To St. Louis du Ha ! Ha ! (Temiscouata Railway), Published 11 October 1938
I'm
not fooling there really is such a place as St. Louis du Ha! Ha! for I
was there last week. It lies deep in Temiscouata county, in the riding
of Jean Francois Pouliot, energetic federal member who lives in Riviere
du Loup. But before I get you to this point, a mere 37.9 miles from R.
du L. Let me go back for a minute and explain to you that St. Louis du
Ha! ditto isn't the only place I've been since I came back from Turkey
and the Trossachs.
I have been to Chicago and Boston, and I was in
Gettysburg, too, taking movies of the old grey-clad, grey-beard
Confederate soldiers. I heard Roosevelt rattle the chancelleries of
Europe at Kingston, and lent an ear while he took an oblique crack at
deep waterway opponents from Wells Island at the opening of the
Thousand Islands Bridge., I have also discovered some queer places
around Quebec, notably the padlocked frontier of Quebec-New Hampshire,
and Egypte, and Mystic, where the tombstone of S. J. Hungerford,
president of the Canadian National, is already erected, and with his
own birth date on it. The stone lacks only the death date to be
complete. I once was at St. Michel des Saints, a spot less than 100
miles from Montreal, yet 48 miles from a railway and 33 from a doctor.
Most of you know Shawville, but few perhaps realize it has no
Catholics, no French and no liquor also no unemployment. Scarcely
anybody from outside points realizes that the Pontiac town can also
boast that it never received any municipal, provincial or federal
relief. How many know that in French and Catholic Quebec, you can go 25
miles up around Shawville, in one direction, and not encounter a
priest, a nun, a separate school or Catholic church.
* * *
Anyway,
with my annual mileage now flirting with the 26.000-mile mark, you can
see I haven't been idle. But we still haven't got to St. Louis du Ha!
Ha! yet, and that's where I set out to take you. At 7.30 one morning
not so long ago, I left Riviere du Loup on the Temiscouata Railway,
heading east for St. Louis you know what.
The betting is more than
even that you never heard of the Temiscouata Railway until now. Since
it is the 61st railway on which I have ridden, let me tell you a little
about it.
Two trails apparently were possible if one sought an
all-Canadian route to the Maritimes from Lower Canada. One was via Lake
Temiscouata. and the other via Metapedia. The Temiscouata Lake road was
open when a Louis was proclaiming the world was his oyster, and while
drooling his famous dogma about the state being himself in person. The
first bishop to Acadia from New France took the Temiscouata trail. Long
before trains were thought of, the short and snappy route to Nova
Scotia - it took only half a summer - was to put your canoe on your
back at Riviere du Loup or near it, walk about 40 miles, and climb over
1,000 feet in altitude through primeval forest before finally launching
your canoe on Lake Temiscouata. Then the paddling route lay along the
Madawaska river downhill to the St. John, and on to the open sea.
* * *
When
help was needed in Upper Canada, against the Americans during 1813. the
104th New Brunswick Regiment took the lake road, as it used to be
called, and marched through to Quebec. Later Fort Ingall was erected on
the shores of Lake Temiscouata. (Incidentally, Temiscouata in Indian
means the lake that is deep all over.) You can see then, that 100 years
ago. and even 300 years ago, the Temiscouata route was well known. But
when the Intercolonial Railway engineers came to build a railway from
the Maritimes to the outside world, they passed up the Temiscouata
route on patriotic motives. It was easy for a gunner at Fort Kent.
Maine, to draw a bead on a box-car across the river and knock it off
the rails with a cannon. You could bowl over trains like nine pins with
ordinary artillery. In those unsettled days, the Imperial engineers
weren't having any of that, and so the Metapedia Valley got the railway
line. To this day, however, the old province of Quebec runs its highway
No. 2 through via St. Louis du Ha! Ha! and Lake Temiscouata, showing
they have a proper appreciation of the old and true road to Acadia.
Thus Highway No. 2 in Canada follows the historic route of the
voyageuxs, from Edmundston, N.B., up through Riviere du Loup, crossing
to the north shore of the St. Lawrence at Quebec. Then it keeps north
of the river but close to its right to Kingston, and then on by Lake
Ontario, and right through to historic old Detroit. That Route No. 2
pretty much takes in all the civilized areas of the Canadas as the
French and British must have known them in the 18th century.
