Places of Natural Beauty

The Passage of the St. Lawrence River

“Where the river narrows!”, the old man shouted after me, in a thick Quebecoise accent. “That’s what it means!”. I beamed back at him. It was poetic, as Algonquin names so often are. Only a handful of kilometres later, I exchanged New Brunswick for Quebec, a small roadside sign marking the transition. I trained my eyes on the letters spelling out “Quebec”. “Where the river narrows”, I repeated slowly and inaudibly under my breath, almost trying to feel the shape of the words in my mouth. I smiled again.

Before long, I free-wheeled towards the end of a corridor of buildings in Rivière-du-Loup, my spinning front tyre spitting cold flecks of muddy rainwater onto my cheeks. A majestic sight unfolded in front of me as I rolled towards the edge of the St. Lawrence River. I stopped at the shore and dismounted, needing a moment to take it all in. Water emerged from the haze of drizzle in the south west and flowed miles to the north east, before disappearing into the mist. The river was so vast that as I stood on the slick, grassy bank, it produced the sensation that I was standing on the water itself. The lines defining each choppy wave blurred and dissolved as I traced them into the distance, the splosh of clapping water fading with the increasingly distant waves. The river looked like an ocean, limited only by the translucent suggestion of a far-away ridge on the opposite bank. In a strange sort of way, a sense of timelessness accompanied the sense of eternal space.

My trance was broken. “AAAAARGH…..JAMIE, NOOOO!!!!”, screamed a fretted mother. Toddler Jamie didn’t care. Watched by a pair of walkers and wearing a toothy grin, he continued his enthusiastic and ill-advised pursuit of an irritated swan. Hisses were drowned out by giggles, and sucked in by his sheer delight, I actually found myself cheering Jamie on.

As the hours and kilometres went by, the weather cleared, and the far bank of the river advanced towards me. Picnickers and families took to its shores, accommodated by the birds and the butterflies. But this wasn’t anything new. The St. Lawrence River has enticed people for millennia.

Soon, an archipelago became visible, and my journey back through the river’s social history began. I passed an island off the shore of Montmagny named “Grosse Île” and marked with a large, standing cross. I discovered that during the Great Famine in mid 1800s, the St. Lawrence attracted thousands of Irish migrants who had fled from the horrors at home. Grosse Île was used to quarantine the travellers, many of whom had contracted Typhus during their long voyages. Tragically, over 3000 died on the island and, as I was solemnly told by Paul, a local waiter, “I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest graveyard [for the great famine refugees] that’s not in Ireland”.

Onwards, and the far bank drew in again; the shapes of mountains and valleys on the other side of the river became definite. Signs for French-sounding towns came thick and fast. Berthier-sur-Mer, then Saint-Vallier, then Saint-Michel. The waterway had brought colonialists too; I knew from a book I had read that I was tracing the astounding voyage taken by Jacques Cartier nearly 5 centuries earlier in 1535. The ambition of Frenchman Cartier had taken him in search of a Northwest Passage from Europe to the profitable markets of Asia, before he was thwarted by the Lachine Rapids outside Montreal. Managing to brush off this failure, Cartier settled for claiming Canada for the French.

As I approached Levis, the river pinched again. I could see settlements on the other side of the river, with flashes of sunshine glinting from the roofs of houses and cars. These were settlements that 1000 years ago were inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, an indigenous people that lived on the fertile land around the river. I had a vivid image of Stadacona, a Iroquoian village that used to reside near present day Quebec City, fixed in my mind. Whether this image was factually accurate, I have no idea, but I pictured wooden structures and mothers washing clothes in the river. I even pictured a laughing Iroquoian boy chasing a swan.

The river seemed to flow as surely as the passage of time, and I, like the Iroquoians, Cartier, the Irish migrants and Jamie, had become a part of the river’s rich historical narrative. The St. Lawrence river has a habit of drawing people together, both geographically and temporally. Though prehistoric, the name Quebec still resonated with me.  My journey through Quebec had been defined by the St. Lawrence River, as had the journeys of those before me. It was a comforting thought.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON