Across to the other side
I find the Acadian accent impossible to nail down. All the Ay sounds (like fête) become Eu (feute). That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I get so distracted trying to analyze what sounds different that I am constantly losing track of what’s being said to me. They must think I’m a total idiot. Funny to think that these are maybe the progeny of the 2,600 who escaped the Grand Dérangement (an understatement if ever I heard one). When the Acadians refused take up arms for the King of England during another round of the endless English-French War, the English decided the fact that they spoke French was suspect and proceeded to round them up on boats (not paying much attention to whether the families were together or not or whether they’d had time to collect the stuff they’d spent the last three generations amassing with their pretty amazing dike system to create good farmland and the like) and hauled them off down the east coast, dropping them off here and there, sometimes keeping them on the boat for months in the winter to freeze and get ill and starve or release them into servitude. Shit sandwich.
When we weren’t checking out the minke whales, we (I) was looking at the birds. This river is a serious thoroughfare for all manner of migrating bird. If I’d had a better connection I’m sure the Merlin App would have identified all of them. Canada Goose, Herring Gull, Ring-billed gull, all sorts of ducks, snow geese, juncos and chickadees. And, of course, the ubiquitous Crow, a ridiculously smart bird. We already knew that they could identify people but we found out on this trip that they recognize each other’s individual voices. Voices they use. A lot.
We also kind of got hooked on watching the boats going up and down the river. There were a lot of them. We were fascinated by the fact that all the ones coming up from Montreal seemed to pull away from the centre of the river and head in toward the north shore at Les Escoumins, just downriver from us, pausing, then taking a hard right toward the Atlantic. We wondered whether there was some deep channel that came up against the shore. After a little too much time looking through binoculars we noticed that during the pause a little red boat would go alongside the big vessel and then the big course correction would happen. After a little research we found out that there are what are called Laurentian pilots. If you are sailing into the St-Laurent Seaway in anything bigger than a certain size that isn’t a fishing boat or a ferry, a special pilot comes onboard at Les Escoumins and takes over the helm until Montreal. And the same thing goes for those heading out to sea. These pilots know the St-Laurent with its shoals and currents and wind and traffic and ice like the back of their hand and, because they are neither beholden to the company who owns the boat nor to those who have chartered it, they are solely agents for the Fleuve. All they think about is getting the boat to its destination without incident and that’s what they do. Stewards of the river. We fell deep into the rabbit hole of vesseltracker.com (yes, it’s a thing). Even without the name of the vessel you can see what boat is going where in real time all over the planet, what they usually carry, where they’ve been and the actual plotted course to where they’re going. There are even nerdy pictures of the boat from all over the world (which I promise I did not contribute to – you need an account).
We’d watch the little pilot boat come alongside the vessels heading toward Montreal and they’d bob there for a while and then the pilot would ascend the ladder or staircase that hung down. The boats that were headed out to sea would stop in the same spot but the little red boat would go around to the far side -- the port side -- of the vessel. We wondered whether there was only a ladder on that side. I’d been feeling pretty self-satisfied that I actually remembered that left=port (four letters in each word, thank you Kanawana) while right was starboard. It took me the rest of the day (suddenly feeling quite a bit less less self-satisfied!) to register that the ladder is on the port side because… D’oh! it’s the PORT side. Hello! It doesn’t just mean left. It turns out starboard comes from steerboard because once upon a time the rudder was not in the centre but on the right side of the boat, as most pilots were right-handed.
Our night at Paradis Marin ended with the sound of minke whales blowing a hundred metres from where we slept. Being under a duvet and seeing the sunrise AND a whale finding its breakfast is a pretty great recipe for an amazing day. I got greedy and told Wil that I wanted to see a humpback tail (like in the David Attenborough documentaries), going against all my superstitious instincts of refusing to name what I want. Watching for plumes of blow (the only vertical thing in the entirely horizontal world of the Fleuve) is the best way to find a whale and we saw a lot of minke doing their version of pacing. Blow, dorsal fin, count to five Mississippi, blow, dorsal fin, count to five Mississippi, blow, dorsal fin, count to five Mississippi, blow, high dorsal fin, tail sighting and wait for them to come up and start over in the opposite direction. It sounds repetitive but everyone around us has eyes trained in the same direction, slightly giddy about what we’re seeing. We have camped at this site before and it has yet to disappoint.
A morning of whale watching, with some very distant views of what we think is a humpback and we pack up and head out, having decided to go to the other side of the Fleuve for the next couple of nights.
We drive up the road to Les Escoumins for the ferry to Trois-Pistoles. We are told to get there an hour early so we park the car and walk out to the dock. The guy who gives us our ticket mentions that a Bossu has just gone by. I try not to get excited but make my way down to the rocks and pull out my binoculars. It doesn’t take long for us to spot first one blow and then another. A pair of humpback whales getting ready for breakfast. The routine of blow, fin, wait soon turns into more. My greedy desire comes true when a tail comes fully out of the water, making an enormous splash. Then a full flipper goes straight up and does a smackdown. It sounds like no big deal but the flipper alone is three times taller than me so it’s pretty impressive. Then, not long after, the top half of one of the whales come straight up out of the water and flops down with a massive splash. And then, as quickly as they appeared, they’re gone. Back into the depths. Mysterious and delightful. What is it about whales? Every time I see these incredible creatures I find myself looking around at the people near me and we are all shaking our head. It feels like we’re at the circus and we’ve all shared the experience of witnessing some wondrous, death-defying feat. Whales are magic.
The crossing takes 90 minutes. We land in Trois-Pistoles which is quite a pretty town. The income gap from north shore to south becomes immediately obvious. The towns on this coast of the St-Laurent are peppered with gorgeous hundred-year old homes. There was money here, once upon a time, and there’s no doubt that the clapboard and shingle houses with views of the fleuve which were once the homes or cottages of the industrial magnates of the time add a whole lot of charm to the bas du fleuve. Trading sand and granite for fertile farmland probably doesn’t hurt either.
Wil stops at a poissonnerie and picks up some fresh mussels. Have I mentioned how great it is to camp with a chef? A quick stop at the Tête d’Allumette for some liquid provisions and we find our camping spot on the fleuve at Sebka. Another cloudless day. Another perfect sunset after a quick hike through the moss-filled cedar wood. The migrating birds are squawking and honking, carving the pink sky into Vs. The Canada geese are heading south, the snow geese seem to be heading north and we are right where we want to be.
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