* * *
The
Temiscouata Railway itself was put through as a lumber route, and while
both passenger and freight earnings have languished, the firm is still
doing business. The Temiscouata head office is in the Canadian National
Railways station at Riviere du Loup, and the general manager is C. A.
Stewart, who runs the line. Passenger business ls poor in summer, and
so a gasoline car makes the 81.9-mile run daily except Sunday from
Riviere du Loup to Edmundston. The train goes right through to
Edmundston, and returns the same afternoon, but you can make a
connection for Connors, another 30 odd miles, via mixed train. However,
let me bring you back to the frosted platform of Riviere du Loup C.N.R.
station. It is 7.30, and the train has begun to chug.
We climbed
over the hills, and immediately started squirming through beautiful
bush country. No wonder the line used to be labelled "The Sportsman's
Route." Lakes, rivers and hills ran all over the landscape, while
occasionally through clearings you saw the spire of a Roman Catholic
church, pointing the way of salvation.
I might say that the
Temiscouata is done out of its normal initials through a railway away
off in Texas. It's this way. The Texas and New Orleans, a branch of the
great Southern Pacific Railway, a line oft venerated in these columns,
is known as the T.& O. down that way. So when the Temiskaming and
Northern Ontario wanted an initialled abbreviation for their railway
they could not use T.& N.O. even if everybody everywhere in Canada
uses that label because the American railway used the letters first.
Consequently the Hepburn line has to stencil its box-cars "TEM." Now
this again poached on the Temiscouata's alphabet combination, so they
must emplov T.M.C. Their cars, as stressed above. used to have painted
on them. "The Sportsman's Route." I imagine they can afford no such
luxury as that now, when they paint a new boxcar.
At St. Honore.
the Temiscouata had climbed over 1,000 feet. Two interesting things I
noted en route. One was that the telegraph posts were twice the normal
distance apart, and secondly, the gasoline car shifted gears like a
truck on a hill. I could hardly believe my ears at first.
Well, here's St. Louis du Ha! Ha! We'll get out here, and later visit the district. A word too about Grey Owl in the next.
Beaver Cabins, Eight Cows and Grey Owl (Temiscouata Railway), Published 20 October 1938
I
have just landed you at the St. Louis du Ha! Ha! railway station, and
the stationmaster is about to earn an honest two bits driving me to
town. You can imagine how busy his Temiscouata railway duties keep him
if the chef de gare can engage to take a passenger ten seconds after
the train leaves!
My railroader turned chauffeur let me off
outside the house of Dr. Antoine Raymond, the only man in the village
who speaks good English. He again confirmed the story of how St. Louis
du Ha! Ha! got its name. The portage was long and tiresome, and after
trudging for days through the woods, one of the men. sweating from
having climbed 40 miles and 1.000 feet altitude through primeval forest
shouted: "Ha! ha! there's the lake." To get the Louis part in, I might
say the first settler was Louis Marquis. So that's how St. Louis du Ha!
Ha! was born.
* * *
The
most interesting thing I saw in St. L. du H.H. was a home-made ferris
wheel. Ingenious French lumber dealers had slapped together a ferris
wheel that propels by hand, and I had the extreme pleasure of
photographing it. filled as it was with the Pelletiers, who are the
Smiths of the village.
I then decided that since St. Louis had
exhausted all its possibilities, after a call on the cure who couldn't
speak much English. I thought I might walk the six miles to Cabano. I
had eaten some cakes in an alleged restaurant at St. Louis which
repeated on me. and I thought I could walk this food off. Perhaps I
could, but instead Dr. Raymond came along and drove me over there. I
was glad to have had the car ride.
In the first place. I found out
that Lake Temiscouata, a 30-mile long body, is known in Indian as "the
lake which is deep all over." In one place, they can't get bottom at
1,200 feet. Again. I learned that Madawaska, the name of the river
which drains it, means in the Indian language of the area "the river
which does not freeze." Hence you have a town on that river named St.
