the good people who fear the lost of the french in québec must never get out of montréal, up here english was a distant memory. i even lost radio one and instead listened espace musique of radio canada which actually puts radio two and that pathetic vinyl café on npr to shame. what a great mix of music. it seems that when one gets away from english one is freed. so there was francophone québecois, then something african, some brasilian, over to cabo verde, up to spain, etc and never once was the world music mentioned. i sort of missed it when the cbc took over again around new richmond.
i already i found that i have no need to rush out in the morning. in fact i take as long to get started as do on the rock, i didn’t bother to head out until about 10am as to-day would be a piece of cake. i was simply to head up to the tip of the gaspé peninsula then down into new brunswick, after the driving i had been doing this was nothing, in fact i could probably make it so that i could catch the ferry and get to the opening in woody point two days from now and i could do it once without racing across the maritimes.
i wanted coffee, i had the two bags the motel provided and some at the buffet. but i wanted more. it would have been nice to have been in the centre of rimouski as i could have walked to a couple of cafés but as it was...
was shocked by rimouski, there were people out and about, people biking up the river front, people walking, the town had bike lanes and people were using them to get places rather than simply exercise. at times i forget that people actually use their legs and venture out for a walk.
i skipped the coffee as my thrifty demeanour set in - i wasn’t going to pay a parking meter for coffee this was too much of a big city mentality. so headed up the coast for what was a mere 850 km. i could do that in my sleep.
except that yesterday’s habits started straight off. i stopped to photograph along the river front. then the drive in then, a few closed shops along 132 then some street furniture.
i stopped to photograph another hockey rink and ended up chatting with some day care workers for about an hour.
i had to stop at the marcel gagnon house, they were like bad thiesenhausens,
then there was whale in matane-sur-mer, the wind farm that stretched quite some distance in st ulric.all in all it took me three hours to go some 50 km.
i resolved to to better and not be distracted by everything i saw and started to up the pace - well after the graffiti on an erratic in the middle of the st lawrence or another empty dép a non catholic church.
another problem was that my sight was better than my recognition. i would see something interesting while speeding up the road at 100km - that seems safe with the sureté - but it would take a good kilometre before i would recognise it then another bit of road before i could turn around.
i also realised that my driving habits in sparsely populated newfoundland, may not be the best method in more populous québec. just pulling off to the side of the road didn’t seem to be done all that much here, nor did pulling into people’s driveways.
i also realised that while i was photographing more or less the same things i was heading to the rock to do, they carried a completely different meaning down here. an empty building didn’t have the significance that it does in an outport as here people could simply go up the road. while the towns along 132 were pretty self sufficient, it wasn’t out of necessity but out of tradition as the towns were close enough that it this were the states every third town would have been emptied of shops and the inhabitants would have simply driven to the next town. all of the villages made peasant pissoir look like an out soviet outpost with its lack of amenities.
the villages were nice, few chains - even t. ho’s was hard to find - i know i needed my double double - there were supermarket chains but there were also more deps than i could count. so where here a closed shop meant someone lost a job, it didn’t speak of the fragility of a population they way it does in newfoundland.
i also realised why it was taking me so much time to get anyplace. on the rock i could drive a good bit without running into a town - the southern shore between cappahayden and st vincent’s. along 132 there would thirty towns all with something to make me stop. there is no bay d’espoir highway here.
in the end even though i continued to photograph businesses that have gone under, i realised that even though the snaps look like the ones i would make on the rock, the ramifications are different.
passing matane - the last crossing to the north shore of the st lawrence, i wondered if over there the villages were as “comfortable”. i liked the towns along the southern shore but while they were all independent, i didn’t have that feeling of tenuousness that i feel in bird cove or st shotts. the people in outport newfoundland make a decision to stay whereas in bas st laurent people decide not to leave.
it was duckish as i was at the tip of the peninsula straining to see land out over the gulf. making it to bathurst would be impossible but i wanted to make it to new brunswick. i could focus on driving as it was so dark that i couldn’t make snaps which was a pity as on the south coast of the gaspé i ran into this strange francophone atlantic city.
in percé everyone was out and about, there were light everywhere, places to eat amusments and it seems the coast is more dramatic - only saw the rochers percés in the dark.
while it is peaceful and definitely i am more focused, i hate driving up here at night and it all has to do with moose. my preferred way of travel is to work a “convoy” with me as the machine that follows. that way the person in front of me can hit the moose and i can use his headlamps to see further in front.
i misjudged distance and the related time, again being used to newfoundland where there is a distance between populations one can build up a speed along the roads. here no, i was driving more often at 60 than 90, i kept putting back my time to cross into new brunswick at every town.
crossing the border and heading into atlantic time i pulled up to the hojo’s at midnight.
-it about 12 hours between here and the ferry at north sydney right?
-yes i’d say a good 12.
that’s fine i could sleep late and still take it easy crossing
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