Tag Archives: Canada

17 October 2013: the Saguenay River and La Baie, Quebec

October 18, 2013 Corey Sandler

The Fabulous Story of the Kingdom of the Saguenay

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

The Rivière Saguenay – the Saguenay River – is one of the major rivers of Quebec, the largest fjord in the province.

Quebec extends nearly 1,200 miles north from the Saint Lawrence to the top of the Ungava Peninsula. I’ve been there: it looks nothing at all like Quebec City or Montreal.[whohit]-FABULEUSE SAGUENAY-[/whohit]

Silver Whisper at the dock in La Baie, and as seen through a window of the cruise terminal. Photos by Corey Sandler.

The Saguenay drains Lac Saint-Jean in the Laurentian Highlands; that lake is filled by thousands of streams and rivers in the watery north of Quebec. The nation of Canada possesses about 8 percent of the world’s fresh water. Quebec alone has 3 percent of the water reserves.

One of the world’s longest, the Fjord du Saguenay cuts through the Canadian Shield. The huge rocky plateau occupies nearly half of all of the Canada, extending from the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence Valley northward to the Arctic Ocean.

The river was an important trade route into the interior for the First Nations people of the area. During the French colonization of the Americas, the Saguenay was a major route for the fur trade.

Few roads connect with the area from the south and east, and only one road connects from the northwest. No roads go north from the area into the wilderness; the last roads north end just a short distance from the city—still within the Lac St-Jean area.

Cartier arrives in New France. From La Fabuleuse. Photos by Corey Sandler

There are no human settlements due north of Saguenay all the way to the Canadian Arctic islands, except for a few isolated Cree and Inuit villages.

The Kingdom of the Saguenay

Another name for the region, one which was latched upon by the early French explorers . . . looking for riches . . . is the Royaume du Saguenay or the “Kingdom of the Saguenay.”

The grandiose name is either the result of a misunderstanding . . . or a bit of a jest or even a calculated trick put upon the French by the locals.

When the French arrived to colonize New France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they learned from the Algonquins of a legendary kingdom to the north.

The loggers and the famers arrive in the Kingdom of the Saguenay. From La Fabuleuse. Photos by Corey Sandler

When French explorer Jacques Cartier arrived at Stadacona in 1534, he did not come with a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy.

The key to the Kingdom may lie with Chief Donnacona, the leader of the Iroquois village of Stadacona, at the place now occupied by Quebec City.

Cartier kidnapped two of Donnaconna’s sons and brought them back with him to France. They told Cartier of a place they called Saguenay, populated with blond men who were rich with gold and furs.

We have no reason to assume that Cartier or Donnaconna and his sons believed there really was such a place. But the story served as a golden ticket: it gave Cartier something to sell to the king so that he could make another trip to the New World, and it assured Donnaconna’s sons of a trip back home.

La Fabuleuse Histoire d’un Royaume

Since 1988, a cast of more than a hundred locals presents an astonishing pageant that tells some of the story of the Saguenay region. It is presented in a massive amphitheatre constructed by the town. They’ve also built a handsome dock for cruise ships, and each season the number of ships increases.

The pageant includes some astounding special effects. Photos by Corey Sandler

On this cruise to La Baie, a rare full-day visit, we were able to attend a performance of La Fabuleuse.

There’s Jacques Cartier, Chief Donnaconna, the Generals Montcalm and Wolfe to stage the battle of the Plains of Abraham, loggers, farmers, capitalists, horses, chickens, geese, a trained pig, barn dancers, flappers, twisters, and hippies.

Modern times to a grande finale. Photos by Corey Sandler.

It’s not Shakespeare, but the Bard of Avon never put on a show that included explosions, lasers, floodwaters, and a field of grass the sprouts on stage.

It was a fabulous pageant, un grand spectacle.

All text and photos copyright Corey Sandler 2013. If you would to purchase a copy of a photograph, please contact me.

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14-15 October 2013: Sydney, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, PEI

October 18, 2013 Corey Sandler

Time Travel in the Canadian Maritimes

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

To me, one of the appeals of Sydney, Nova Scotia is that it allows me to time travel back to a time I once knew: the 1950s.

It is one of the only places in North America where I could direct you to a cobbler to have your shoes resoled.Or a seamstress or tailor.[whohit]-SYDNEY-CHARLOTTE-2-[/whohit]

Or old Doc Archibald with his office in an old Victorian behind a white picket fence.

