We arrived ashore via Zodiacs to a wonderful welcome: an elementary school (we would visit later that day) stood on the shores waving posters and banners and cheering our arrival. It was so cute!
The building is beautiful, with an airy courtyard in the middle.
We had a whirlwind tour of the facility, including Coast Guard rescue operations, the marine animal research facility, and hydrographic services. We spent less than two hours there; I could easily have spent the whole day.
Holding tanks full of turbot are studied at various stages of life.
SHRIMP!
The little white piece of equipment in front is used for remote-controlled survey.
This is a self-righting vessel, meaning that if it capsizes and flips completely upside-down it will roll itself over so that it is right-side-up again. Now who wants to go for a boat ride?
This skeleton of a grey seal is on display in the corridor.
This is the skeleton of a beluga.
Before we left, we were all gifted a beautiful poster detailing the "Voyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain". It's gorgeous and, in light of recent revelations about my Acadian heritage, I especially love that it connects Atlantic Canada with Quebec.
Next up was a visit to the Pointe au Pere Maritime Historic Site where we visited the Empress of Ireland pavilion. The museum is full of artifacts from the wreck, thoughtfully displayed, and our costumed interpretive guide was excellent. But, far-and-away the best part of the museum is the short film they show in a small movie theatre off the main gallery. The intro to the movie is a 30-second time-delayed live shot of the theatre audience filing in and taking seats. When we realized we were the previews, all manner of subdued silliness ensued while we waited for the feature attraction. The movie tells the story of a few passengers boarding the ship, and then the collision that caused her to sink. Images are displayed on the screen and front, but also on the side-walls of the theatre, plus they use flashing lights, fog machines, and fans to make it total sensory experience. It is very effective story telling, emotional and terrifying in all the right ways.
After lunch we were went to the Ecole Bleue, the elementary school whose pupils had greeted us upon our arrival at the wharf that morning! The school uses emergent-learning to teach the students, with an emphasis on their connection to the environment and the ocean. We were there for an open-house, where the children presented projects they had been working on all year, like a science fair that included biology, ecology, and social history. The displays and presentations were fantastic!
After touring around and looking at the student projects, the C3 team spread out the giant floor map for a presentation to the kids.
After that, we had some time to wander around the school and take it all in. The school has been decorated by professional artists who worked with the children to paint murals all over the walls and lockers. They did an amazing job adding hundreds of species of the St. Lawrence River in very life-like and accurate portrayals. The upper floors are decorated to reflect the surface and middle-parts of the water column. The bottom floor is scheduled to be painted next, depicting the sea-floor.
Imagine our surprise and delight to find that they had included our ship, Polar Prince, in their mural. What an honour!
C3ers were stoked to discover this part of the mural!
We had a wonderful day in Rimouski, our last full day of the expedition before the Leg 3 participants took over the next day. We spent the evening aboard ship, hanging out and saying good-bye over a special hangar-dinner prepared by Chef Matt.
The crew joined us for dinner, and for speeches and special presentations, including this one:
JR and Joanne present the Plunger d'Or.
This was a very special award, called the Plunger d'Or. I'm proud to say Leg 2 was the recipient of this award, for not having caused any of the toilets to back up during the entire leg... something Leg 1 couldn't attain, and for which the crew was especially thankful for.
The sunset was particularly beautiful that evening, and I couldn't resist the urge to take the mic and lead the Nova Scotians in a rousing version of Farewell To Nova Scotia.
The sun was setting in the west...
When I was done singing, the bosun, Kevin "Canso" Newell, told me something strange happened to his eyes while he was listening ("They got all wet."), and Captain Guy hugged me and thanked me and told me it gave him goosebumps. That meant so much to me. I was glad to share a beautiful song in a beautiful place.
We spent the morning of our ninth day at the small First Nations reserve, Innue Essipit. Having been educated in a system that I'm beginning to realize places very little emphasis on Canadian history and even less so on Indigenous history, I didn't know that Innu and Inuit are not the same thing. I know the difference between Austria and Australia, so how is it that I don't know the difference between Innu and Inuit? Whoever said "Ignorance is bliss" is full of shit. Chances are you don't know the difference between Innu and Inuit either, so let me fill you in a bit.
