeheartedly. You usually end up seeing so much more.

In 2012 I went straight into the town down the main street because in 2011 I had taken the scenic route. What we encountered back then are some typical older suburban houses built in the traditional North American Clapperboard style. These are really fine examples of this.

There's also quite a good example of a typical late 19th Century North American multi-occupancy home here, as well as the customary 21st-Century Canadian overhead power lines that really get on my wick.

I don't think much of the view that you would have from the windows of the homes just here. There's nothing but the silos and the hoppers of the wood-mill.

It's not only the view either that would depress me. It's also the smell of the wet wood, which is totally overwhelming. I would be really hard-pressed to live in a house somewhere down this end of the town, anyway. Being so close to the river, I would want some kind of view of the water.

We were talking just now about wandering around the back streets of an industrial city, so here's a question for you. Have you ever noticed that whenever you are wandering around the back streets of your own city and you encounter foreign tourists down there, they always seem to be so much more friendly and approachable?

It's probably because it is these people who are not content to be herded around like sheep to museums and other artificial tourist attractions but have much more of a real interest in what is really going on in the real world (in case you are wondering, I used to work in the tourist industry). These people are generally much more open and with a different intellectual view on things, more outgoing and more curious to find out what is really going on.

A few of us were discussing this not so long ago and someone asked how this all applied to me. My reply was that people have been saying for many many years that there is no doubt at all that I'm a very curious person.

Now if I hadn't have come this way down these back streets or if I had turned off this road as I intended to do about 30 metres before here, I would never have encountered any of this. It just goes to show ….

I have to say that I like the way of controlling the crossing - the man standing on the front of the leading engine (for there are two coupled together here) waving an orange flag.

Two engines coupled together … you will know from an earlier journey that we had around North America that this indicates that the load of wagons that they have gone to fetch will be about half a mile long.

Another thing that I discovered here down the back streets of Trois Rivières was a good place to take a photo of the silos of the pulp mill that I had just seen. Right into the light, unfortunately, but then again you can't have everyhing.

To my surprise, I found that I had stopped on the car park of the local Charity Shop. These aren't like you find in the UK, with each and every Charity Shop having its own outlet in almost every town that you visit. Here in Canada, they are few and far between and take some searching out.

In 2011 I popped in this one and bought another tin opener seeing as how I always seem to break them, and a couple of interesting books to keep me going during the long, dark and lonely nights.

In 2012 though, there was nothing at all of any interest, although I did have a most interesting encounter in there with one of the local women. She was brandishing a small cast-iron skillet that must have weighed a good 7 or 8 kilos.
Our hero - "I bet your husband knows who is in charge in your house if you have something like that in your kitchen"
Woman "my husband has passed on, unfortunately"
Our hero - "so that's why you need a new cast-iron skillet then"
Woman "not at all. However, I am looking for a new husband"
Our hero - "well, if you are buying a cast-iron skillet like that, I'm afraid that I shall unfortunately have to decline the opportunity"

And so back on the road again and I run slap bang into - "well, not quite" ...ed - my two trains again. The delay while they pull their wagons back across the road gives me time to consult my Jane's Train Recognition Guide - a useful book for the international traveller.

These trains belong to the Québec - Gatineau line and the front engine carries n°3016. It's hard to say from my book but this one might well be one of the 1,225 GP40-2 locomotives built by General Motors ... errrr ... almost 40 years ago.

And if you think that 3016 is an old design of locomotive, then 2007 is one of 733 GP38 locos built by General Motors in ... err ... 1965. Clearly there's not very much in the way of investment in modern machinery around here.

According to my Jane's Train Recognition Guide, these locomotives "soon became runaway favourites with train crews". I would have thought that someone would have shown the train crews how to apply the handbrake.

Both these locomotives very proudly display a sign announcing that the aim of the company is Zero Blessures, or "No Injuries". I'm sure that this is the aim of every company, except perhaps the Armed Farces, and I'd be interested to see how the actual performance compares with the target.

Certainly, if these types of locomotive are indeed runaway favourites, it won't help much, especially if you couple some of them up to an oil train somewhere near Lac Megantic.

As an aside, if you are not from Eastern Canada, you might be wondering what or where Gatineau is. It's not a name that rolls readily off the tongue of a foreigner.

The Parliament of Canada used to be in Montreal and weren't the Québecois proud of that fact? And then in the early 1850s the Parliament Building burnt down. What followed after that was several years of bitter disputes, if not fighting, as to where the new Parliament Building should be constructed. In the absence of concensus (which, to be frank, was never ever likely to happen) the matter was referred to Queen Victoria.

After taking much advice, she made the decision that the new Parliament building should be constructed on a prominent bluff in … Bywater, a very small settlement in Ontario on the banks of the River Ottawa - a position that would dominate the Québecois (and formerly American) settlement of Hull on the other side of the river.

This decision was initially greeted with astonishment, if not actual derision. Nevertheless, it was not a bluff and the choice was confirmed in 1859. The name of the settlement was then changed to Ottawa, to reflect the Ottawa (in French, Outaouais) river.

The reaction from the Québecois was predictable. The town of Hull seems to have been discreetly absorbed into the neighbouring community of Gatineau and unofficially rebaptised in order to underline the Québecois indentity across the river. Even today in the Montreal area you will never see any road sign giving directions to Ottawa except that it is accompanied by the name of Gatineau .

My opinion on this subject was reinforced by seeing a tourist leaflet issued by the Cote-Nord - Duplessis region of the Province of Quebec. It gives a list of distances to that region from the principal towns and cities of Canada.

At first, I couldn't see Ottawa at all. Gatineau was there, but not Ottawa. And then on looking closely, Ottawa was indeed mentioned, but after a hyphen after the name of Gatineau.

That's the Province of Quebec's opinion of the national capital. And so I have the distinct impression that in the Québecois shorthand around here, Gatineau seems to be the preferred Francophone way of talking about Ottawa.

As for Hull, I have never seen anywhere in Canada a road sign for the town of Hull, even though some Canadian Government offices are installed there.

But I've not finished yet with this tourist leaflet from the Cote-Nord - Duplessis region

The boundary between Quebec and Labrador was always an issue that waas open to a great deal of dispute and disagreement, and a meeting of the Privy Council took place in 1927 to define the boundary.

As I mentioned elsewhere , a couple of Quebecois politicians have stated in a press release that
"no Quebec government has ever formally recognized the drawing of the border between Quebec and Newfoundland in the Labrador peninsula according to the opinion rendered by the Privy Council in 1927. For Quebec, this border has thus never been definitively defined."

And sure enough, in this leaflet, the border between the two Provinces that the Cote-Nord - Duplessis region defines bears no resemblance whatsoever to the 1927 frontier, and claims for itself a huge chunk of what is now the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

It did not escape me, as I'm sure that it will not escape you if you were to see the map, that the Privy Council agreement has definitely been acknowledged by the Cote-Nord - Duplessis region when it comes to including into its territory land that never was part of Quebec until that agreement was drawn up.

But I digress.

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