 | CANADA - |
| CANADA - |
THE EDGE OF CHICOUTIMI
Wandering around rather aimlessly in the twilight looking for somewhere to park up for the evening, seeing as how all of the campsites in the area were closed, I came across what appeared to be an abandoned country park with a large reasonably-secluded car park
It's not particularly ideal and the setting might not be perfect, but it's good enough for what I want seeing as it's getting rather late.
And do you know what? I had one of the best nights' sleep that I have had in ages. I was out like a light and slept without any interruptions at all until dawn.
As the sun was rising next morning I went for a good long walk for an hour or so to clear my head. And not 500 metres from where I had been sleeping I encountered a beautiful river.
No idea where I am of course, having drifted around aimlessly for a while as I mentioned, but this may perhaps be the riviere Chicoutimi although I wouldn't like to bet my mortgage on it. If it is, this was one of the most important portages between the Saguenay River and Lac-St-Jean in the days before the railway.
But no matter. Let's return to the walk, and I dunno what it is that was blowing through the air that morning but it was some kind of breeze or something and I remember feeling much more, well, enthusiastic and full of the joie de vivre than I have felt for a while.
Now how do you explain that? It's a bracing fresh wind that is doing me good, I think.
The river is another one of these that has a barrage across it and the water has certainly some kind of impressive force as it powers through the sluice gates just there.
So if I am at the riviere Chicoutimi, this will be the Barrage de Portage-des-Roches. Finished in 1924, it's 450 metres long and just over 15 metres high. The lake behind it is over 5,000 hectares.
The principal fspurpose of the dam is, surprisingly, not to create hydro-electric power but to regulate the flow of water down the valley.
After my stroll, I now need to head back towards Chicoutimi and to my surprise, The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav directs me to the dam and onto the road that goes across the top.
That would have been quite a nice drive as I bet that the view would have been impressive, but as you can see, it's quite out of the question as the barrage is undergoing repair and so the road is closed.
That's rather a shame, and a huge disappointment to my friends and acquaintances, many of whom have been telling me for years that I've gone over the top.
The alternative route adds a considerable amount to my distance, which is rather unfortunate, and it wasn't anything like as pleasant a drive as this would have been.
The closure of the road and the repair to the dam serve to reinforce my opinion that this might well be the Barrage de Portage-des-Roches. There was a devastating flood here in 1996 and it was subsequently held that the barrage here was insufficient to control the flow of water in modern times, increasing due to climatic change, and considerable revisions needed to be made.
As a result, in 2010 the Province put out tenders for a major programme of reconstruction of the barrage, and work subsequently began, to an estimated contract price believed to be not unadjacent to $50,000,000. Work is expected to be complete by 2013.
My route into Chicoutimi took me along the Boulevared de l'Universite, and one of the ultra-modern buildings here proudly proclaims itself to be Canada's Aluminium Technology Centre of National Research.
That didn't surprise me in the least. We seem to have spent a considerable amout of time driving past aluminium smelters along here, and so I reckoned that there would be something of this sort attached to the University.
On the edge of the city centre I encounter another word that I can add to my "Teach Yourself Quebecois" course.
You will encounter the word Aubaine in the Francais de Paris but not very often at all. And in the Francais de Paris it means something like "windfall" or "Godsend".
Here in Quebec however, Aubaine means "markdown" or "sale", as in clearance prices for goods in shops, translated into the Francais de Paris as Solde.
I finally make it into Chicoutimi and find a good place to park the Dodge, a little car park just outside the town centre.
The building opposite the car park immediately caught my eye. This beautiful stone building dates from 1905 and was designed by local architect Adolphe Beaulieu in the "Second Empire" style. It was originally the local Post Office.
In what is rapidly descending into nothing more than a chroncle of Quebecois conflagration, I can tell you that this area fell victim to a a major disaster, the Great Fire of 24th June 1912. It seems that this fire started within metres of the Post Office and yet the Post Office was one of the very very few buildings to escape total destruction.
That demonstrates the superiority of building in stone over building in wood. That's nothing new, of course, and is something that was well-known to Higher Authority in Canada and for centuries too. In fact, following a disastrous fire in the city of Quebec as long ago as August 1682, the city Fathers passed a law that all buildings in that city had to be built of stone.
Right close to where I'm standing is the church and so I went over to admire it.
It's not actually a church as such - it's the cathedral of St Francis-Xavier despite its rather shabby appearance.
It was built in 1922 by Gravel, Lamontagne and Lemay to replace the two previous cathedrals, both of which had, to coin a rather picturesque phrase, "fallen into the flames". The first, built in 1878, succumbed in 1912 and the second, built in 1915, lasted merely 4 years, until 1919
A weird, if not totally bizarre claim to fame is that the cathedral contains the heart of Dominique Racine, the first bishop of Chicoutimi. I suppose that it beats leaving your heart in San Francisco.
This rather attractive stone building right next to the cathedral displays the number 514. And by coincidence, the address of the cathedral is given as 514 rue Racine Est, which is probably where I am at this very minute.
Consequently, taking a wild guess, I would say that this is the building to which all of the post delivered to the cathedral would come, and so it is probably the Presbytery, or wherever the Bishop lives.
You can see the date on the building - 1915 - and so this would tie in with the building of the second cathedral - the one that was devoured by the flames just 4 years later.
This building is the Ancien Pensionnat des Soeurs de Bon Pasteur. Designed by Alfred Lamontagne, it was a boarding school that opened in 1927 with the intention of educating young girls, prsumably for domestic duties in the same sense that the Ursulines were doing up at Roberval.
They were here for 30-odd years before moving out, and this place became the Lycée de Saguenay. The school has now moved on elsewhere and the building is now back in the hands of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
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