![\"2015-08-15_saguenay_1\"](\"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/2015-08-15_saguenay_1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was like visiting some long lost and very dear friends… who you never even knew you had. It turns out the good people of Saguenay have been waiting a long time to see us; the last time they saw the ship was thirty years ago, when it sailed into Saguenay Fjord as the ‘Alexandr Pushkin’. Back in those days, there wasn’t the pier that they have today (which was only built in 2009 at a cost of $33.75 million); the Alexandr Pushkin had to drop anchor and ferry people ashore by tender.<\/p>\n To show their appreciation of our visit the town had laid on singers, jugglers, unicyclists, ladies on stilts and a good many other entertainments. Folks had come down to the quayside to see us and greet us, making all those who went ashore early feel a little bit like rock stars.<\/p>\n I was amongst them; being on tour escort duty meant I had to be on the quayside, and by the school buses, by 8am.<\/p>\n The excursion I was on today was billed as ‘A Stroll in the Park’. A one-hour school bus journey to the Saguenay National Park followed by an hour and a half’s gentle walk along the shores of the Eternity River Delta and through some woodland.<\/p>\n The landscape around these parts is quite spectacular, with steep glacial cliffs and forests as far as the eye can see. Saguenay is located at the top end of a fjord that worms its way North from the St Lawrence River; it is as deep as its surrounding hills are high.<\/p>\n Our guide today was Louis, and he was brilliant; very entertaining, educational and funny in equal measure. As we drove through the small port town, he told us that up ahead, to our right, we would be seeing the American Embassy, which turned out to be McDonalds. He then told us that Saguenay had only two seasons; this winter and last winter – although, it should be said that the weather today has been absolutely marvellous; sunny and warm, to the extent that it almost felt Caribbean this afternoon.<\/p>\n Louis told us that his ancestors were employed by the Hudson Bay Company in 1896 to cut down trees, for the growing pulp and paper industries. Despite being explicitly told not to build farms or houses, they did just that. Four years later, their employers found out, but 140,000 people could not be evicted; instead, the government gave them the land that they had illegally settled on… all of which meant, acording to Louis, that his ancestors were squatters.<\/p>\n In the summer of 1996, record rainfall caused serious flooding in the downtown areas, resulting in a major disaster. Houses were washed away and bridges destroyed; the three and a half thousand inhabitants were evacuated, so the death toll was only seven people; the cost of damage was recorded as 1.5 billion Canadian dollars. Louis pointed out a large monument that had been built to remember the disaster; a large pyramid built almost entirely of red aluminium warning triangles, and an inscription bearing the names of all the town’s inhabitants.<\/p>\n When we arrived at our destination, a different guide was appointed to us, a young lady whose mastery of english wasn’t quite as good as Louis’. She was funny too, but only because of the way in which she tried to say things.<\/p>\n Our walk didn’t cover much ground. We would walk a bit, then the guide would gather everyone together to try and tell us about the environment in which we were walking. I took those moments as an opportunity (because I was bringing up the rear) to take photographs a little away from the group.<\/p>\n This area has moose, and black bears, skunks and beavers. Our guide showed us glossy, laminated photographs of them all … but the only wildlife we saw was a woodpecker.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n