Travelling the Relais Nordik

This summer I took passage on a provisioning ship, the Desgagnes Bella, from Rimouski Quebec to Blanc Sablon and back, visiting many communities along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, and Anticosti Island. The ship makes the voyage, over a thousand kilometers in each direction, in one week — more or less.

The more or less part comes from the fact that schedules are determined by the amount of cargo that is being transported. Passengers are asked to keep a 48-hour window open at the end of their voyage, in case of lateness. On my trip, we left Rimouski about 24 hours behind schedule, and by the time we returned we were a little further behind. The cargo backlog was due to ice blockages in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, earlier in the season. I had originally booked by trip for early May, but at that time the river was so blocked with ice that the ship could only go as far up as Sept-Iles. They had been accompanied for several weeks in the spring by an ice-breaker. I remember reading in the spring that one of the ice-breakers called on to do this for another ferry was originally destined to go to the Arctic with science experiments to measure climate change, but the experiments had to be cancelled when the ice-breaker was diverted to support the ferry service. By late June, the river was clear of ice except for the very mouth of the river, by the eastern section of Anticosti Island, where the water was bergy. We saw many icebergs during the trip, and I remember the first sighting well. A lithe young woman with piercing bright eyes pointed over the railing. Iceberg! (Same in French and English). She gave me the binoculars and soon I too was pointing excitedly. At first we saw them at the side of the river, near the mouths of tributaries. By the time we approached Labrador, there were bits of ice everywhere, bergs and bits of bergs, really bergy water.

There must have been about sixty cabin passengers who boarded at Rimouski, the majority Quebecois. The ship has some characteristics of a cruise, with an exercise room, bistro, dining room and tourist shop. But no balls, or casinos. Stops take place day and night, and on quays passengers must pay attention to the marked pedestrian route by the cargo area. Some cargo quays are close to the villages, but sometimes they are much as 10 kms. away. It is possible to get around by bicycle, if you are willing to ride against the substantial winds at times. At each port, the first container off and last one to be loaded is a smaller unit for passengers’ bicycles.

At Sept-Iles and Natashquan, passengers boarded the ship who had driven up the North Shore of the St. Lawrence to the end of the highway. Cars are stored in containers for the duration of the voyage. The highway now ends at Natashquan, and beyond that point, the residents of the villages on the north shore of the St. Lawrence river rely on this ship to deliver provisions each week, 44 times per year with a short break in the winter. Many of the passengers who boarded at these highway ports were local residents, most of whom had seats in the lounge rather than cabins. The ship, an essential service beyond the roads, also provisions Anticosti Island, an island in the middle of the river that is larger than Prince Edward Island.

It was on the way to Anticosti Island that the passengers were introduced to an unexpected treat. A group of musicians joined the ship at Sept-Iles and had an open rehearsal which we listened to on our way to Anticosti Island. On the way back, they boarded again to go back from the island to the mainland and we were treated to a full concert of baroque music by Bach, Lully, and Vivaldi, played by the ten guitarists, contrebass player and orchestral leader of the Montreal group Forestare. You can get a feeling for the energy in the room by listening to this audience ambience, recorded as we waited for the concert to begin: https://soundcloud.com/andrasound/bella-forestare-audience. The concert took place in the bistro, where there were also presentations on life in the villages, and whales that are sometimes sighted on the river. We did not see any, but I was thinking often of the right whales who died within weeks of this voyage in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the research to discover why this is happening.

Our voyage was particularly calm, and only on one foggy night (after the concert) did the waves seem a bit higher, more pitch. I was intrigued by the purring rumbling rhythm of the ship’s engine in those seas, and made a recording in my cabin. I had done many recordings throughout the voyage, sometimes eight in a day. The majority were done during soundwalks in and around the ship, inspired by my interest in a particular ambience, and most were under two minutes in length. The recording of the ship’s motor rumbling in the waves is by far the longest recording, a register of the calm I felt at that time, and my enjoyment of the comforting and enveloping ambience: https://soundcloud.com/andrasound/bella-deep-rolling. it brought to the surface a contradiction in my listening experience: I often find the sound of the diesel engines used in road transportation and construction to be annoying or disturbing. As in the film Duel (1971), where an unseen driver’s big rig sounds demonic, I often hear such diesel engines as like snarling beasts dominating the sound environment. But during the Relais Nordik, the recordings are suffused with the sound of the ship’s diesel motor, which seems comforting and enveloping to my ears in this context, only when heard on a system with good bass response. An interesting contradiction that inspires more thought.

Here are some other favourite recordings from that trip:

Busy cargo hammering: https://soundcloud.com/andrasound/busycargohammering1. On Anticosti island, the quay is very long. In this recording, trucks loaded with softwood tree trunks load a barge. while the Bella discharges cargo and workers on a nearby ship make some repairs, their hammering echoing across the bay.

Bella foghorn: https://soundcloud.com/andrasound/bella-foghorn. Every two minutes in fog, which is common through the northern part of the route. The two minute intervals, deep hum and woolly atmosphere create a warm atmosphere of insulated slowness.

Bella dining room: https://soundcloud.com/andrasound/bella-dining-room-ambiencewav. The food on the ship is excellent, with local seafood available throughout the voyage: halibut, turbot, hake, lobster, snow crab… The restaurant staff are very friendly and English menus are available. The voyage is a great opportunity to hone French-speaking skills, with a knowledgeable, amiable crew and adventurous, reflective passengers who are patient with tentative French speakers like me.

Kegaska waves: https://soundcloud.com/andrasound/kegaska-waveswav. Waves recorded near the cargo quay at the village of Kegaska.