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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
To anyone who grown up playing Age of Empires III, Lac-Saint-Jean would be familiar to them as being the giant body of water in the Saguenay map. Tactically speaking, it was one of the more tactically sound maps because there were only two routes for land attack around the lake. Read more…
The Naval Museum of Quebec is only open during summer and run by the local detachment of the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve. All of the stories told in the museum are of individual sailors during the Second World War. Many of the artifacts were provided by family members of veterans Read more…
The Museum of Civilization was designed by Quebec architect Moshe Sadie, who also designed Habitat 67 in Montreal and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Quebec. The only downside to the design is the lack of parking in the museum building, municipal parking lots charge by the minute. I visited Read more…
The battle of the Plains of Abraham was a decisive British victory that paved the way for the capitulation of Montreal and the conquest of all of Canada for Britain. Beginning in June 1759, 320 British ships, 49 of which were warships with 1,871 guns, set siege to Quebec City Read more…