Rose de Degele.
But there's more history to the place than that.
Route 2. on which I was travelling, is known as the Lake Road, and I
think I told you that the first bishop from France to Acadia went that
way. Later, you recall the 104th New Brunswick Regiment marched through
to help their comrades against the Americans in 1813 via Temiscouata
Lake, and Fort Ingall was erected there. I am merely skimping rather
than sketching the history of this beautiful area.
* * *
In
Cabano I found Father Cyr trying to take movies of a caterpillar going
up a shrub. But the poor fur-coated worm had Klieg eyes, or studio
panic, or something, for he would not perform. He'd drop to the ground,
and the priest would put him back up. Finally, the caterpillar,
apparently never having heard of Bruce and the Spider, gave up. and
striking a pose, put on the best possible act for the
cure-photographer, and a couple of interesting feet of film resulted.
I
learned in Cabano that the place was named from the river, and the
Cabano river originally was called that because the beaver huts out
along the river suggested "cabanes" to the French. What I heard about
Grey Owl interested me more, and I have no doubt Lloyd Roberts will
refute it. My informant said that Grey Owl never had a beaver farm, but
owned only two beavers.
"He trapped and killed all the beavers for
years, then finally set out to raise them, but he never had any but two
young ones." said my local acquaintance. "Originally he read the
outdoor magazines, but did not write. Later he became a writer. A fine
fellow perhaps, but certainly he had no farm here."
(You
recall Grey Owl claimed he got no sympathy nor support in Quebec, so
went with his beavers to Riding Mountain, Manitoba. There he discovered
the place was too dry. and went to Saskatchewan. There, absurdly
enough, in the province where there never is enough water he found lots
of it for his beavers.)
When I motored back to St. Louis I found
out that the only place the word St. Louis du Ha! Ha! is correctly
spelled is on the Quebec highway sign. The railway station omits the
two exclamation marks, and so does the post office; even the post
office stamp hasn't got these twin bits of punctuation.
* * *
By
now the affair of Mr. Richard's eight cows down at Estcourt on the
Maine border is famous, but I want to go over two or three interesting
points, as I got them from Jaan Francois Pouliot, the dynamic MP.,
whose house I was in that night. First of all, this international
pasture field belongs to Mr. Richard. A bit of it is in Maine, but
there is no fence to stop the cows walking into the United States,
because, after all, the whole field belongs to Mons. Richard. Secondly,
there is no American road to Estcourt, Maine, and so the United States
immigration officials had to travel 40 miles on Canadian soil to get
back into the United States and arrest the cattle. Well entrenched on
private property about three worms length into Maine, the Fort Kent
Immigration men made their famous haul. Again, of these eight cattle so
arrested, two are American-born anyway. Next, so ashamed were the US.
officials that they denied they had seized the Internationally minded
bossies, and Mr. Pouliot had to produce the US. Department of
Immigration's form of receipt.
* * *
I
did not have time to go to St. Patrick, but I should like to have seen
the old house in which Sir John A. Macdonald lived, some summers. Here
treked ponti-ficos, politicians and pap-seekers alike, all seeking
something. and there probably wasn't a giver in a carload. Those
lamp-lit, buggy-driven days are over, and today a Grit M.P Mr. Pouliot,
is responsible for having Canada's greatest Tory perpetuated in his
riding. Although the plaque marking this house has been up two seasons,
Mr. Pouliot has not had time to have it unveiled yet. Actually, it has
been unofficially unveiled a long time ago, and there it stands sans
ceremony.
The governors-general of Canada used to come to Cacouna,
but I didn't go there. Your old Geography Teacher knows this
Temiscouata stuff isn't as exciting as his wanderings through barbed
wire into Russia, or around the Sultan's harem in Turkey, nor yet again
his travels through the Trossachs. But you can't always be hitting high
C. you've got to croak once in a while, and perhaps this is it. Just
the same, I hope you think my trip down to an almost unknown part of
Canada, does not read like a total loss, and that some time again,
you'd like to hear about it, when I emerge from a similarly obscure
part of the Dominion that we sing about so proudly, and of which we see
so little.
|