Sydney, Nova Scotia. The colors of autumn in a place frozen in time. Photo by Corey Sandler

From 1784 to 1820, Sydney was the capital of the British colony of Cape Breton Island. The colony was merged with neighboring Nova Scotia when the British decided to develop the abundant coal fields surrounding Sydney Harbor.

By the early twentieth century Sydney was home to one of the world’s largest steel plants, fed by the coal mines of the Dominion Coal Company. By the late 1960s both coal and steel industries were failing, and were taken over by federal and provincial governments. That lasted until late in 2001 when they could not be sustained any further.

The cruise terminal in Sydney with Silver Whisper at the dock and a super-sized fiddle along the water. Sydney is one of the centers of Ceilidh, the Celtic-based barn dance centered around that instrument…in a hand-sized version. Photo by Corey Sandler

With apologies to some of my Anglophone Canadian friends, when I speak of this region I use French pronunciations for places like Bras d’Or (the Golden Arm) and Louisbourg.

I do this knowing that for the locals, the same places are often called LEWIS-BURGH and something close to BRASS DOOR.

See my Blog entry of 3 October 2013 for a recent visit to Sydney and Louisbourg as well as some details about Baddeck and Alexander Graham Bell.

Queen Charlotte, the Orphan Anne, and Prince Edward Island

When you think of Stratford-upon-Avon, you think of a certain poet and playwright by the name of William Shakespeare.

We are talking apples and oranges …or jellyfish and lobsters here… but in certain circles around the world…in some of the most unlikely places…Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island is not known for Queen Charlotte, not remembered for the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 that led the way to Canadian Confederation, and not thought of at all for almost anything else…except for the work of a relatively minor author named Lucy Maud Montgomery and a series of novels that begin in 1908 with “Anne of Green Gables.”

More colors, in a house near the waterfront of Charlottetown, PEI. Photo by Corey Sandler

Anne of Green Gables began as a Canadian bestseller, became an American success, and went on to become an international phenomenon.

For reasons no one hasfully figured out, you are quite likely to find a tour group from Japan…looking for Anne. I think it has to do with the fact that Anne is a girl who is for some about as un-Japanese as possible: feisty, independent, and decked with freckles and braided red hair. They love her in Japan, and come to PEI by the planeload.

I last wrote about Charlottetown in a Blog entry on 2 October 2013.

A study in angles and colors in Charlotteown. Photo by Corey Sandler

Charlottetown is the capital of Canada’s least-populated province, Prince Edward Island. The city is the country’s smallest provincial capital, with a population of about 35,000. (Canada’s three territories: Nunavut, Yukon, and Northwest Territories have smaller populations, but they are not provinces.)

The town was named in honor of Queen Charlotte, consort of King George III from 1744 to 1818.

Like Sydney, it is a place where time seems frozen.

I spent the day walking Charlottetown with a group of guests as we conducted a photo safari, hunting the colors of Prince Edward Island.

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13 October 2013: Halifax, Nova Scotia

October 14, 2013 Corey Sandler

Halifax, Nova Scotia: Up from the Ashes

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Halifax has had a tumultuous history. The British built a great citadel here as part of its claim to New England, and it still stands guard over the city.

Every day at 12pm they fire the noon gun; no matter how many times we have visited, it still startles.

But there are echoes of other events: the arrival of Loyalists who fled the upstart American colonies during the revolution. The departure of raiding parties from here to burn Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. The both-sides-against-the-middle trade with the South and North during the American Civil War.

Ducks on the Pond at the Victorian Garden. Photo by Corey Sandler

Then came the Halifax Explosion near the end of World War I, a time when the harbor was filled with convoys gathering to cross over the Europe. And the convoys were back during World War II when this place was one of the most important links in the resupply chain for the United Kingdom and later Russia.

Today, the city shines with some handsome buildings–many of them with mirrored glass reflecting the harbor and the old Victorians and Georgians.

Around town in Halifax on a beautiful fall day. Photos by Corey Sandler

And the superlative weather still follows us. Shh…don’t tell anyone that it’s not supposed to be like this in mid-October.

Silver Whisper reflected in the windows of a building as we departed near sunset. Photo by Corey Sandler

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12 October 2013: St. John, New Brunswick

October 13, 2013 Corey Sandler

The Tides They Are a’Changing

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We think of New Brunswick as part of English Canada, but it actually has a significant French background.

Jacques Cartier claimed the region for France in 1534. Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian sailing for the French in 1548, though the place worthy of being named after Arcadia, the Greek name for an idyllic place. In French, that became Acadie.

Right from the start, this was the line of dispute between the French and the English.