"Like many other Aboriginal peoples, until recently the Innu were known by what was, for them, foreign labels, rather than by the name they used for themselves. The early missionaries, encountering Innu who came to the St. Lawrence River French settlements from the nearby hills, called them 'Montagnais', meaning 'mountain people'. In Labrador this term was sometimes changed to 'Mountaineer.' By contrast, those Innu living in the tundra region of northern Labrador and Québec, who became known to Europeans later, were called 'Naskapi.' This word is of uncertain origin, but for the missionaries it meant a pagan and 'less civilized' group than the Montagnais. In the 20th century, anthropologists recognized that these two groups had, for the most part, a single common culture, and so coined the term 'Montagnais-Naskapi'.
In the 1980s the Innu themselves made it known that they preferred to be called 'Innu', a word meaning 'people' in their own language. They also began to publicly use their own name, Ntisinan, for their traditional territory. Despite the apparent similarity between 'Innu' and 'Inuit', the two words are not related.
In terms of culture and language, the Innu are the easternmost group of a very widespread people commonly known as the Cree, another term probably of European origin. Except for the Plains Cree, whose culture has much in common with that of the other horse-mounted buffalo hunters of the northern prairies, Cree groups (including the Innu) all inhabit the boreal forest and share a broadly similar cultural tradition." (Innu Culture)
We had a wonderful welcome at the community centre with singing and dancing, and they fed us some traditional Innu foods: banock with caribou fat, fir jelly, cedar jelly, and cranberry jelly, and a piping hot cup of Labrador tea to wash it down.
Having just had one of Paul-the-Cook's giant ham and bologne and eggs and hashbrowns and fruit and toast breakfasts aboard ship, I wasn't hungry at all. However, the food was delicious, and since I am a pig (and an opportunistic one at that) I had seconds of the delicate little snacks we were provided. When is the next time I'm going to have the chance to eat caribou? Or homemade jellies made from trees? It could be years, or it could be never. I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by. The food was really tasty. The caribou fat had a mild taste, and the jellies were woodsy, savory, and fairly delicate tasting.
The Labrador tea is brewed from a plant that grows wild in the area, and had been pointed out to me the day before by the Parks Canada guide who I hiked up the fjord with. We stopped and picked some, and he told me that tea could be made with it. Little did I know I would be drinking it the very next day, and quite enjoying it. Now I wish I had asked more specific and pointed questions about it, so I could forage for it here at home.
After our welcome at the Essipit community centre, we boarded the bus for a tour of their very small community. The reserve is less than one square kilometre, so the tour was quite brief! Our guides were community leaders who took great pride in their community, as they should; there is zero unemployment on the reserve. ZERO. I feel like the significance of this amazing fact may have been lost on the Westerners in our group, but to an East-Coaster this is a totally foreign concept. I asked the guide to repeat and clarify what they meant. About 40 years ago there was a change in leadership and mindset on the reserve, and one of the goals was that everybody should have a job. Maybe its because I'm a Maritimer, but I didn't realize that 0% unemployment was like, an actual possible thing. What an accomplishment!
Next up we headed off the reserve to the Coast Guard Marine Communications & Traffic Services facility at Les Escoumins. This is a hub of communication for all marine traffic on the St. Lawrence River. The building overlooks the river, and there are about three dozen computer monitors tracking all the traffic in real time. We were able to spot Polar Prince at anchor on one of the monitors.
There were so many tankers and cargo ships on the monitors; the importance of the St. Lawrence River for trade and industry in Canada cannot be overstated.
