On a humid day

There is a trend in these parts to convert presbyteries into B&Bs. Monday night was spent in a former presbytery and so will be tonight (Wednesday). That the intervening night was spent in a high end hotel can be made up for in that tonight’s B&B is at the lower end. Comforatable, but not chi-chi.

The main feature of today revealed the origin of last night’s hotel’s name. Apparently, there were 21 signatories to a document giving them the right to develop this neck of the woods as opposed to the Hudson’s Bay Company or William Price and company, who the local (Québécois) conventional wisdom regards as a monopolist. He probably was, but as a historian and Anglo-Quebecer, I would urge a note of caution for reasons related to the general knowledge of the exhibit in question.

The exhibit was in the Musée du Fjord, La Baie’s museum. It involved the ancestry of people in Quebec and more specifically in the Saguenay. The credentials of the curators can be called into question by a couple of observations. They refer frequently to a computer program or database called BALSAC, but never give out the meaning behind the name or acronym. Secondly, they mention that the Québécois usually have some ancestors from countries other than France. They list some common ones. The list includes Scotland and Great Britain. *head slap* As someone whose grandparents’ last names are from all four of the kingdoms in the United Kingdom, I was not impressed. I therefore view the curators’ gloss on local history with a grain of salt.

Other exhibits included some examples of natural camouflage, animal intelligence, photographs of how much fun can be had hereabouts in winter and a large aquarium filled with the local fish, mostly large cod. (I had a hankering for fish and chips.) There was also an immersive film thingy, where you sat in funky, high-tech looking chairs and were taken on a pretend ride on some time-travelling ship which could fly into space as well as submerge down to 28 atmospheres of pressure. The idea was to present the Fjord and its geological and natural history. Among other things, this involved getting too close to cheesy CG belugas whilst underwater. As usual, I was left with unanswered questions. If I got it straight, the last ice age scrapped the bottom of the fjord bare down to the bedrock which can be up to 1000 meters below sea level. In the past 10,000 years, sediments have filled the fjord so that it is at most only 250 meters deep. My question is where did those sediments come from? I don’t think 10,000 years is enough to lay down that thick a layer. Unless, after having been stripped clean by glaciers, the retreating glaciers dumped sediment from farther North. Or the glaciers didn’t entirely strip the fjord and it became a pocket of sediment.

After lunch, I headed off in the irregularly spitting rain with a convenient tail wind. There was a slog up a long hill. Despite the cool weather, sweat was pouring off my forehead. Thankfully, the hill had a reasonable, though relatively steep gradient. There was also a good shoulder. Eventually, I reached what I think of as the plateau level of the Saquenay, so it was relatively smooth sailing from then on, although there was some annoying steep hills in St-Felix de Otis.

Anyway, I am now in Rivière Éternité. Tomorrow will be quite possibly the toughest day of the whole trip, not for distance (only 82 kilometres) but for hills. Google Maps gives it about 800 meters of climbing.