It seems I am loosing my observational skills. When I went to put on the wheel magnet to replace the one I thought my bike shop had taken off, there it was. There must be gremlins.
Today was a day for touristing, this began in Jonquière with tracking down the William Price Centre. This proved to closed except on Sundays. There is something odd about this as the Centre is located in a former Anglican Church which was moved to its current location after falling into disuse. There were some informational signs around which were interesting in not only what they said but in what they said. For instance, the writers (evidently Québécois Catholics) felt the need to explain Anglicanism as well as evangelicalism.
Between Jonquière and Chicoutimi, I passed in front a Rio Tinto aluminum plant. Using my computer, I measured its frontage as being more than a kilometer long! I also had the thought that the aluminum in the frame of Leonardo might well have come from there!
In Chicoutimi, I first visited La Petite Maison Blanche. This building is in the middle of a park of water scoured bedrock now partially landscaped with waterfalls including water coming out the bottom of the backdoor! Prior to July 1996, it had been in a residential neighbourhood, the nearby power dam not withstanding. During the Saguenay floods, the neighbouring houses were swept away, leaving it standing, a bit damaged as a symbol of the resilience of Saquenay floods across the TV screens of the world. About a month later, the owner, an 80 year old widow, died of cancer. Having become a symbol, and the City having declared the area a flood zone, the descendants of the woman sold the house and the rights to the image to the City. It is now a nice museum. There was an AV presentation about the history of the house which included the fact that the woman’s husband had during renovations during the late 1950s made sure that the foundations went down to the bedrock and where solidly attached with steel. It seems he had been worried about flooding from a relatively minor 1947 flood.
Afterwards, I bought some candy in a tourist trap “general” store. The cashier asked where I was headed. When I said “Halifax”, she was stunned. Several people I have spoken with just can’t get there heads around it. When I mentioned this to last night’s host, he subsequently looked up how long that would take according to Google Maps. The figure he quoted was 55 hours of biking. On the whole, that seems reasonable to me! ;-)
Afterwards, I visited La Pulperie which houses Chicoutimi’s major museum. It had three permanent exhibitions and one temporary one. It is between seasons so several were in the process of being taken down. This earned me a discount on my ticket. The first and most interesting one was about the history of the site. It had been a pulp mill and was proudly a wholly French-Canadian financed venture. It made much about how the Catholic union never went on strike, etc. However, this fierce French-Catholicism might explain why the concern went under after only 30 or so years during the early 1920s. I suspect the business expanded too quickly and too much. There was some mention of them building a new building in order to take advantage of strikes in Nordic countries. Another interesting exhibit discussed the early history of Chicoutimi. Then there was the temporary one about shipping in the Saquenay. It would have benefited from some maps explaining where the places mentioned were! It had rather interesting model of a cargo “goélette” or schooner, though the term had come to mean smallish wooden cargo ship. Instead of conventional rope handling gear on the foredeck, there was a tractor minus its wheels to pull ropes and cables. I wonder how authentic it was. The last permanent exhibit was about the life and work a naïve artist from the area whose name escapes me. His art didn’t impress me much and I didn’t spend much time there.
I was looking for a place to eat lunch along a street of restaurants in downtown Chicoutimi, when an older couple sitting on a terrasse called out to me. They recognized me from the train! I selected a café a little further down the street partly because there was a trio of older men with bikes eating there. We chatted a bit. They weren’t stunned by my objective having done a fair bit of bike trekking themselves, including going through North Hatley! They asked me where I was going to stay tonight. When I said “21 in La Baie”, they gave me an envious chuckle. Unless I have missed something, it is the best place to stay in La Baie. You only live once. And my package included the use of their Nordic spa.
There are a fair number of cyclists in Chicoutimi. However, a depressing number of them are riding electric bikes, including those wearing spandex. Though in fairness, there are a number of annoyingly steep hills.
As I set out to ride to La Baie, I heard a weird sound and there was a jolt from the back wheel. I stopped to investigate. It seems I had neglected to do up one of the straps on my rear left pannier. The strap had got caught in the rear wheel, wrapped around the axle and then snapped. Wheel was okay. My nerves weren’t. I had meant to include a bungee in my gear for this trip but hadn’t done so. Thankfully, I spotted a “roadkill” replacement whilst leaving Chicoutimi. Silly Daniel.
Nearing La Baie, I stopped at the Boivin cheese factory for some soft ice cream and fresh curd cheese. As I rolled into La Baie, I saw some disturbance in the water and wondered if it meant wind or rain. I quickly found out it was rain. I stopped to don my rain jacket and cover my handlebar bag. I sought out a convenience store and had some juice while the short shower happened. Wandering around La Baie I was surprised by a menu sign outside Le Pavillon Noir (read “Jolly Roger”) restaurant. It was only in English! The dynamic was that it was aimed at people from the nearby cruise ship terminal. The contents of the menu seemed to me to very bland. The only local dish I spotted was poutine. Furthermore, there were a couple of mentions of langouste which really isn’t in the Québécois repertoire and isn’t remotely local.
I have come to the conclusion that L’Auberge des 21 owes a significant part of its revenues to expense accounts. For all its scenic beauty, this neck of the woods is too far removed from the beaten to track to support something like it from tourism. However, there is a major amount of heavy industry, particularly aluminum.
(The latter industry was the reason the Canadian Army thought to station an anti-aircraft battery here during the Second World War. (That or it was a good place to train gunners). For that matter, perhaps the location of CFB Bagotville nearby is not a coincidence. It has long been a fighter base and is currently one of two RCAF airbases for fighters. I saw a CF-18 fly over La Baie this afternoon having presumably just taken off from Bagotville.)
So if you are a Rio Tinto honcho wanting to impress a client who might buy 100 thousand tons of aluminum, why not wine and dine them? Or if you are a Rio Tinto exec coming in to oversee some change in the plant, why not charge the firm? Certainly the menu is pretentious enough that I had to resort to Google to figure out what “buccins” and “armillaires ventrues” were. The wine list includes some wines costing over a thousand dollars a bottle! However, the dishes I have had are very good. I did have to temper my appreciation for rognons de veau dans la sauce au champignons with my love of kidney stew. ;-)
Tomorrow is another short day and it will probably rain.
In other news, Mummy informed me that a picture of me in the Défi des Cantons may be seen on Vélo Québec's website. And here it is.
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Those of you who knew that it meant “whelks” and “a type of mushroom” can leave early.
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