1 September 2015

from Saguenay to Øresund

1 September 2015

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Tuesday 1 September 2015--From Matane to Quebec City, the south shore of the St Lawrence presents a much gentler landscape than the one we've been traveling through on the north. Most of it is taken up with agricultural land. This morning, we pass through the villages of St-Ulric and Baie-des- Sables, sleepy places with apparently idyllic seaside settings. I suppose they are not so peaceful during a winter nor'easter. Farther along are the villages of Métis-sur-Mer and Grand-Métis. Marc notices the names on the mailboxes along the road here are all English, surprising in this part of the country. (I should note that, to a Québecois, "English" includes Scots and Irish.)

The tapestry of Canada's history has an awful lot of Scottish tartan woven into it. If you have time, read the entries at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography for Donald Smith and George Stephen, cousins born in Forres and Dufftown, respectively. Smith rose from apprentice clerk to Chief Commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company (and that's cutting a very long story very short). Stephen started out in Montréal in dry goods, and then turned to transportation. The two were among the principals involved in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, an enterprise that was fraught with technical problems, financial difficulty, and political scandal. Despite all that, the project was responsible for the transformation of the Canadian west, if not in fact for the very existence of Canada as it is today; but it nearly broke Stephen. While Smith continued to run his innumerable business and philanthropic interests up until his death in 1914 at age 93, a disillusioned Stephen resigned from the CPR in 1888, aged 59, and retired to the Gaspé Peninsula to fish salmon. Later, he bought an estate at Grand-Métis. Upon his death in 1921, this passed to his niece, Elsie Reford.

Elsie Meighen Reford (1872-1967) was born to an upwardly mobile family in Perth, Ontario, and was educated in Montréal, Dresden, and Paris. She led a remarkably active life, being an avid outdoorswoman, a philanthropist, and a social and political activist. When she was 53, her doctor suggested that she take up gardening as a less strenuous alternative to fishing and hunting. She set about planting gardens at the estate she had inherited from her uncle. Elsie did nothing by halves. The extraordinary result of her efforts is Reford Gardens, known as Jardins de Métis in French. The gardens were opened to the public in 1962, and designated a National Historic Site in 1992. Marc and I spend a couple of hours strolling through the gardens and investigating the International Garden Festival in an adjacent field. The festival comprises a couple dozen garden/art installations by international landscape artists. Some of these are pretty odd--well, most of them, really--but they're fun to look at and explore.

It's just a few miles from the gardens to the village of Ste-Flavie. We stop at the Cantine de Ste-Flavie for lunch. Marc has seen this listed somewhere as one of Québec's best casse-croûtes. My lobster roll is strong corroborative evidence.

From there, it's about a half an hour to Rimouski, where we are staying tonight. A seigneurie established in 1696 is now a city of about 50,000. It's a pleasant place with a relatively modern atmosphere, due largely to a fire that destroyed half the town in 1950. Route 132 was at some point shifted from the town's main street to the shoreline, an obvious mistake (one I've seen made in many waterfront cities and towns), but it is mitigated somewhat by a nice promenade on the river side of it. I see some interesting-looking restaurants around, and there is a jazz festival going on in the Place des Anciens Combattants. There is, of course, a brewpub, Le Bien, Le Malt, close by our hotel, else why would we be here? We have a pint, then dinner at Les Complices [found closed in 2019], which Marc scouted on our initial exploration. Then there are a few more pints at Le Bien, Le Malt. We're happy.

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