by Alison Hobbs
On Saturday morning, it was still by no means clear where (or indeed IF) we were going.
We'd considered Halifax, Riviere du Loup, the Ile aux Coudres, Trois Rivieres, Bromont, Montreal, Toronto, Stratford, Tobermory, Owen Sound, or even Picton (John Ainsworth's not entirely serious suggestion). There appeared to be "weather" in the west, which narrowed our choices to any place east. In the end, by mid-day, we were definitely going to Bagotville (on the Chicoutimi map) and John was speaking to the military at that airport, by phone. But Bagotville wanted everybody's call sign, registration number, address, phone numbers, grandmother's middle name and so on, before they'd give us permission to land. At this point, three people from our group dropped out in disgust and went home, which left six of us still keen to go ....SOMEWHERE (i.e. Francine Lams, Francine Macra, Roger Grant, Robert Lams, Chris Hobbs and me. Alison Hobbs), and four other hopefuls (these being, unsurprisingly, Don Buchan, Carol Hinde, Elva Nilsen and Laurie Davis) still waiting for a phonecall saying 'Decision made.'
Finally, at 12:20 on Saturday, seated beside My Pilot on a beautiful but half-wasted flying day (except that Chris had typically seized the opportunity to warm up VAX' engine by making a few practice approaches into Gatineau while everyone else was standing around), I called Laurie on the cellphone to say we were on our way.
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Yes," I said. "We are IN THE PLANE!" (which was C-GVAX)
We were only flying as far as Lachute to start with, I told him, but thereafter we'd definitely be making our way to the Ile aux Coudres ("hazelnut island" --about half an hour's flight to the northeast of Quebec). Francine (M) had managed to contact Mariette, at the little island airport, to confirm there'd be accommodation available for us at the nearby Cap aux Pierres, and that this "auberge" would send its bus to pick us up. The island had been the destination of choice for most of us all along, so that was fine.
14:45, engine on again, at Lachute, having had lunch provided our ever-helpful friend Jaz, of KEJY Aviation (See http://www.kejyaviation.com) --bi-lingual owner, manager, unicom, dispatcher of rental bikes, power planes and gliders, line-girl, cook and waitress all in one, the lady with the flying feet! She was a little tired this Saturday, having been in Quebec City the night before in the hopes of winning a national award for her contribution to tourism (she did win the local one).
By the time we'd reached the Mirabel VOR, Laurie and Elva were already 38 nautical miles ahead of us in C-GXBU, and Don, having left Rockcliffe, was catching up rapidly from behind in C-GNEJ. Roger's Cessna 182, C-GKQX, overtook our slower 172, and Robert in C-FWFG had given us a head start, so we spread out along the Victor-360 airway in a line above the hazy hills, navigating via the St Felix des Monts NDB and over Trois Rivieres to Quebec City, thence up the north shore of the St Lawrence along the escarpment of the Laurentian Mountains, with the Ile d'Orleans to our right and the Mont Ste Anne ski resort to our left --still with some snow --to our destination in the Baie St-Paul. Big cargo ships floated below us at a more stately pace, and a single track railway wound its way beneath the 2000ft escarpment, defining the north shore of the St Lawrence. The sky and scenery got clearer and clearer. It was absolutely gorgeous.
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It was 17:12 before we landed, since Chris insisted on flying a circuit of the whole island first, to have a look at it, he said, but actually from sheer joie de vivre, you know! Robert followed us in. (here is a picture of the runway on short final. |
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One by one the five little aircraft touched down safely on the turf-and-gravel landing strip ("busier than Mirabel") between the fir trees and taxied up the hill (!) in the field to the little huts that constituted Ile aux Coudres' Terminal, Laurie, with his portable radio, standing encouragingly on the grass under the windsock, Roger waving us in to a suitable tie-down. When one switched off one's engine, one could hear birds singing (the goldfinches, perhaps) and very little else. In the background a wonderful view of the mainland with a distant village half way up --on the alps, as it were --Les Eboulements, "the fallen rocks," with a silvery church spire, very Quebec-like. Much further away in the other direction, to the south, we could just make out the other shore of the St Lawrence seaway, with a great, shiny stretch of water in between.
Chris pulled a rug out of VAX, spread it on the grass under her wing and lay down to sunbathe, his hat over his face. The rest of us went up the wooden steps into the shed to shake hands with Mariette and her son Nelson (the Unicom man). Mariette takes photos of each plane that lands on their field and during the winter, when business comes to a halt, she turns her photos into oil paintings which are not for sale: instead, she proudly displays all the photos on the walls of her "pilots' lounge" and decorates the walls of its basement with her finished paintings. There are hundreds of them, very well done, too.
