La Côte-Nord du Québec: Labrador with a French Accent

Monday, June 19, 2023

This is our sixth day in Labrador. Yesterday we moved southwest from Red Bay to L'Anse au Clair and this morning we took the opportunity to explore south of Blanc-Sablon, Quebec, where our ferry arrived from Newfoundland. Highway 138 runs from the Gulf of St. Lawrence at Old Fort, along the Quebec section of the North Coast, becoming Highway 510 in Labrador, running through Red Bay, all the way to Goose Bay, Labrador, where it intersects Highway 500 and, turning south through Labrador City back into Quebec, completes the circuit of Labrador as Quebec Highway 389 back at the Gulf of St. Lawrence at Bale-Comeau, then tries to return along the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Old Fort, but only makes it as far as Kegashka, Quebec.

We inquired of a local whether it is possible to get from Kegashka back to Old Fort by using a ferry to connect the two ends of Highway 138.  He confirmed that, but emphasized that it is a 9-day ferry ride with no possibility of removing your car. As the ferry makes its last stop each day, the passenger must either debark and find local lodging overnight, or book lodging on the ferry.  This seemed like an excellent idea for some future visit to Labrador, but not for today.

Today we were exploring Highway 138 in Quebec, southwest from L'Anse au Clair to Old Fort.  We decided to drive straight down to Old Fort and then work our way slowly back up, visiting sites of interest.  We got an early start -- so early that we spotted the 8:00 am ferry leaving Blanc-Sablon back for St. Barbe, Newfoundland as we passed through Blanc-Sablon:

Where we are camped, in Labrador, it is 1.5 hours later than Blanc-Sablon, merely 8 km south of us.  So, in fact, we had started our adventure at 6:30 am Quebec time. This time difference made our heads spin the rest of the day.

Blanc-Sablon is home to a visitor center for people disembarking from the Newfoundland ferry.  We made a stop to inquire about viewing puffins and got the wisdom of some teenage intern.  We left as informed as we arrived.

Now you must endure some history.  This is taken verbatim from the website, "Discover North Shore" (http://www.lowernorthshore.ca/history.aspx), which is an excellent tourist resource:

The history of North America is palpable on the Lower North Shore. For thousands of years, the plentiful resources of the Lower North Shore have attracted many different peoples seeking fish, whale, seal oil and fur. Thanks to the low population density of the Coast, many traces of their passage have withstood the test of time and remain right on the surface. A dynamic mix of Inuit, Innu, French, Basque and English once frequented this coastline.

 

The first people to arrive on the Lower North Shore were the Early Maritime Archaic about 9,000 years ago. These earliest inhabitants and the many different Aboriginal peoples that followed left burial mounds, tent rings, caches, and arrowheads. These vestiges are constantly being uncovered today. Local place names suggest the historical presence of Inuit along the Coast, which is unusually far west and south. The ancestors of today’s Innu arrived to the Lower North Shore 2,000 years ago. Archaeological sites along the Lower North Shore are exceptional because they have uncovered traces of human presence spanning from 9,000 years ago to the contact period in the 16th century and beyond.

[Here is a photo from a local museum of indigenous people building an igloo]

In the late 15th century, Breton fishermen began fishing cod along the Lower North Shore every summer. Whalers in search of oil for European lamps spent summers living and hunting along the Coast before returning to their native Basque country on the border between Spain and France. Fragments of their terracotta roofing tiles have been found near the water scattered along the Coast. In 1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed along the Lower North Shore and proclaimed it “the land God gave to Cain.” Major exploration of much of North America began and ended with a trip along the Lower North Shore. Explorers Louis Jolliet and Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval also explored and mapped the region.

In the early 1700s, the king of France dispatched various noblemen residing in New France to manage vast tracts of land along the Coast called seigneuries, where they acquired seal oil and fur for the new colony. In the 1760s, Britain gained control of North America, and British companies took over many of these trading posts. Bilingual fishing merchants from the Jersey Islands arrived next, setting up industrial codfish processing plants and drawing new waves of settlers. Over the decades, some arrived from Acadia and elsewhere in Quebec. The biggest and most recent wave of settlement came from Newfoundland in the 19th century. These newcomers introduced Newfoundland traditions and contributed to the unique cultural mix of the Coast. 

