Highway 138

Canada (or maybe Quebec) has a highway that’s missing its middle. It peters out in one small village (after being quite a long major highway), and starts again over 400km away at another small village, and continues on (changing its number) past the border to become the only major highway in Labrador. I drove it today from the Labrador border to where it peters out.

It is gorgeous. In fact, it would probably rate as one of the most scenic highways in the world if it wasn’t a dead end. The villages in the middle have no road access and are slowly dying. At the other end it joins Quebec to New York.

First though, I crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence in a ferry.

At St. Paul’s River, I visited a second museum and was invited to a speech by William Fitzhugh, an archaeologist who has been digging in the area to discover the southern extent of Inuits. He has discovered the Innu, the Inuits and European fishermen (basques, Portuguese, English...) living together since the 1500s. Before that, the people living in the area depended upon the climate of the time. In cold cycles, the northern animals and waterlife moved south, so the Inuit did too. The opposite happened in warmer cycles.

The next few days will be internet free. So there won’t be any blog posts