The Little Town of Gaspe

 We had been to Gaspe before, and had taken the hour's bus ride to Perce to take a boat ride around the rock, so we decided to take the tender into town and wander around a bit on our own.

Gaspe is a very small town, but it was one of the earliest French settlements on the St. Lawrence. It is the main hub of the Acadian Peninsula, and boasts, among other things, a VIA Rail Station, a liquor store, and McDonalds, and, of course, a Tim Horton's (this being the first one we've seen since Montreal!). The local branch of TD Canada Trust has been there since 1902!!

It was a lovely day, and, once we were away from the harbour, not very windy.

The Cathedral of Gaspe. It is the only
timber church in North America, unfortunately
closed for visitors.

There are a couple of very nice looking B&Bs in
town

A wildlife sighting!!

St. Paul's Anglican Church

Along the waterfront promenade there are
replicas of historical homes and plaques
telling of the town's history

Seabourn Quest at anchor with the autumn colours
in the background

Yes, we bought some Timbits! Just because
it was the first Tim's we'd seen since Montreal

We left Gaspe at 3:00 in the afternoon for our day and a half at sea directly back to Montreal. The wind certainly hadn't gone down any as we sailed back out to the Gulf.

This is a little community of cottages up in the hills
across from Gaspe

 We rounded this point, 
Cap Gaspe, to get back into
the Gulf of St. Lawrence

In the evening we had been invited to dine with Tiffany and Callum and a few other guests. We had a great time and learned that this group of singers and dancers would be ending their current contract in the middle of October, after the next cruise. Tiffany and Kimberley will be back on one of the other ships, and Callum, from London, is leaving the ships to do something completely different. We really enjoyed their performances (one more tomorrow) and the fact that they spent time interacting with the guests and getting to know them.

The show in the evening was by a group called Citizen West, a 'boy band' trio of singers who were quite talented and entertaining.

The Mingan Archipelago

The what?? Although we usually associate archipelagos with warm water regions, we do have one on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it is a National Park.

Our port stop yesterday was the small town of Havre-Saint-Pierre, another industrial town originally settled because of timber and fish. Now there's apparently a good amount of the ore that produces titanium also to be found in the area, and this has become a major industry in the area.

We had to be in the Grand Salon at 7:50 a.m. to meet our tour, so we had a light room service breakfast and got our things together. It was already windy as we boarded the tender, so we were wondering what the boat trip to Ile Niapiskau would be like, and what kind of boat we would be on!

A few minutes after stepping off the tender in the town's harbour, we were already on board the vessel that would take us to the island. Fortunately it was a nice, large boat with inside seating and an upper outside deck. We were a fairly small group, so we could all sit inside on the trip out. But as we sailed slowly by one of the other islands, some of us had to get outside with our cameras.

About 10 minutes after leaving there, we arrived at Ile Niapiskau and met our Parks Canada ranger guide. The islands of the St. Lawrence are limestone, and our guide explained the formation of the material, the compression from the ice layer during the Ice Age, and how over thousands of years, the earth's crust is bouncing back very slowly since the ice melted. It is during the process of rising through the surface of the water and being eroded by wave action that these pillars and outcroppings have been sculpted into their current shapes, which haven't changed since they rose completely onto land.

Many of the stone pillars have been given names. Niapiskau itself means 'pointy rock' in Innu, the language of the local first nations. They may have had their names, but the early area settlers, when they explored, gave them others that have probably evolved somewhat over time.

This is 'La Grande Dame' or The Lady. 

This one is Wedding Cake

And this one is, depending on your age and aversion
to all things political, either Cyrano de Bergerac
or Richard Nixon!

The views around just the small part of the island we visited were quite spectacular.

Yes, she was actually here!

We had a walk around one of the trails for about an hour, and then time to wander around the pillars and along the beach on our own.

Once the boat came back to pick us up, we were rather happy that we had to get up early to be in the first group out. There were at least twice as many people in the next landing group, needing two guides, and some had to face the wind on the top deck on the way over. Our trip back was rather nice as the wind was behind us, so we sat up top.

Once back at Havre-Saint-Pierre, we thought we'd take a short walk around town. But the wind was blowing so strong that we literally had grit from the road blowing into our faces as soon as we left the shelter of the harbour building. So much for that idea! While waiting for the tender, the local security guard told us, when we asked it was always this windy, that yesterday they'd had no wind at all!

Oh well, at least we managed to get a couple of days' blog posting done and spend a leisurely afternoon on the ship. Our Assistant Cruise Director, Nick, did a pre-dinner show that was excellent. He was recently part of the international tour of 'Jersey Boys' and sang a wide variety of music, including one of Michael Buble's hits. He even sounds a bit like him. And the evening presentation was Jo Rochell, a British singer/pianist. She'd already done one show in the cruise, and she was just as great the second time.

Because the wind never let up before we left port, the overnight started out with quite a bit of movement from the ship. We didn't have huge waves, but to get to our next stop at Gaspe, we would have to cross the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Acadian Peninsula, running across the wind. As the captain said when explaining why we had to change our itinerary because of Hurricane Fiona, this ship 'doesn't do waves very well'. She's stable enough, but because Quest is a relatively small ship, she gets buffetted around more by wind and seas.