The Cap aux Pierres shuttlebus had meanwhile gone to the marina to pick us up there, not that it mattered, the airport being such a nice place to wait. As a matter of fact, we'd have been allowed to stop and camp, had we thought of it (idea for another time). When the misunderstanding with the bus driver was resolved, Don and Carol set off purposefully up the road on their folding bikes while the rest of us accompanied the luggage in the bus.
The island is mainly flat, but raised above the river (or sea, almost --since it's tidal and slightly saline at this point) by high bluffs. At our end, Cap aux Pierres means rocky cliffs and there's shale on the beaches where you could break the local laws by harvesting shellfish. It smelled of seaweed, down there. Carol wanted to take a large lump of rock home featuring worm-fossils, but Don said it had far better be left as part of the natural environment. The island has white cows, barns, many a neatly stocked woodshed, wayside crucifixes, boat repair yards, seabirds, bluejays, ravens, lichens, wild rose bushes (eglantiers) and 1400 human inhabitants. The islanders ride those ATVs with big rubber wheels along the shore and own fishingboats called Le Grizzly, etc. The more disreputable types sit around bonfires on starry nights in the shrubland at the tip of the island, leaving their bottles behind.
Six of us went for a walk, under a very starry sky, past some vehicles mysteriously parked on a verge by the beach with their lights off and on the beach itself, with headlights on, some negotiation or other going on. We speculated wildly on what they might be up to but (next day) Mariette supposed it was legitimate --fishmongers waiting to receive the night's catch, something of that kind.
We feel we've been travelling abroad. The only disappointment was that we weren't able to stay at La Coudriere, recommended by Francine and Roger who'd been before. The "accueil" at Cap aux Pierres was more expensive ($222). It was doubtless hard luck we happened to be there at the same time as a group of architects in evening dress, celebrating their graduation with a rowdy dinner in the same dining room as ours: congratulatory speeches over the loudspeaker received with whistles, rounds of applause and general hilarity that had left our supper table unimpressed. The irony was, we had come onto this island for some peace and quiet. Eventually, Roger got the manager to screen us off behind a concertina'd blind, which meant we could hear a little more of our own conversation. An architects' dance was to follow, ominously "starting at 10:30pm," but from our rooms only a distant thumping could be heard, plus some individuals partying into the small hours around the ornamental fountain, and some of us were too zonked out to notice even that.
Had it not been for the background noise, I think we'd have appreciated the table d'hote at Cap aux Pierres far more. Personally, I found it a rather good meal. I chose
1. an "inspiration
du chef" --escargots + champignons, very garlicky
2. some "feuilles du jardin aux framboises" (the lettuce salad)
3. (out of curiosity) the "truite au pamplemousse" --that wasn't a whole
fish with a couple of grapefruit wedges, as I'd assumed, but a small filet
of trout lying tastily in a grapefruit juice sauce, with vegetables.
4. a fancy fruit salad, to follow
Roger ordered some red wine for our end of the table. For other people, it accompaned the foie de volaille, the filet mignon, the asperges au vinaigre, the creme caramel, the sugar pie, choc mousse etc. Nobody ordered any "ris de veau" once Robert or Francine (L) explained that this was a delicacy made from a calf's thyroid gland.
Breakfast was a plentiful, varied buffet. See http://www.hotelcapauxpierres.com The only downside to this place, aside from the expense, was a certain unwillingness to be friendly (they'd never warned us about the graduation party, nor that the indoor swimming pool would out of bounds, to deter the young architects).
Our view of the smooth, wide river from the bedroom windows was superb. At sunrise there was such bright, white light to the east no detail was visible. It would have been impossible to steer in that direction.
We decided to check out after a walk down the hill (or, in the case of Chris and me who went out before breakfast, after two walks), past the guesthouse with all the plastic geese in its garden and the hanging man in the tree that's illuminated with fairy nights after dark.
Once at the water's edge, Robert and Roger did their impressions of barking seals, to attract the wildlife (unsuccessfully), and others began to warm up our singing voices.
"Is that a foghorn?"
"No, it's Chris."
We found the ruined "Goelette L'Ile aux Coudres" resting on a lawn by the river--an old wooden sailboat, half wrecked by fire, that in its prime used to carry lumber, manned by a crew of four. In the 1930s it became a ferry boat, suffering much damage from the ice in winter.
