A Fish For Scale
For ten dollars a head you can park your innocence outside the doors of the Cascapédia River Museum and enlighten yourself with enough fish facts to amaze your friends. Trophies and tributes to the river are enclosed in the building on Route 299, flanked by wooden fish cutouts bearing names of their benefactors. We pay the fee to escape the sun and begin the tour inside with a focus on locating a spare outlet to charge our dying phones. Our tour guide motions to the adjacent room where a canoe built for a seven foot man cuts proud through the centre, dwarfing the supporting displays. To the left of the boat hangs a shadowbox of expertly tied fishing flies pinned like rare butterflies; I examine them as fine art I’m supposed to appreciate but don’t understand.
We didn’t bike to the Gaspésie to see fishing paraphernalia or a ballcap signed by Jimmy Carter but here we stand over a display of artifacts blessed by famous signatures. To get here we traveled up New Brunswick into Québec through a bundle of towns prefixed with the designation of Saint something or other. Inching along we tracked our progress as the cathedral spires grew from modest heights into towers of grandeur. Accustomed to their shade we made them our
refuge along the way, until a wrong turn on a map intended for snowmobiles led us to the doorstep of the mighty salmon shrine.
Ending our tour under the watchful eye of the final taxidermied fish we join ranks with the commoners listed in the guest book and exit at the gift shop. Following straightforward directions you only get in a small town we turn left at the train tracks, pass over the bridge, and after the church find the Fumoir Cascapédia. The smoked salmon I’ve been craving since we planned our trip in the spring is within reach, and so is a breakdown. We perform day surgery; disconnect the negative terminal from the battery and remove the front cover to reset the points gap.
Motorbike and appetite satisfied we backtrack upstream to our final campground in a weeklong expedition around the Gaspésie. Fish shaped plaques similar to those housed at the museum hang on trees along the river to mark the entrance of private camps. Access to the exclusive sport is strictly monitored and available only through a lottery style draw. Winners cast their lines knowing that they’ll have to release the fish once they catch it, substituting a trophy for souvenir pictures and tall tales. I study the water for signs of the muse but drive away without a sighting. The sun remains high above the mountains and keeps us warm while the fish remain cool and camouflaged at home in their river.
We’ve been away for so long I’ve been building my own camouflage to adapt to a strictly French speaking environment. The challenge hasn’t been the wind or the long days but tuning into a dialogue different from the French I’m used to. Parked at a lookout, a man shouts questions out the window of his car forcing me to move closer to meet his acquaintance. Between bites of his chicken leg he laughs and I laugh louder hoping it will mask my confusion. If he gets into a deeper conversation than, ‘what year is your bike?’ I’ll move on to the weather or subject him to a list of my favourite Québec cheese.
Entering our campground we tackle a ten kilometer stretch of steep grade covered in chunks of loose gravel and ruts. My confidence needs to get a grip as much as my spinning back wheel does, and I perform a pep talk under my helmet mixed with the occasional French swears I’ve acquired in traffic. Campervans dust us with an outer layer of adventure as we creep along the side of the road in low gear. Everything on the bike threatens to shake free of the frame but we land without casualties at the registration booth where we collect ourselves and enough firewood to get through a summer night of chilly coastal weather.
Completing one trip readies dreams of another, forming a link to buffer you from the shock of going back home. We scroll through pictures to recap what we loved most about this one, of things we want to repeat in the future. Hiding food from the bears in remote parks while we slept with one eye open, or taking long hikes to chase off the calories from the gourmet food. Meeting people who were so kind and welcoming that even their traffic lights issued a polite ‘merci’ when the radar was satisfied. Riding sandwiched between the threat of the mountains crumbling onto our path or being swept away by the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. We’re ready to challenge these obstacles again for the sake of the spectacular views and grandeur of the Appalachian Range, but before we follow the saints back home I still have a plateful of charred fish to tuck into, as the stars fill the sky in a nocturnal ode to our navigation.