Once seemingly endless, the cod stocks that initially attracted so many settlers and fishers to the region collapsed in the 1990s. International trawling and overfishing around the Gulf of St. Lawrence eventually depleted this resource. Although the stocks are currently being rebuilt, the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery is one of the great environmental lessons of the world. Residents are shifting to other economic activities out of necessity, and as a result, the Lower North Shore is experiencing dramatic economic and social changes.

Fishing still remains a center of local life, as witnessed by this fishing boat moored (stranded?) in a small cove along our route:

After a drive of over an hour, we arrived in Old Fort Bay, which calls it "North America's First Capital."  Also known as "Old Fort" and (most favored) "Vieux-Fort," its claim is of uncertain validity, as a random web search for North America's first capital results in the answer of "San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico."  So we will leave it at that.

Whether or not it was North America's first capital, Vieux-Fort has a pretty cove and, at the end of Highway 138 boasts a pretty point with a view of the town:

We assessed what to explore in Vieux-Fort and decided to first try a beach walk to look for sea glass:

We were amply rewarded, but much of the "sea glass" looked a lot more like "party glass."  We tried to keep only those piece that seemed to have been polished and smoothed by the waves rolling in from the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Our next stop was coffee at a local grocery and convenience.  We were pointed to nearby Granny's Hill, where we took a 1-mile stroll to the height of land over Vieux-Fort:

We followed an ATV track to the top of a hill where the local radio tower is perched --

-- and were rewarded with a pleasant view of Vieux-Fort and its cove:

We moved back northeast along our route to the small town of St. Paul's River, where we had learned that the Whiteley Museum, which pays tribute to the traditional salt cod fishery and the way of life that grew up around it in the St. Paul’s River region.  Its exhibits highlight the contribution of the Whiteley family, who operated a fishing post on the island of Bonne Espérance from the late 1860s to the mid-1940s.

The Whiteley Museum boasts a small coffee shop, the "Cod Trap Cafe," where we feasted on a muffin, scone and hot green tea.  The proprietress called over to local historian Garland Nadeau, who was kind enough to drop by the museum and give us a personal introduction and tour to the museum's exhibits and the history of the North Shore.

It turns out that Garland has a commercial fishing license.  We were able to persuade him to show us his season's catch of cod, halibut, salmon and trout, and some of the berries he has gathered.  For some reason, he was willing to share some of his wealth with us.  Below, you can see Garland sawing a frozen salmon steak from the whole salmon:

St. Paul's River boasts a boardwalk along its waterfront; we wandered down and walked the boardwalk, enjoying this Quebec/Labradorian version of "cottage country."  As Garland Nadeau and other locals explained to us, while this section of the North Shore is part of Quebec and is officially French-speaking, the large majority of the residents are English-speaking because of this area's heritage of fishing and settlement by the English, Newfoundlanders and Americans in addition to the relatively small proportions of indigenous and French settlers.

Rounding a corner of the boardwalk, we were surprised by this lone loon fishing in the cove.  We understand that mated pairs of loons do not inhabit salty or brackish waters, but unmated males will take to saltwater to fish.

We followed the boardwalk over to the main quay, where some fishing boats were docked:

As we returned along the boardwalk, we happened upon a model boat with a small electric motor -- all handmade, including the hand-drawn windows on its cabin. Its propeller appeared to be missing, and we surmised it had somehow wandered away from its owner and been washed into the cove on the tide, only to be foundered on the grass near the boardwalk.

We had not expected to find so much on this drive.  We looked at our watches:  it was already lunch time, and we hadn't even covered a third of the route back from Vieux-Fort! We decided to concentrate only on the highlights, such as this view upstream from North Cove near Middle Bay --

-- and the striking Brador Falls, southwest of the town of Brador, Quebec, which fall over the fall line of the Canadian Shield, a massive geologic formation that stretches from here into Ontario northwest of Toronto:

The entire coastline in the North Shore is gorgeous, so much so that tourists and locals go to great lengths to find picturesque boondock spots.  This little trailer seems to be right at home with its view of the Gulf:

By the time we got home (after a late lunch in Lourdes), it was 4:30 pm.  Kathy emptied out her haul from our friends in St. Paul's River, it included redberry preserves (not pictured), as well as 3 pounds of bakeapple, salmon steaks, jarred eider duck meat, jars of lobster and crab, a huge bag of crab legs, a halibut steak and a cod filet. Ruby investigated it all (particularly the fish) and approved the haul -- provided she would be allowed to share in the wealth over the next few weeks!  Of course.