"Histoire à remarquer : celle du sauvetage d'un avion effectuée par "l'Ile-aux-Coudres " en 1944. Àla suite d'une panne d'essence, l'avion se retrouva au milieu du fleuve. Des quatre personnes qui prenaient place à son bord, deux furent rescapées."
The island has plenty of history; one of the earliest European explorers, Jacques Cartier, laid claim to it in 1535. It has a legend of a priest who predicted he would be dead by midnight at which moment the church bell would ring three times and a tempest would blow up. Sure enough, that was exactly what did occur. Another story told how a large stone with a spring seaping over it was once a weeping girl who'd sat on the bluffs, all winter long, waiting for her seafaring fiance who never came back. Her father came by and found her transformed into la Roche Pleureuse.
After walking back up the hill, there was no further need for Don and Carol to keep fit, so they folded their bikes to go on the bus with the rest of the luggage, loaded by chain gang as we piled in.
"Is that the lot?"
"Hang on, we haven't got Carol's rocks, yet!"
We decided to fly back as far as Trois Rivieres and spend the second night there, at the Auberge Baie-Jolie whose website Francine (M) had found on the Internet (www.baie-jolie.com). She rang the proprietor, Jean-Marie, who, very pleased to be promised 10 guests all of a sudden-- pilots, what's more!-- offered to come and pick us up in two batches from the airport.
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View
of the runway from the turn-around area.
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The flight to Trois Rivieres was enthralling, over the river all the way, so that I got a perfect view to the right, of the mountain peaks, the forest fire (which we reported on the Quebec Terminal frequency, but which had already been spotted by a Fire Patrol), the Montmorency Falls, Quebec's Vieux Port and Falaises d'Abraham, the city of Trois Rivieres and all those gliders cluttering up the circuit at our destination airport. The situation was in fact quite hazardous, with aircraft doing both left hand and right hand circuits and some wanting to come "straight in," with the extra, turf runway not marked as such on the map and half the pilots announcing their positions in French, half in English. Chris has already written a letter to Transport Canada about all this! There was an element of humour though; one of the planes gave the callsign C-FUKU, which, according to Roger, once caused an American Air Traffic Controller to ask, "Is that aircraft duly registered in Canada or are you just mad at us?" I expect its (francophone) owner gets used to that sort of comment.
More humour on the ground when Jean-Marie arrived to drive us five women to the auberge, ahead of our menfolk, who were still busy helping one another push the aircraft around the pumps. "The dancing girls are in the bar round the corner," Jean-Marie advised them. "I'll take as long as possible to get back." We'd met his wife Francoise and their collie-mongrel dog, Jessie, had chosen our rooms, had settled in and were installed peacefully on the lawnchairs "en face du fleuve," by the water's edge (we were on the shores of the Baie St-Pierre now, not the Baie St-Paul) by the time the men arrived. "Voici les Maitres!" announced Jean-Marie with a flourish. I could understand practically everything he and his wife said, because they'd only moved here from France, from the Vosges (Epinal), a couple of years ago and their accent was therefore comprehensible, unlike the usual Quebec one. I love listening to French that I can follow.
| We stayed on the lawn and ordered some beers, Chris and I sharing a "Leffe," and were just beginning to unwind nicely when a catastrophe occurred, or another exciting moment was laid on for us, depending on your viewpoint. |
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Far out in the river a canoe capsized and the canoeists fell into the water. We could just make them out from the distant splashes. We thought at first it was kids larking about, but after a few minutes realised that they were no longer anywhere near their upturned canoe, were being swept away by the very cold current and, what's more, only we were aware of it! So we stopped laughing, ran into the house, Roger in the lead, and got Jean-Marie to dial the emergency services on 911. Having done that, very quick and efficient, he then rushed off up the road to rouse a neighbour, "le pecheur," who owns a small motor boat.
Moments later, the engine was throbbing, the boat pulling away from the neighbour's jetty, Jessie the dog was running around in excitement, and the police sirens were wailing in our driveway. Not having anything else to do, we stood on the lawn snatching the binoculars off one another, with Francine (M) jumping up and down, waving her arms at the victims and yelling in French (though I doubt they could hear her) "We're coming! We're coming! Don't panic!" The policeman and policewoman didn't respond in quite the same way. Presumably they got in touch with the coastguard on their portable radio, because a few minutes later all the nearby speed boats and such began to converge on the scene to offer help. Then the two police officers hurried across to a house near the adjacent bird sanctuary, the Ile aux Sternes (=Tern Island) where a green canoe was lying on the bank, and had a debate about what to do. In the end (by which time "le pecheur" --invisible to the police from where they were standing-- taking his own initiative, had almost reached the people in the water) the two police officers got into the canoe and started paddling towards the island. We were watching both procedures through the binoculars, and giving each other a running commentary:
"Qu'est-ce qui arrive?"