In 1629, the English brought in boatloads of Scottish settlers and changed the settlement’s name to “Nova Scotia,” Latin for New Scotland.

The colony was returned to France in 1632, but disputes between the two powers continued until 1713 and the Treaty of Utrecht when Acadia passed a final time into British hands.

Although the question of sovereignty was settled, skirmishes continued.

That led to Le Grand Dérangement, the Great Upheaval: the displacement by the British of the French Acadians.

It is estimated that three-quarters of the Acadian population was uprooted between 1755 and 1762.

The Acadians landed in many places, but the best known colony of expatriates went to Louisiana. And there they became known as the Cajuns.

Rocks and seaweed along the beach in one of the places with the greatest tidal range in the world. Photo by Corey Sandler

Walter Pidgeon, Hawkeye Pierce, and Jack Bauer

The small city of St. John produced two celebrated actors:

Walter Pidgeon starred in many popular films including “How Green Was My Valley”, “Mrs. Miniver”, and “Advise and Consent.”

And more recently, Donald Sutherland, who came to fame as Hawkeye Pierce in the movie “MASH”, as well as “Klute”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and “Ordinary People.”

He is also the father of Keifer Sutherland, who for eight seasons single-handedly protected the United States from nuclear, biological, and narcoterrorists as Jack Bauer in the series, “24.”

Also from Saint John: Stompin’ Tom Connors, one of the most successful country singers to come out of Canada.

Fundy and the Falls

But the thing which makes Saint John and the surrounding region most famous around the world is an unusual natural phenomenon.

The tourism board will tell you that Minas Basin in the Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world.

In truth, it depends on who is doing the measuring and when the measurements are done.

I have been to places much further north, including Leaf Basin in Canada’s Ungava Bay at the top of Quebec near Hudson Strait. Some scientists say the tidal range in Ungava is greater.

Of course, not all that many tourists—or even scientists—go to Ungava Bay.

I do know that when I went there researching my book on Henry Hudson, our icebreaker had to wait twelve hours for the highest of tides in order to get out of the bay. And we still scraped bottom.

And there are also those who say the Severn Estuary in the U.K. should be in the discussion.

So in fairness and accuracy, I think we can say that the Bay of Fundy has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world.

In classic political fashion, the Canadian Hydrographic Service has declared it a statistical tie, with measurements of a 16.8 meter (55.1 feet) tidal range in Ungava Bay and 17 meters (55.8 feet) at Burntcoat Head for the Bay of Fundy.

At Saint John itself, the St. John River flows into the Bay of Fundy through a narrow gorge several hundred feet wide at the center of the city.

The tidal difference in Saint John is about 8 meters or 28 feet.

And it is there that we have the unusual phenomenon called the Reversing Falls.

It’s not what it sounds like: it is not a waterfall that flows upstream.

What happens is that when the tide changes—as it approaches and then reaches high tide—it flows over the top of the river.

When it is coming into the Saint John River, it appears to reverse the water flow of the river for several kilometers.

The phenomenon continues for several hours.

The rapids, or “falls,” are created by a series of underwater ledges which roil the water in either direction, causing a significant navigation hazard, despite the depth of water.

Tides and falls in the Bay of Fundy. Photos by Corey Sandler

Now, the Reversing Falls is not quite Niagara or Yellowstone National Park. It’s interesting, no doubt.

But many visitors are surprised to find the encroachments of industry on this natural wonder.

The Canadian Pacific Railway built the first Reversing Falls Railway Bridge in 1885; the current one at the location took its place in 1922 and is used by the New Brunswick Southern Railway.There’s also a road bridge. Both are just downstream.

And then there is the not-very-attractive pulp mill right at the falls, directly across from Fallsview Park.The J.D. Irving mill has been in operation for many decades and continues to belch steam and raise the hackles of environmentalists.

The Reversing Falls and the paper mill. Photo by Corey Sandler

Fallsview Park offers a good vantage point of the falls.

But the real lure for many people is a jet boat ride. This is not for the timid, or for those who don’t want to get wet.

In fact the whole point seems to be to get wet.

I’ve ridden the jet, and I’ll tell you: some might find it more fun to watch than to ride.

They loaned us a rainsuit, which wasn’t a whole lot of help.

I had to take off my glasses so that they wouldn’t fly away.

And I couldn’t take any pictures, because I wasn’t about to risk my professional equipment in the boat.

This time, I photographed the jet boats from the shore.

