8/30 - Quebec Day Trip

Yesterday we spent the day driving over to and up and down the lower St Lawrence River valley in Quebec.  Being the northern end of the Appalachians it is beautiful land, of course, but the addition of the river is really something.  The river is amazing……absolutely HUGE!  We drove over and back on the Transcanada Highway which is a lot like an interstate in places but just two lanes in others.  The highest speed limit is 100 km (62 mph) which seems very low considering the road.  Not many people were paying attention to it anyway.

View of Lake Temiscouata from the Transcanada Highway.

Transcanada Hwy and Lake Temiscouata, not far from New Brunswick border.

Warning signs for moose everywhere, even one with flashing yellow lights warning of increased risk of moose for the next 10 km.  I couldn’t grab the camera fast enough to get a picture of it.  We’ve seen moose warning signs everywhere we’ve been up north but have yet to see a moose.  I suppose that’s a good thing since they can do very serious damage to a vehicle (not to mention what the vehicle does to the moose).  Someone we met up here who had been a policeman for 14 years said he had worked numerous moose-caused accidents and they’re all very serious.  He said we’d probably be okay if we hit one with the dually because of the height.  A moose’s legs are very long so when a car hits it the moose flips up over the hood and through the windshield.  Everyone loses.

I didn’t get good clear pictures of the Saint Lawrence, both because of the haze and because the river is so wide.  

Huge boulders left by receding glaciers.  This is at almost low tide.  The rocky island in the background is bare granite which looked so white as we were coming down the hill towards the river it actually looked like snow.  Gave Jim quite a scare. :D

This gives a better idea of how wide the river is and the width of the area affected by the tides.  When we stopped here on our way back a few hours later the water was almost covering the grassy area in front of these bushes.

Taken from almost the same spot as the picture above this after the tide had been coming in several hours later.  This is about at the point the St. Lawrence starts looking more like the ocean than a river.

On the scenic highway near Kamouraska.  There are low mountains just to the east with wide, flat farmland stretching to the river, maybe a couple of miles across.  The glaciers have left odd little hills or mountains along the way, some looking like large haystacks.  

Going into Kamouraska which is perched on a ridge between the farmland and the river.  It’s a popular vacation spot with lots of lovely little shops and hotels, much more picturesque than the other little towns we drove through.  

One of the interesting buildings in Kamouraska.  Every building on the left side of the road is river-front property with a wonderful view.  

Lots of interesting roofs here.  Don’t know if it’s just a French style or if it has something to do with helping snow slide off. 

One of the things we have been so impressed with, both in Canada and in northern Maine, is how neat and clean everything is.  There is NO trash on any roadsides…..not a single piece of paper…..and 99% of the houses and properties are very well cared for.  We can’t get over how the yards look in the Madawaska area where we’ve been driving to and from the campground every day…….especially the acres of manicured lawns.  Everyone’s lawn looks like it’s just been cut and we never see anyone out on a lawnmower. 

We were going to check some of the cemeteries in the little towns along the river hoping to find some of my ancestors.  On the way to Kamouraska we passed something intriguing so went back to check it out.  It turned out to be a small park and chapel commemorating the first site of civic and religious life in Kamouraska and the Bas (lower) Saint-Lawrence area.  A monument lists 220 last names of the known 1425 graves whose markers disappeared long ago.  There were several individual monuments to pioneers erected by descendants including ones for my 6^th and 7^th great-grandparents.  I didn’t know about this historic site so we were very fortunate to stumble over it.  

Berceau de (Cradle of) Kamouraska marking the site of at least 1425 graves of the early pioneers.

Jean-Baptiste Dionne and Madeleine Michaud  - 6^th great-grandparents.

Jean-Baptiste Labourliere dit Laplante and Catherine Francoise Martin – 7^th great-grandparents.  His name is a mouthful.

We then went to the cemetery in Riviere-Ouelle and found a group of monuments to the pioneers of that area.  All the graves in the time period I was looking for are so old their markers are gone, but there are new monuments for some which have been put up by descendants.

Jeanne Savonnet was one of my 8^th great-grandmothers. She was widowed and remarried twice.  Two of her husbands were my 8^th great-grandfathers (Soucy and Bérubé).  

Mathurin Dubé and Marie Campion - 8^th great-grandparents.

Robert Levesque and Jeanne Chevalier – 7^th great-grandparents.

This has all been quite an experience, finding ancestors who were on this continent back to at least the mid 1600’s.  Until I got into genealogy I had no idea how far back this went.  From the genealogy work done by a distant relative, my father knew the first LaTendresse arrived from France in 1757 but he had no idea about the 100+ years before that.  I wish he could have seen all this.

Today we went to the library in Madawaska where I was successful in gathering more information, especially from the very helpful head librarian.  I had read many of his posts on the Acadian Heritage Facebook site but had no idea he was the librarian here.  That was another serendipitous meeting.