Jean Chrétien was Prime Minister of Canada for a decade between 1993 and 2003. He was born and raised in Shawinigan, Quebec, where a museum is dedicated to his role in integrating Canada with the wider world. Although fire department maps name the gallery space as a “temporary exhibition” space Read more…
La Cité d’Énergie is the main tourist attraction in the otherwise sleepy post-industrial Shawinigan. It’s one way the town is trying to reinvent itself as its population is declining for better opportunities in larger cities. The science centre is easily distinguishable by its 115-metre-tall pylon that has been converted into Read more…
Like other industrial towns of Quebec, Shawinigan used to be ruled by an anglophone elite on Rue des Érables. The land was owned by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company and the town was centrally planned as company land. The Olmstead Brothers Agency planted the trees in Shawinigan in the Read more…
The Saint-Maurice River flows from the Laurentians to meet up with the St. Lawrence at Trois-Rivières. The flow of water rushing down 444 metres from the mountains has powered Canada’s oldest industrial community between 1730 and 1883. The Forges du Saint-Maurice produced iron cannonballs, stoves, and agricultural tools for the Read more…
This article is part of a series called Backstory where I reveal how feature and in-depth stories were crafted. You can find more with the Backstory tag by searching “Backstory” in the search bar.(Featured photo courtesy of Lindsey James.) The original story was published here:https://capitalcurrent.ca/dog-2/ The video assignment took about Read more…
One of several NS-Dokumentationszentrum dotted all over Germany with other notable ones in Nürnberg and Munich, it displays the history of the Third Reich and Germany’s dark Nazi past in Köln. The EL DE Haus itself was a former Gestapo headquarter with torture chambers and prison cells in the basement Read more…
Not to be confused with Frankfurt an der Oder, Frankfurt am Main is the bustling urban centre of Europe. I’ve probably been to Frankfurt about a dozen times for railway transfers that took anywhere between two to six hours each time. Because the Frankfurt Hbf is located right in the Read more…
The paper mill at Saguenay is the oldest one in Quebec. Opened in 1896, it produced wood pulp for newspapers, like how the mill in Trois-Rivières supplied for the New York Times. The mill reached its peak in 1910 when it was renown for its high pulp quality, it closed Read more…
Cracking the Quebec Code in 45 MinutesBy: Jean-Marc Léger, Jacques Nantel, Pierre Duhamel, Christian Bourque, and Philippe Léger The book is an abridged version of Pierre Duhamel’s original text in French, translated for an English audience. I wish more authors would publish abridged versions of their books that are well-supported Read more…
Quebec Route 381 connects two of the most scenic locations in La Belle Province. It traverses the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of the Laurentians to provide the shortest route between Saguenay and Baie-Saint-Paul. The entire route is 114km long and takes about an hour and a half to complete. It was first Read more…