A Jet Boat in the Reversing Falls. People pay for this. Photos by Corey Sandler

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4 October 2013: Halifax, Nova Scotia

October 4, 2013 Corey Sandler

Halifax: Beauty and History in the Mirror

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Much of the history of the Maritimes of Canada can be summed up in one place: Halifax.

Native peoples. Early European explorers. French and English military clashes.

And in Halifax, one of the largest and best protected ports in the world: a great and terrible harbor.

Halifax is Canada’s front door, a place where more than a million immigrants landed to populate the mostly empty nation.

Halifax: Canada’s Front Door. Photos by Corey Sandler

During peacetime it grew as a great trading port very close to the Great Circle Route—the shortest distance between Europe and North America.

And it grew—and suffered—during wartime as navies clashed for control in Colonial times, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War.

Then it became even more critical as its superb harbor was used as a place for convoys to gather before crossing the Atlantic during World War I and II.

Halifax Old and New. Photos by Corey Sandler

THE GREAT HARBOR

The harbor runs in a northwest-southeast direction.

What is now a huge harbor is actually a drowned river valley.

It was carved by a massive glacier.

Then, after the ice age, the sea level rose to fill it in.

Closer to the open ocean is the Northwest Arm. It is not wide or deep enough for major ships, but instead is mostly used by pleasure boats.

Deep into the harbor is The Narrows, where the two sides come close together. Today a bridge passes overhead.

And then past the Narrows is the large Bedford Basin.

THE TERRIBLE HARBOR

It was at the Narrows where the largest manmade explosion before the atomic bomb occurred:

The Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.

During World War I, the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc, packed with a witches brew of munitions and chemicals collided with the Norwegian war relief ship Imo at the Narrows.

The explosion destroyed a major portion of waterfront Halifax as well as Dartmouth across the harbor.

It killed about two thousand people and injured nine thousand more.

Halifax was devastated, and there are still some places where you can feel the century-old echoes: the Hydrostone District above the narrows is filled with homes all built after the explosion.

Down along the waterfront, Halifax has done a marvelous job of reclaiming the harbor as a civic jewel. Tourists stroll along the boardwalk, and locals visit the museums and restaurants.

And most of the modern construction along the water uses mirrored glass. The water is reflected everywhere you turn, the mirrors seeming to double the size of the huge harbor.

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3 October 2013: Sydney, Nova Scotia

October 3, 2013 Corey Sandler

3 October 2013: Sydney, Nova Scotia

The Fortress of Louisbourg, Resplendent in the sun

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Sydney, Nova Scotia once had a thriving economy based around fishing, coal mining, and steel mills.[whohit]-LOUISBOURG-[/whohit]

All three industries are all but gone now.

Things got pretty grim, and I’m not just talking about the weather, which can be extremely awful: cold, windy, and snowy. And even worse in winter…

It’s not always gray and grim.

Twenty miles to the south of Sydney is Louisbourg, a massive French fortification on a particularly lonely piece of coastline.

Louisbourg. Photos by Corey Sandler

The times we have visited—even in summer—it has often been shrouded in fog and mist, sometimes nearly wintry.

But not today: it’s a bit scary, the weather we’ve had lately. Blue skies and sun. What will winter hold in store?

The location of the fortress on the southernmost point of the Atlantic coast of Cape Breton Island was chosen because it was easy to defend against British ships attempting to attack Quebec City.

The fort was also built to protect France’s hold on one of the richest fish deposits in the world, the Grand Banks.

A Lady of the House at work, and as reflected in a mirror at Louisbourg. Photos by Corey Sandler

The original fortress, constructed mainly between 1720 and 1740, was one of the most extensive (and expensive) European fortifications constructed in North America.

The fortifications took the original French builders twenty-five years to complete.

The fort itself cost France thirty million livres, which prompted King Louis XV to joke that he should be able to see the peaks of the buildings from his Palace in Versailles.

Two and a half miles of wall surrounded the entire fort.

Louisbourg. Photos by Corey Sandler

On the western side of the fort, the walls were thirty feet high, and thirty-six feet across.

For the French, it was the second most important stronghold and commercial city in New France. Only Quebec was more important to France.

It was captured by British forces and colonists in 1745.

And then in 1760 British engineers systematically destroyed Louisbourg to prevent its future use by anyone.

And the fortress and the town were more or less left untouched for two centuries.

In the 1960s, the Canadian government paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the partial reconstruction of the fortress as a living history museum, in the process providing some temporary jobs for unemployed coal miners and struggling fishermen in the area.

The result is spectacular, all the more so on our out-of-season weather.