This facility is also responsible for all marine rescue coordination for the province of Quebec. They coordinate all manner of rescue efforts; anything from pleasure craft vessels running out of gas on tiny tributaries, to full-on ship wrecks and groundings in the St. Lawrence, and everything in between. Luckily it was a busy day on the river, but everything was running smoothly while we were there. The C3-ers thanked the Coast Guard staff for the nice visit and hoped we wouldn't have to talk to them again :)
There are huge sections of the St. Lawrence River where a designated pilot is required for all vessels of a certain tonnage and class to pass safely. A short distance from the Coast Guard Marine Communications & Traffic Services building is the Pilot Boat station, and that's where we headed next. When a ship enters this part of the river, a pilot is ferried out to the ship on a pilot boat, where he boards and takes control of the vessel in order to navigate it safely through the shipping channel. The pilots have extensive knowledge of the river and its terrain, conditions, and navigation rules.
One of the pilot boats, docked at the station.
Guylaine Bernier is an Olympic Rower. Here we see her moonlighting as a pilot boat captain.
From the pilotage building we watched one of the pilot boats leave the station and head out to meet an approaching cargo ship. The cargo ship maintained its speed and course as the pilot boat came alongside. As the two vessels coordinated speed and position with exceptional precision, the pilot jumped from the pilot boat onto a ladder on the cargo ship and boarded her. This is an incredibly dangerous part of the job, and I can't imagine having to do it everyday.
By the time we wrapped up our tour of the Pilot Boat Station and the Coast Guard it was lunch time. The mayor and council of Les Escoumins graciously hosted us for lunch, and a brief presentation and reception at the community centre before ushering us off to one of the town's points of pride: whale watching at the Parks Canada Marine Environment Discovery Centre.
Staff at the Marine Discovery Centre gave us a brief intro about the whales that inhabit the waters of the St. Lawrence, then had us watch a 10-minute movie about marine life in the area. I guess the long days and short sleeps were starting to catch up, because (with the exception of Carole) the lot of us fell asleep. Another first for me courtesy of Canada C3: I don't think I've ever fallen asleep in public before! The movie was just so soothing, and the theatre so dim and cozy...
The nine-and-a-half minute nap did me wonders, and after we left the theatre we headed outside to wander around the shoreline of the Marine Discovery Centre, or to explore the river by getting in.
A group of C3-ers get suited up for a diving adventure in the St. Lawrence.
While a few people opted to go snorkelling/diving, most of us went and sat on the rocky outcrop between the Marine Discovery Centre and the river to enjoy the beautiful sunshine-y day, and to watch the whales feeding mere metres from where we sat.
That little black bump just past the rocks is a minke whale.
We saw dozens of whales, mostly minkes and a few belugas too. Even though we had been seeing whales for two days, it never got boring and every sighting was exciting. I managed to capture a video of one of the minkes coming up to the surface and then diving.
My voice in this video illustrates the typical reaction I had every time I saw a whale. First you hear me trying to contain my excitement so as not to frighten the whale, as if me yelling "wow" would scare it off. That's Dennis saying "Boy, that's close." and Parks Canada staff saying "There's a dive." Minkes tend to break the surface once or twice (presumably to breath) before they dive down swallowing up prey as they go. Off camera you can't see me, Heather, and Andrea exchanging gleeful looks of amazement with each other... but you can hear me giggling with delight and awe. This was our reaction to every whale we spotted, despite this video being quite possibly and literally our 100th sighting. I mean, it just never got old. Andrea, in particular, found being in the presence of the whales, especially the belugas, to be very spiritual and profoundly emotional. There is something deeply soothing about seeing them, and Andrea was able to put it into words in ways that I can't quite capture. I'm glad she was there to talk to me about it that afternoon.
We went back to Polar Prince for a quick dinner, then back into the Zodiacs and put ashore at the Marine Discovery Centre for a public event, the C3 "Ship T'Shore Sharing Show". Andrea, Heather, and Alex all gave spirited performances, and Dardia performed her graduation slam poem as well. You can watch part of the Facebook live broadcast of the show here. Another awesome day was done, and it was back to the ship for a quiet evening underway.
Imagine our surprise and delight to find that they had included our ship, Polar Prince, in their mural. What an honour!
