Oh Canada! June 3rd - Labrador City to Churchill Falls, LB

Day 6 - Sunday, June 3rd

During breakfast we visited with a fellow who told us that the odd area of boulevard and sidewalks we drove past the day before was all that is left of a town called Gagnon.  I remember seeing that name on the map and wondered why we hadn’t seen it during the drive.  Turns out it was a mining town, and when the mine closed down the mine owners were required to return the area back to its original state.  So they bulldozed everything, moved the workers to the new mine in Fermont and left only the boulevard and sidewalks.  I’m sure there were other scars from the mining operation, but we didn’t see them.  I guess you could call it a ghost town of sorts – except that the town itself was the ghost.

Our trip to Churchill Falls was paved the first two thirds of the way, and gravel the final third.  It was filled with more rugged scenery of amazing proportions.  We passed fewer bodies of water, and in fact seemed to be traversing a broad high plain for much of the way.  The trees were sparser and spindly.  We saw remains of the winter’s snow on higher peaks, in the shadows and around some of the lakes we passed.

The picture above and below give you an example of the VAST quantities of sand/gravel we saw!

This one gives you some sense of scale as to how big the gravel beds are.  Miles and miles of the stuff!

Much of the terrain this day was like this - flat scrubby wetlands.  The electric company used the device below to help secure their poles in the wet soils.

One of the beautiful shallow lakes we saw today.  

If you can look far ahead, you'll get a sense of the relatively flat, yet gently sloping road we traversed this day - at least until the pavement ran out...

A large area of the landscape had been burned by wildfires at some point in the past, and the areas still looked like forest graveyards.  We saw a fair amount of that on the way up to Labrador City as well. 

Remains of a forest fire.

Looking at the remnants of snow around the small island and along the far shor - as seen through the burnt shells from a forest fire.

One of the landscape features we found remarkable were the large areas covered with sub-angular/sub-rounded boulders of perhaps 3-4 feet in diameter – perhaps up to a cubic yard in size.  There were miles and miles of this stuff!  We remarked about how difficult it would be to walk across that kind of terrain.  I don’t know how the animals do it.

We tried to imagine the glacial process that laid down these vast craggy boulder fields.  How in the world would you traverse it?  Not easily, that's for sure.

Speaking of animals, we were getting a bit chagrinned about not seeing anything larger than a porcupine so far on the trip.  Chris wondered if it was difficult for them to cross the road given that the roadbed is raised 4 to 6 feet from the surrounding landscape across most of its length.  And the ditches were often deeper than the surrounding terrain.  

One does not want to go off the road.  Guaranteed rollover.  And we actually saw a couple of cars along the way that were on their tops in the ditch.  We stopped at the first one we saw, which looked like it happened just recently, to see if anyone needed help.  John said he saw a purse in there and a laundry basket filled with clothes, but no people or bodies.  Spooky.

As we approached Churchill Falls we crossed the Churchill River which was another interesting sight since the river pretty much isn’t there anymore – well, the river bed is there, but there isn’t any water coursing over it.  That’s because the river has been dammed.  So on the one hand, it was very interesting to see the bottom of the river which was scoured down to bedrock.  On the other hand, it was no use taking the hike to the Churchill falls, because there isn’t any water going over the falls anymore.

The Churchill River bed and the remains of the river.

What an odd place Churchill Falls is.  We gassed up and asked the way to the Midway Hotel.  A very nice lady said she’d drive us past the place if we’d like to follow her, which we did.  She told us Churchill Falls is a ‘company town’ essentially.  Everything in the town is owned by Nalcor, the company who owns and operates the hydro facility in Churchill Falls.  The only things they don’t own are the hotel, it’s restaurant and I think the grocery store.

I asked her if she was from Churchill Falls.  She replied, 'Oh goodness, no, dear.  I hope nobody my age is 'from' Churchill Falls'.

It’s possible to tour the electric facility in the town, and I understand it’s quite impressive, but we took a pass on that.

The Midway Hotel is in a large building called Town Center that also houses their school, grocery store, bank, restaurant and I’m not sure what else.  The houses all look modular – the easier to haul in, haul out and/or demo when they are no longer needed. 

The room was comfortable enough, but the walls were paper thin.  We had a jolly fisherman in the room next door who was pretty verbose, and we could hear every word he said.  It was ok when he was on the phone with is wife talking about his fun day of fishing.  But later, when he was talking with his buddies about girls that done him wrong, his political views on this and that, and dropping the F bomb every sentence, it got a bit old.  Fortunately there was an electric fan in the room which made some white noise.  And by 11pm or so, they quieted down.