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2 October 2013: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

October 3, 2013 Corey Sandler

2 October 2013: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

Anne of Green Gables and Tokyo

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

When you think of Stratford-upon-Avon, you think of a certain poet and playwright by the name of William Shakespeare.

We are talking apples and oranges …or jellyfish and lobsters here… but in certain circles around the world…in some of the most unlikely places…

Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island is not known for Queen Charlotte, not remembered for the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 that led the way to Canadian Confederation, and not thought of at all for almost anything else…except for the work of a relatively minor author named Lucy Maud Montgomery and a series of novels that begin in 1908 with “Anne of Green Gables.”

Charlottetown. Photos by Corey Sandler

But let’s start with the real place that is Prince Edward Island.

Charlottetown is the capital of Canada’s least-populated province, Prince Edward Island.

The city is the country’s smallest provincial capital, with a population of about 35,000.

(Canada’s three territories: Nunavut, Yukon, and Northwest Territories have smaller populations, but they are not provinces.)

Autumn in Charlottetown. Photos by Corey Sandler

The town was named in honor of Queen Charlotte, consort of King George III.

Charlotte (1744 to 1818) was a Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Queen of the United Kingdom.

Canada has produced some very notable authors, including Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, the poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen,

Michael Ondaatje (“The English Patient”,) Margaret Atwood, (“The Handmaid’s Tale”,) Mordechai Richler (“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,”,) and Robert Service (“The Cremation of Sam McGee”) among them.

But none have had the global impact of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

About 150,000 tourists visit Green Gables each year; in the peak months of July and August as many as 2,000 per day.

On the day of our visit, two much larger (and spectacularly ugly) cruise ships were in the harbor. We came in by ship’s tender, threading our way to shore. Photos by Corey Sandler

There are some other businesses on the island: fishing, potato farming, and recreation.

But a large portion of the province’s income comes from tourism, and most of that is directly or indirectly related to Anne.

Which brings us to Japan.

“Anne of Green Gables” was translated into Japanese in 1952 and quickly adapted as one of the standard texts for teaching English in the nation’s schools.

There are Anne of Red Hair fan clubs all through Japan; one of them is the Buttercups.

There are major groups of fans in Europe, Australia, and China as well.

But only in Japan have they taken it to the level of idol-worship, comic books, refrigerator magnets, and wedding ceremonies.

In Japan, Anne is almost everywhere.

Why are the Japanese so fascinated with Anne?

It could be the beautiful pastoral settings of Prince Edward Island, something which connects with the Japanese appreciation of simple nature.

But as the writer Calvin Trillin observed in a 1996 essay in The New Yorker, it could also be a fascination by Japanese girls with this impossible creature Anne who is so un-Japanese:

feisty, independent, with a face full of freckles topped by a mane of red hair.

That is as much of an alien creature for the Japanese as Godzilla.

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30 September 2013: Saguenay and La Baie, Quebec

October 1, 2013 Corey Sandler

Up the Saguenay River to La Baie, Ha! Ha!

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant SIlversea Cruises

Le Royaume du Saguenay, the Kingdom of Saguenay, is one of the most spectacular watery regions of lower Quebec.

Ha! Ha! Indeed.[whohit]-SAGUENAY-[/whohit]

I’m not making fun of the place. The local First Nations People called the cul-de-sac on one fork of the Saguenay River Ha! Ha!, which we believe means (en francais) a cul-de-sac. The English word is a bit harsh: dead end. But it is anything but dead.

In the park. Photos by Corey Sandler

The people of La Baie take great joy in the place where they live. Fishing, hunting, skiing, hockey, and greeting the occasional cruise ship that makes an excursion up the river. In 2013, about 20 made the tip, Silver Whisper among them.

In fact, we’ll do it three times this season, returning in a few weeks for a visit inbound from New York to Montreal and again coming back out.

Shhh…don’t tell anyone else or they’ll ruin the place.

In the park. Photos by Corey Sandler

The morning began as we made a left turn out of the Saint Lawrence near Tadoussac. There we were met by greeters in the river: a pod of beluga whales and a few minkes.

The Saguenay River extends about 100 kilometers or 62 miles in a deep fjord: about 500 to 600 meter high cliffs, and at least that much water beneath our keel.

The pale blue, almost white belugas were known to early mariners as “canaries of the sea” because of the high-pitched whistle they sometimes make. We instead whistled at them.

About two hours later, near Eternity Bay, we passed below Notre Dame du Saguenay, a statue of the Virgin Mary erected in the 1880s by a local salesman giving thanks for his successful escape from a plunge through the ice.

