Chapais, Quebec, Canada: 29June - 3July 2008

Chapais is Mathieu's hometown. He completed part of his education here and had his childhood here. It is a small town 8 hrs drives from Montreal. It is a town grown from mining and when the mining stopped, the town inevitable becomes quiet. Currently, it serves as a stop for the logging trucks between the Northen and Southern bigger city.
This place is so far-north-in-the-middle-of-no-way that, it gets really cold winter and even no maple trees can survive such a harsh weather. We see only small leaves trees, such as pine trees.



A small town near to Lac St Jean. (On the way to Chapais.)



One of the lake at Chapais.
When we were there, a waste dam used during the mining time was broken and some waste water polluted the lakes near by.



The place is pretty much wild that, there are quite many outdoor activities to do, such as, camping. Years ago, the people here can just roam around the wild and "choose" a piece of land to be registered with the government for rental and built their own camping hut.
This one that we went belong to Mathieu's father's friend.



Mathieu and his brother went fishing in a weather like that.
I didn't like this idea at all (i mean fishing), but i went with them.
Then i so called used my "mind power" and dowsing and whatever i can manage, to prevent them for getting the fish.
It ended up that, they got only two "victims" for the whole trip, at that so called best fishing spot.
But they released a few small fishes as well.
They said, never to go fishing with me again.



Cooking becomes a tricky thing when it rains!
So a small "tent" was setup so that we could cook the meal.
i feel the camping was "real" when we had to cook with lake water (no tap water).



Due to the rain, the lake areas were flooded.
So during the return trip, the truck had to cross almost 10 inches deep of water.



Before the White people came, the land around Chapais is occupied by the First Nation (like Malaysian, bumiputra or orang Asli).
The government bought or took over the land, built the First Nation a village called "reserve", so now most of them stay in the typical Canadian kind of house.
There was a "display" or musuem kind of facilities showing what a First Nation's house used to be.
There are still tensions between the First Nation and the other Canadian.
Some First Nation think they were driven out from their land and marginized, while other common Canadian think, no tax if the first nation is living in the reserve and no limit for the first nation to catch fish (eventhough they are living a modern life now) ... are kind of unfair.
Well, it is just a complicated issue.