"There are boats all over the place!"
"The cops are still stuck in the swamp! on the wrong side of the island!"
"He's got two people into the boat now. They ARE wearing life jackets.... Their canoe's being picked up, look, it must be all right... They're being taken to that boat there..."
"Here comes the Red Cross!" (This being an enormous container ship on its way past, painted red.)
"They've got the people onto the other boat! They're saved! Hooray!"
"The police have gone missing on that island now."
"It's a man and a woman. Perhaps they want to get lost."
"They're right out of it. They don't know what's happened."
(long wait)
"Look, there's the police, coming back with their canoe."
"Oh, this is so CANADIAN!" (which last comment was mine.)
Laughter.
The supper table got
neglected a little while we calmed down, but Francoise soon brought out
her aperitifs tray, and served us glasses of Kir as we sat there in the
setting sun. The supper itself "wasn't haute cuisine" but it was "served
with a lot of heart!" commented Francine (L), appreciatively, and so say
all of us. It was substantial and tasty, served in a room decorated liberally,
as indeed was most of the rest of the house, with miniature and not so
miniature pigs, or pictures of pigs. Some of us wondered how many there
might be, and the answer was 1100, approx., so far. "It is a theme!" said
Carol. Other bric a bric lay amongst the pigs, a basket of coloured, plastic
eggs on a corner table, for instance. "Pig's eggs, probably," thought
Don and Laurie. Our supper --with
wine and hot drinks-- was included in the cost of our accommodation, $120
per couple, inclusive. We had: tarte aux oignons
(a form of quiche) At the end of the
meal, Jean-Marie set the overhead ornithopters flying, a PIG WITH WINGS
that flapped around in circles over the dining table to our delight and
amusement "...et son frere" at the other end of the room! We have photos
to prove it. I shall send you one. We could hardly waddle
out to the garden after such a filling meal, but we did for a while before
retiring to bed, because Jean-Marie had lit a bonfire for us to sit around,
while Francoise insisted on stacking the dishes by herself. Jean-Marie
said he sits with her by the bonfire on the shore every night, guests
or no guests. Stars were out again and it was most romantic. On the horizon
we could see the elegant road bridge at Trois Riviers, the pont Laviolette,
about to be restored, which will disrupt the morning commute of some 30,000
people. In the night, the
moon came up and, for those of us who peered through the curtains now
and again, its reflection shimmered beautifully in the river. We woke up to a magnificent
view of the morning sun on the river and a substantial breakfast, with
juice, coffee, homemade preserves, fruit salads, grainy bread and croissants.
The pig theme, continued, meant that we got pig-shaped pieces of toast
with our pig-shaped fried eggs. What a unique experience, altogether!
We were in no hurry
to leave because the weather seemed set fair until the "peu de nuage"
forecast for Wednesday, but the men soon went ahead to check their aircraft,
leaving the wives behind to take a walk round the neighbourhood or be
conscripted as dancing girls. Chris thought he might
give our host and hostess a ride in VAX and they accepted his offer with
pleasure, even bringing the dog to the airport in the car, although she
didn't get to go in the aeroplane. Francoise, sitting in the co-pilot's
seat, took the controls once, as they circled over their guesthouse. She
came down utterly thrilled, wearing a huge grin. The warm sky was still
full of Air Cadet gliders and on the way home, the Hawkesbury gliding
area was active too, because of the amazing thermals. Over the Mont Tremblant
area north of Montreal these thermals were throwing us around significantly
at 8500 asl, at least we think that's what caused the so-called "moderate
turbulence." Chris says we were climbing at 1500ft per minute at one point
("I've never seen THAT before!" he said) and would have been happy to
stay up there and play all day. Francine L broadcast briefly to Francine
M on the en route frequency to say she may not have got to Wonderland
(the amusement park in Toronto), but it looked as if she was getting her
joyride just the same. Carol, who was looking out of her window, spotted
a promising airport -- St Donat, on a lake just east of the mountain.
That's where we might
go next time.
poulet a la creme
a salad with brie, except for Chris' "sans fromage" (as everyone
now shouts in chorus)
tarte aux prunes
cafe, ou tisane