I was up on the Bridge giving commentary and then Captain Luigi Rutigliano executed a graceful full circle in the river in front of the statue as we played Ave Maria on the open decks.

At La Baie, the locals were out on the dock dancing, demonstrating arts, and shaking the hand of every passenger.

The Silver Whisper at the dock in La Baie. Photos by Corey Sandler

The autumn sun lights the trees. Photos by Corey Sandler

I went with a group of guests to the National Park of Saguenay and we climbed on a fairly technical path up to a spectacular view of the river. Ha! Ha!

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29 September 2013: Quebec City, Canada

September 29, 2013 Corey Sandler

Quebec City, Canada: Je me souviens

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

What is better than a visit to Quebec City on a superlative fall day? How about a second visit in three days. [whohit]-QUEBEC CITY#2-[/whohit]

Je me souviens is the official motto of Quebec City; it means “I remember” and it refers to the rich culture and (to some) the mixed history of the region. But for us, we remember yet another stroll through one of the most glorious places we know, the most European city in North America, more French than France in many ways.

I wrote about Quebec City in my blog post of 27 September; you can read that entry below.

Today we walked deep into the banlieue of Faubourg, the residential suburb of Quebec City. It is like a miniature version of the big city, with silver-spire churches, bistros, and handsome houses. All it was lacking were thousands of tourists.

Speaking of tourists, the principal difference between today’s visit and our previous one two days ago was the presence of several other cruise ships in port. One of them, the Celebrity Summit is docked just in front of us and it is like a monstrous horizontal skyscraper.

The Summit appears to me as if it were the box that our lovely ship was delivered in.

It is not something I want to remember.

Fall comes to Faubourg. Photo by Corey Sandler

Early morning near the Chateau Frontenac. Photo by Corey Sandler

A magnet for sweet tooths. Photo by Corey Sandler

Museum of Civilization in Quebec City. Photo by Corey Sandler

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28 September 2013: Montreal, Canada

September 28, 2013 Corey Sandler

Au Revoir…Arrivederci…and Welcome Aboard

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We arrived this morning in Montreal to a second consecutive spectacular fall day. We deserve it.

About 300 our guests will be disembarking and heading home. More than 50 will stay with us as we head back out on the Saint Lawrence and then turn south toward Nova Scotia, Boston, and then west to New York. [whohit]-MONTREAL-[/whohit]

Safe travels for those heading home…happy to see friends who are staying, and welcome aboard to our new guests.

Here’s our next cruise: from Montreal to New York by way of Charlottetown, Halifax, Boston, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Montreal is the second largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris.

You can quibble about a few francophone cities in Africa that have more residents—Algiers and Kinshasa amongst them—but French is not the mother tongue there.

The metropolis of Montreal is truly cosmopolitan.

Think of it as a large, exciting city where most of the inhabitants happen to speak French.

Pointe a Calliere, near the Old Port of Montreal where we are docked. Photo by Corey Sandler

Montreal is Canada’s has about four million habitants in its metropolitan area; it is the second largest city of Canada, after Toronto.

The French language is spoken at home by about 66 percent of Montreal residents, followed by English at 13 percent.

I have described Montreal as a cosmopolitan city, though, and that is very much true.

There are more than a dozen languages in common use. In approximate order: French, English, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Creole, Chinese, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian, Vietnamese, Russian, Armenian, and Polish.

Reflections of autumn in Montreal. Photos by Corey Sandler

Quebec is Canada’s largest province. Only Nunavut, which is governed as a territory, is larger.

To put things in perspective: Quebec occupies a territory nearly three times the size of France. Or, for that matter, three times the size of Texas.

When you walk the streets of downtown Quebec, there are more than 1,200 miles between you and the province’s northern boundary along Hudson Strait.

Unlike most Canadians I’ve been up there, and let me tell you: Ivujivik looks nothing at all like Montreal.

And they don’t speak much French up there, either: northern Quebec is the home of the Inuit and a lot of caribou, seals, and polar bears.

For us, we’ll enjoy haute cuisine aboard our five-star hotel as we sail from French Canada to Acadia, New England, and New York. There are more than a few languages, accents, and local peculiarities ahead: stay tuned.

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27 September 2013: Quebec City, Canada

September 27, 2013 Corey Sandler

27 September 2013: Quebec City, Canada

Quebec City: A Coup de foudre

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

A Coup de foudre, indeed. That’s a French expression that literally means a bolt of lightning.

But figuratively, it is an expression of love at first sight.

We have been to Quebec City dozens of times; we’ll be here four times in the next month, and we’re still in love.

