August 30 - Saguenay, Québec, Canada

This is a very long blog post but there is a lot I want to remember about this place when I look back on my travels.

Last night I went to the Girls’ Nite cocktail party and dinner, followed by late night dancing in the Club.  There were about 30 of us divided into three tables of 10 in the restaurant.  It was fun!  I met a couple of ladies I hadn’t had an opportunity to meet before. In between we went to see the show performed by the Seabourn Six, the professional cast on the Sojourn.  It was pretty good, not great.

I slept quite late this morning. It seems I can’t burn the candle at both ends as much as I used to be able.  Today we’re docked in La Baie, part of the municipality of Saguenay in the province of Québec.  I stopped here last fall on my journey on the Quest.  It was in the third week of October that time and the leaves had already turned, in fact they were past their prime then.  This year we're too early for leaf-peeper season. Nevertheless it is a still a lovely area.

The big pier in La Baie and below are some street performers on the dock. They were gone by the time I went ashore

Saguenay has a population of about 150,000 spread out over a very large land area of several hundred square miles. The municipality is divided into three boroughs, La Baie (where we’re docked), Jonquière, and Chicoutimi, which is the most urban of the three.  In fact there’s a university there.  It was first settled in 1676 as a French trading post.  In the mid-19th century it was officially incorporated as a municipality by one Peter McLeod who was a timber contractor.  The area is surrounded by large forests of both pine and hardwoods so it was natural that sawmills should be built here.  It thrived as a center for paper and pulp industries especially when the Canadian National Railway arrived in 1893.  By 1910 the Chicoutimi Pulp Mill, founded by French Canadian investors, became the largest pulp producer in Canada. Unfortunately with the advent of the Great Depression the area began to decline, mills shut down, and the economy took a big hit.

The economy is now in a state of transition.  A cruise pier was built and opened in 2006 to accommodate large cruise ships.  Processing of aluminum began and the economy now is increasingly focused on research and developing technology for energy, forestry, and even some aircraft parts. There’s also a Canadian Air Force Base here, one of only a few apparently in Canada.

I decided to take a tour described as “Wine, cheese, and wild blueberries” because that sounded like an interesting and tasty combination.  We set out from La Baie under some dark clouds on our foray into the countryside.  The area is lush and green with lots of forests of both pines and hardwoods.  In a few weeks it should be absolutely beautiful when the leaves begin to turn.  We drove by pastures and fields of corn, wheat, barley, and canola.  In the distance we could see the Laurentian mountains, which stretch for about 900 miles through Québec and Labrador with some peaks rising to over 3300 feet.

Lots of very green countryside

Eventually we came to our first stop, the Fromagerie Boivin.  We saw a short video on how they make cheese and then of course we got to sample some.  Our guide told us that the cheesemaker had sent some of its cheddar to Buckingham Palace and that Queen Elizabeth pronounced it the ”best cheddar in the world.”  We tasted several of the cheeses they produce, including the cheddar, and my friends and I decided the Queen was being very diplomatic because we thought it rather bland and actually a little rubbery.  Boivin also produces a lot of cheese curds which are evidently very popular here in Quebec.  I think the curds are used to make poutine which I’ve never tried.  Anyway, I wasn’t tempted at all to buy any cheese.  The only thing I saw in their shop that was interesting were some bags of Cracker Jacks, complete with surprises in them.  I haven’t seen Cracker Jacks in ages and I was almost tempted to buy a bag, but I didn’t.

Fromagerie Boivin

After our tasting we headed onward to our next stop, a wild blueberry place where they produce all kinds of things, including blueberry wine.  To get there we drove through Chicoutimi, the major population center.  This place had a mall, fast food outlets and suburban sprawl.  We did drive through an old part of town near the cathedral.  The streets there were tree-lined with some lovely old houses built in the 1920’s in the craftsman style. Leaving Chicoutimi we again drove through countryside and passed through one area where people keep alpacas for pets and we stopped to take some photos. I really like alpacas!  They’re very cute.  I forgot to mention earlier an interesting piece of information.  The cows here are kept inside most of the time, not in some of the lovely pastureland!  I think that’s absolutely terrible!  Apparently the government decided that the cows produce more milk and it’s easier to regulate the percentage of various nutrients in the milk if they’re kept inside.  That seems like a miserable life for a cow to me.

The Cathedral in Chicoutimi

Alpacas are so cute!

We eventually got to the blueberry place, Domaine le Cageot.  I found it confusing because they were supposed to be wild blueberries, but there were rows of plants which were cultivated.   I don’t know how that is wild, but anyway that’s what we were told they were.  We tasted some blueberry pie (I’ve tasted better), blueberry wine (very sweet of course), and blueberry vinaigrette.  Now that was fantastic!  I bought a couple of bottles of the vinaigrette because I think it will be great on a salad, especially a spinach one.  They do make all kinds of blueberry products including sparkling wines, liqueurs, and jams.

Domaine le Cageot, the blueberry farm

Once again on our bus it was time to head back to the ship.  This time we took the equivalent of an interstate.  Our guide Linda told us the road is only going to be about 80 kilometers long when completed and construction began the year she was born (1956) and is still not completed.  That sounds a lot like some of the road projects back home in Virginia.  The clouds had cleared during the course of the afternoon and at the blueberry place it was actually sunny and beautiful.   Along the way we made a little detour through Jonquière to see the most beautiful church in Saguenay, the  Eglise de Saint-Dominique.  It is a lovely edifice that is 155 years old.  Atop the main doors are gilded statues of the the four gospel writers. The church is still in use unlike some of the other small churches we passed during our drive.  As church attendance has declined here, some of the churches have been repurposed as community centers and one has even been converted into luxury condos.  That seems kind of sad to me.

The Eglise de Saint-Dominique

Unfortunately, as we approached La Baie where we were docked the skies turned dark and ominous and of course, they opened and it began to pour. I knew that would happen and I’ll tell you how I knew.  John Barron, a cruise director with whom I’ve cruised many times and who I really like, came onboard in Newfoundland and is taking over the job in a couple of days in Montreal.  He planned a caviar sailaway for this afternoon on the open deck.  Now on every cruise I’ve sailed with him each time he’s planned a deck party it has been rained out.  He’s batting zero so far.  So this morning when I read in the daily program that we were having a deck party and John was to sing, I knew it would inevitably rain.  I should have made a bet on it and I could have made a little money.

The party was moved inside and it was fun anyway.  I had dinner with John afterwards and we talked about old times and mutual friends.  Later I went to the show which featured a really funny comedian from Philadelphia whom I’ve heard before.  I thoroughly enjoyed his show and then went to the Club to hear some more live music.  It was a lovely day except for the poor cows who don’t get to enjoy the green pastures of Saguenay. I think happy cows should be allowed to graze in nice green pastures and even take a roll in the grass once in a while.