Shore (Côte-Nord) of the St. Lawrence River and which is about a 3 hour drive from Havre
Saint-Pierre, the smaller further-east town which is closest to the Romaine River and will be
most directly affected if the dam is built or not. Anne-Marie and Daniel did a couple of
interviews at the airport, and Roy did one while Anne-Marie and I arranged to have the rental car delivered to the airport.
Before we left the airport, we were met by Christian and Charles-Antoine of Nature Québec, who were in Charles-Antoine’s car and who fortunately had enough room for my suitcase in their car.
For once my luggage was smaller than everyone else’s because I didn’t have my tent and sleeping bag yet–they had been sent on to Havre Saint-Pierre earlier in the week with the river guides.
The trip took about 4 l/2 hours because we stopped to eat or get coffee, and at every stop people knew that Roy was there about the river, so they wanted to come over and talk to him about it.
We ate lunch in Riviere-au-Tonnerre (Thunder River, BoomBoom River) at a small restaurant
that backed up on the gulf of the St. Lawrence, but was set quite a ways back from the water.
We ordered crab club sandwiches. Since there was no outdoor patio, we walked along a narrow
path and sat on huge boulders beside the sea to eat lunch and discuss the press conference and
meeting with the mayor which would take place late that afternoon when we arrived in Sept-Îles. It was warm and sunny, but very windy along the shore.
After lunch we went to a convenience store a couple of blocks away so that Roy and I could get a
fishing license. We weren’t sure that we would be fishing, but we couldn’t take the risk of being
caught fishing without a license, which would have been an embarrassment to the Foundation.
The older lady taking the license applications was so bowled over by selling a fishing license to
Roy that she didn’t even look at my paperwork or passport–she just gave me my license.
Havre Saint-Pierre is a smaller town with some paved streets and some that are dirt or gravel.
Lots of the houses I saw looked pretty new, and the pubic buildings such as the hospital and the
city facilities looked good. We had reservations at a small B&B which was a sprawling house
with outdoor staircases and two-level wooden decks on the south side where we could sit facing
the sea. We were at least a couple of blocks from the marina, but from the decks you could see
the water and boats between the buildings.
My room had a small dining room, kitchen and living room combined as well as a bedroom and a
bath with washer and dryer. Spacious and nice, but among the most usual decorations I’ve seen
in a while. Lots of antiques, and every inch of space in every room that I saw was decorated to
the nth degree. There were pigs and rabbits and angels and birds everywhere, as well as ruffles,
lace and velvet, beads and bright colors. I mean, there wasn’t a square inch anywhere that wasn’t decorated. Even the chairs at the kitchen table had little lace up booties on them.
Anne-Marie and Daniel ran some errands and spent some time trying to find Christian and
Charles-Antoine because they had gone to their hotel and forgotten they had my suitcase, and we couldn’t find them for a while.
Then Eden stopped by. He had been in and around town all day and had spoken to a number of
locals about the dam project. He knew that it was popular with many people in town and
seemed to think that those who were opposed felt intimidated about speaking up.
He is British but has lived and worked in Ottawa for decades. He is a biologist who has spent
enormous amounts of time fishing and camping on a very large number of rivers in Quebec and
is very knowledgeable about the wildlife and plants in this area and all around Quebec. He never
went anywhere without his pipe and tobacco and his thermos of hot water so that he could make
his special brand of darjeeling tea.
A while later we went to the marina a few blocks away which overlooked some of the Mingan
Islands in the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve. What looked like one of the larger
isles was immediately across from where we were in the port area, and we were able to watch the boats and ships coming into the harbor there. We saw a species of whale leaping in and out of
the water close in too.
The meeting with the mayor and some other city officials, as well as the press conference, took
place upstairs in the Reception and Interpretation Center for the national park reserve. Later the photos that appeared in the newspapers were taken on the deck outside on the south side of the building overlooking the harbor. The mayor appears to be persuaded t
hat the only way to save the town is to build the dam so that employment will be guaranteed in the next ten years,although it is not clear to me what employment will remain after the dam is built and what the
people in the area will do at that time when they have no river. If an alternative energy source is
discovered or chosen by the eastern seaboard, reducing or ending the need for the hydro-electric
power from the Romaine, the area will really have nothing.
Our first meeting with the guides was at 7:30 P.M. at a bar which was directly across the street
from the marina and the center. They were waiting for us on the patio where all the
introductions were made, and then we moved to another nicer restaurant for dinner. The
restaurant had set up a large room in the back for us where we were joined by Hugo and Jessica
from the Journal de Montréal for the first time. Bruno made some announcements and gave us
instructions about the next day, and we finished filling out the needed forms.
Before we left we were given our bright new red dry bags so that we could pack them before the
next morning.
Back at the B&B I went through everything that I had planned to take and decided I had to leave part of it even though everyone who had been on a rafting trip before told me these were the
biggest dry bags they had ever been allowed to use. We were still extremely limited on the
clothing and other items we could take because our sleeping bags, tents, wet suits, paddle jackets, hiking boots, and everything else had to go into the one bag
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