The portal to the sublime Seminary of Quebec, and a statue to women’s suffragists at the Quebec Parliament. Photos by Corey Sandler

Near our dock in Quebec City. Our ship’s funnel reflected in a building across the way. Photos by Corey Sandler

Our transatlantic crossing began in Southampton on September 12 and sailed in mostly gray skies and fractious seas to Cornwall, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland, and ports on the outer reaches of Saint Lawrence River.

Our reward was superb weather in Quebec City, a Chamber of Commerce day with impossibly blue skies, warm sun, and (relatively) few tourists in town. Let us give thanks.

The Cultural Capital

Québec City region is home to more than 700,000 people. That’s about one-sixth the population of metropolitan Montreal, which has four million residents, two million in the city itself.

It is Québec City, though, that is the political and cultural capital of the Canadian province of Québec.

On this visit we chose to go to the Parliament where we took a guided tour of the beautiful interior and its two houses. It is a less-visited jewel of Quebec City.

Inside the Quebec Parliament. Photos by Corey Sandler

Europe in Canada

Québec City is the most European city in North America, more French than Paris in many ways.

While Montreal is a large city that happens to mostly speak French . . . Québec City is a defiantly French place.

Defiant despite the fact that the battle that broke the hold of the mother country on New France took place here on the Plains of Abraham.

Defiant in the face of the British who tried to change not just the government but also the culture.

Defiant against the Americans who rose to power to the south and who fought—first with armies and later with movies and television and McDonald’s.

And, it must be said, defiant in many ways against the First Nations who were living here . . . for centuries or longer before Jacques Cartier arrived in 1534.

Politics and history aside, Quebec City is one of the most spectacular cities in the world.

A portion of the skyline of Quebec, and river buoys on the bank. Photos by Corey Sandler

The Lower Town of Quebec City. Photos by Corey Sandler

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26 September 2013 Baie-Comeau, Quebec

September 26, 2013 Corey Sandler

26 September 2013 Baie-Comeau, Quebec

Pulp Non-Fiction

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Baie-Comeau is on the Côte-Nord, or north bank of the Saint Lawrence, near the mouth of the Manicouagan River.[whohit]-Baie Comeau-[/whohit]

You’ve heard the term company town, right?

Baie-Comeau was a company town that essentially grew out of a single man’s investment and homestead.

And he wasn’t even a Canadian.

Robert Rutherford McCormick rose through the family business to become owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

He was one of those publishers who felt that his newspaper was his personal megaphone.

A conservative Republican, he was a fierce opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Also Democrats in general, liberal Republicans, easterners, the World Court, the League of Nations, and later the United Nations. Oh, and also he intensely disliked the British Empire.

He was an America First isolationist who strongly opposed entering World War II and supporting Britain.

So what was he doing in the Dominion of Canada, part of the British Empire until 1982?

Why, he was using the abundant water resources of Quebec and what seemed like an unending supply of soft wood trees to construct a paper mill and a hydroelectric power plant to operate it.

He established the town of Baie-Comeau in 1936.

Baie-Comeau. Photo by Corey Sandler

Newsprint is loaded onto a huge special-purpose ship in Baie-Comeau. Photo by Corey Sandler

He modestly named the structure holding back the Manicouagan river the McCormick Dam.

The dam thing is still there, just 3 kilometers or 2 miles west of town.

Hydro Quebec, the provincial power giant, owns and operates dozens of huge power plants in Quebec; I’ve been 1,200 miles north of Montreal to the La Grande complex at Radisson on Hudson Strait.

Manic-2 Hydro Quebec power plant, and the Manicouagan River. Photos by Corey Sandler

Here on the Saint Lawrence River, the Manic-2 plant was completed in 1967.

The eight turbines together produce about 1.145 Gigawatts of power, which is in the range of a large nuclear power plant—without the nuclear reactor.

The tour is, shall say, electric. Especially when you are able to enter into one of the turbine and generator rooms and are able to feel the power of the onrushing water and see the huge rotor spinning within the stator.

Alas, photos were not permitted because of someone’s idea that allowing them would threaten the dam security. It almost killed me to walk around the dam without my cameras.

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25 September 2013: Gaspé and Percé, Quebec

September 26, 2013 Corey Sandler

25 September 2013: Gaspé and Percé, Quebec

Traveling Back in Time

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

The Gaspé Peninsula reaches out to the east…toward Europe.

