Saguenay Region and Trois Rivières

After a breakfast at the hostel, I drove off. But first I took a few pictures of the Michel Falls, just opposite the hostel. This was just a minor waterfall, more like a weir actually.

My friend had told me that the Saguenay was the beloved river of the French-Canadians, and that they had songs about the river and so forth.

I saw many hydroplanes on the lake. I suppose that when the weather gets severe and the roads get difficult to use these planes are a quick way to get in and out of the Saguenay region.

At Alma I bought some ham and croisants for lunch. I was disappointed to find indifferent baguettes on sale at the supermarket. Perhaps the better bakers were elsewhere. For all its French heritage, the Saguenay region seemed to be headed towards fast food and shopping malls, like the rest of North America.

I crossed several rivers feeding the Lac St. Jean. At Ticouape enterprising kids offered noisettes (hazelnuts) for sale by the roadside. Mistassini advertises itself as the bluets (blueberries) capital of Canada. Chicoutimi is quite touristy because it caters to the skiers in the winter that flock to the slopes of Jonquierre. At La Baie, Alcan has a large aluminium smelter, powered by the nearby hydroelectricity. La Baie is just on the Baie des Ha! Ha! What a strange name, I thought. Later I read in a tourist leaflet that haha means a dead end in old French.

I passed a couple of hitchhikers just outside La Baie. Unfortunately I was about to turn around and take the Laurentides route back to Quebec so I knew it was no use giving them a ride. Anyway I doubt if they had any problems getting a ride.

Driving through the Laurentides is much nicer than driving past built-up areas although Canada as a whole is nowhere as tacky as the US. Eventually I emerged from the forest outside Quebec. I skipped Quebec, there was simply no time to do it justice, and headed west along Highway 20, the north bank of the St. Laurent. Once in a while, the river peeped out from the trees along the highway.

My destination was Trois Rivières. The hostel was not hard to find although navigating the one way streets took some time. The warden was a nice young French-Canadian but I had a hard time with her Quebecois accent so she had to speak slowly. They flatten out the trailing syllables, these Canadians. Also at the hostel was a girl from Alberta, spending a year at the local university to brush up her French. She was going to be a schoolteacher when she finished her studies. Now that she had found a place to live for the year, she was leaving the hostel as soon as the taxi came. She must have been put in a mixed dorm room last night because she mentioned that in the questionnaire as one of the disadvantages of the hostel. This hostel was cosy and clean but underpatronised.

Trois Rivières is named for the three streams that the Riviere St. Maurice breaks up into at the junction with St. Laurent. The local industry was firmly wood pulp and paper based but tourism was playing a rising part.

I finished off the remainder of the ham and croissants from lunchtime for dinner. The hostel was very quiet and the French warden was playing chess with her friend. They taught me the French names of the pieces. Only the name of the bishop, le fou (the fool), was new to me.