Grand Manan to Ste Flavie

Written in a notebook on Tuesday evening, when we couldn't get the Internet connection to work.

We'd booked a room at Marcel Gagnon's Centre d'Art and Auberge here in Ste. Flavie weeks ago so were obliged to arrive today. It's another place with a sea view from the bedrooms, this time including the artist's Grand Rassemblement of concrete figures wandering up onto shore or being submerged in the waves.

There's amazing clarity in the air here as well. We flew through a "mild cold front", hardly noticeable but for a few bumpy clouds and a clearing of the haze that lay over the New Brunswick coast when we took off across the island of Grand Manan to the north, with one last glimpse of the Swallowtail light, fishing weirs and cliffs. We crossed the open water parallel to the route taken by our friends in the ferry on Sunday, with a view of The Wolves, small islands in the Grand Manan channel. Even hazier views inland though we could make out the military practice area south of Gagetown and as we approached our destination we passed a series of ponds in the muskeg magically full of cloud reflections that made for some good photos (appearing here soon). Joining left base in the circuit for "Freddie" (Fredericton) we saw the elegant bridge over the St John River, and then we were down for a late breakfast in the terminal building. 70 nautical miles.

The second leg of our journey was 180 nautical miles, east of the St John River on a line almost directly north (i.e. magnetic north) from Fredericton to Mont Joli. This route took us over some very wild country where the only sign of human interference was a maze of loggers' tracks in the hilly forests. There wasn't much on the map either though I identified the Tobique River, the Kedgewick River and the Restigauche in the valleys in the vicinity of the Quebec / New Brunswick border. We could hear other pilots coming into Charlo on the Baie des Chaleurs, but I never spotted the bay for the hills that were now covered with dark blobs of shadow as the clouds thinned out. They finally disappeared as the St Laurence estuary came in sight with the sunny rolling countryside--fields of barley-- on its south bank. That's where we were headed.

While Chris was tying PTN down and having her refuelled I went into the Mont Joli terminal and rented a car for our two days at the "Gateway to the Gaspésie". We drove to our lodging then back up the hill to retrieve the SPOT device that Chris suddenly remembered leaving on PTN's nose, and so on up the road a couple of kilometres into Mont Joli which is liberally decorated with frescoes depicting past times, called Les Murmures de la Ville. I like that name. We had a snack at the railway hotel restaurant, rather a grand place considering that the Montreal-Gaspé train only stops here twice daily, both times in the middle of the night.

During the rest of the afternoon I drove us to the edge of Rimouski, discovering the Pointe-au-Père Historic Site where were three tourist attractions, the 2nd tallest lighthouse in Canada, a museum about the wreck of the Empress of Ireland (a Titanic like disaster) and a naval submarine... these to be described in the next blog because we visited them on the morrow.

We watched the sun go down behind the distant shore, at which Chris made hissing noises, then ate an excellent supper at a window table, where we could gaze at the afterglow.