Not all that much changed from the way it looked when Jacques Cartier passed through in 1534. He planted a cross on behalf of Francois I of France, and kidnapped the sons of Chief Donnaconna to bring home as trophies (and as pilots to bring him back to what became known as New France.)

For 400 years afterward, the peninsula developed just a bit, although it still seems frozen in time as if it were in the 1950s. Beaver Cleaver would feel right at home.

The word Gaspé is actually not French; in the Micmac language it means something very close to Land’s End, which it would be if you were coming from the west, from North America.

You could call it Land’s Beginning if you were coming from Europe.

We are near completion of our transatlantic crossing west from Europe, Iceland, and Greenland to Atlantic Canada.

As we do, let’s not forget that in the 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th century it was all about Asia.

Trust me: Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and Quebec and Virginia and New York were not Asia.

But the reason they were explored was because the Europeans who came there thought that a passageway through to Asia was somewhere right in the neighborhood.

Depending on how you phrase the question…..and who you ask…..Cabot was in 1497 perhaps the second European to “discover” the mainland of North America.

As we know, the first quite possibly was Leif Ericson, about the year 1000, who may have established a settlement or at least a service station at L’anse Aux Meadows.

But some people will want to talk instead about Saint Brendan of Clonfert who set sail in a small boat—basically a leather bathtub—about the year 500.

True believers say Brendan made it to Iceland; others say he crossed all the way over to North America.

Christopher Columbus referenced Saint Brendan’s Island in his planning.

Why is Columbus not on the list?

Columbus never touched North America.

On his four expeditions he sailed in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, and landed on the coast of South America in Venezuela and Central America in Panama..

Gaspé. Photo by Corey Sandler

It was 1534 before the next major expedition was sent to the northern part of North America. Among other things, François had been distracted by yet another war with Spain.

The man in charge: Jacques Cartier, born in Saint-Malo in Brittany in northwest France.

Like nearly all explorers of the time, Cartier was told by his sponsor that if he could not get through to the Orient he should at least try to find gold and silver.

The first peoples he met were probably the Micmac.

“As soon as they saw us they began…making signs…that they had come to barter with us…and held up some skins of small value, with which they clothe themselves.”

“We likewise made signs to them that we wished them no harm,” Cartier wrote, “and sent two men ashore, to offer them some knives and other iron goods, and a red cap to give to their chief…

“They bartered all they had to such an extent that all went back naked…”

In what is today called the Detroit de Jacque-Cartier (the Jacques Cartier Strait) he abandoned his exploration because of fog and bad weather.

On the way out, passing south of Anticosti at the Baie de Gaspé, Cartier met the members of a local migrant tribe, a Huron-Iroquois band called the Laurentians.

It would be a relationship that would bring benefit and loss, good and evil to each side.

Cartier gave gifts, and met Chief Donnaconna.

The alliance was formalized with dances and celebration.

Summer was ending and Cartier had little to show; he searched for something to convince the King to fund another expedition.

First he tried flattery. In July 1534, near today’s little settlement of Gaspé, he had his men erect a thirty foot cross with a fleur-de-lys shield.

Carved into the wood was “Vive le Roi de France.” (Long live the King of France.)

If you go into the town of Gaspe, you can visit the Cartier cross: not the original one, but the stone commemoration erected in 1934 as a gift from France.

The Pierced Rock

Rocher Percé, or Percé Rock is a large offshore rock in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence off the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula.

The Pierced Rock, which looks to some like a ship under sail, is one of the world’s largest natural arches located in the sea. The arch stands about 20 meters or 66 feet above the water.

The limestone rock is about 1,420 feet or 433 meters in length, about 288 feet or 88 meters high. Geologists estimate its age at about 375 million years.

The name was said to have bestowed by Samuel de Champlain in 1607.

He’d recognize the rock, but perhaps not the souvenir stands.

Rocher Percé. Photos by Corey Sandler

Around the World with Corey Sandler

Tag Archives: Canada

17 October 2013: the Saguenay River and La Baie, Quebec

14-15 October 2013: Sydney, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, PEI

13 October 2013: Halifax, Nova Scotia

12 October 2013: St. John, New Brunswick

4 October 2013: Halifax, Nova Scotia

3 October 2013: Sydney, Nova Scotia

2 October 2013: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

30 September 2013: Saguenay and La Baie, Quebec

29 September 2013: Quebec City, Canada

28 September 2013: Montreal, Canada

27 September 2013: Quebec City, Canada

26 September 2013 Baie-Comeau, Quebec

25 September 2013: Gaspé and Percé, Quebec

Cruise Photos and Stories by Corey Sandler