Friday, July 18, 2008

Labrador City to Baie-Comeau
























































Today we hit the wilderness! Dirt road, few cars, nothing, nothing, nothing except miles, and miles, of trees. Despite this, the journey was quite interesting. During the first part, we passed the amazing iron ore mining sites at Fermont (iron mountain) owned by Quebec Cartier Mining Company which exploits iron ore deposits from Mont Wright. The site is enormous and it is amazing that something that has been created by man can still be so beautiful despite the economic usefulness of the iron ore. I suppose the slag that is deposited over the countryside is all natural in that it originally came out of the mine, but you have to wonder what we have done to the land it covers. Not sure about environmental problems related to open pit iron ore mining. One good thing I suppose, its miles from anywhere and its massiveness is not disturbing anyone – probably it has disturbed wild life though. Before we left Labrador City we tried to see the Iron Ore of Canada mine, or the Scully Mine at Wabush which is operated by Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. , but unfortunately IOC was not able to come up with someone to take the tour as it is summer and lots of people are on holiday. There is a tour at 1:00 p.m. and we just didn’t have the time to wait until then.

This part of the road was interesting too; very windy, and many of the corners were 45 degree angles and steep 10 and 11 % hills. It was not as forested as other parts. At one part a large tractor trailer truck came baralleling past us just coming up to a corner; then we saw another tractor trailer truck coming baralleling down the hill on the other side of the corner; we knew they would meet on the corner; needless to say, we backed right off, and miraculously they both got their trucks around the corner without hitting each other. The dust was unbelievable; it was like going off the road into a snowbank in winter (guess that means I’ve there!!).

The railway line ran alongside the road and we must have crossed it many times as it zig zagged across the road. Also many wooden bridges, just like the ones we crossed in the Pantanal in Brazil. Parts of the road were very pretty and in particular one part which seemed as if we were winding our way across a plain of lakes joined by the road; and the ever present wild flowers along the side of the road and the caribou moss amongst the black spruce trees all added to the wilderness atmosphere.

We entered into Quebec shortly outside Labrador City. About half way down the Route 189 we saw the dam for Manic V and the huge sluices that take the water down to the plant below. Unfortunately we missed the tour by half an hour. Further along the route we came to Manic 3 and Manic 2. I tried taking some pictures at Manic 3 but started to get eaten alive by the human-hungry black flies and mosquitos and decided that Manic 3 and Manic 2 were not going to be my photographic moments. They are incredibly impressive. We certainly did a “resource Canada” road trip between Churchill Falls and Baie Comeau.

Another interesting comment: they marked the “parallels” at the side of the road, so we knew when we crossed the 51st parallel and the 50th parallel.

As we grew near to Baie Comeau, we felt the scenery started to get a little more like the Muskokas. More lushly forested hills and narrow paved windy roads. Then we hit civilization – or semi-civilization – our Rogers’ Cell phones still did not work! However, there were traffic lights to obey, and there was no stopping in the middle of the road to take a picture knowing that nothing would be coming along for another half an hour!! It was like arriving from the wilderness – which of course we had!

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