Saturday 11 August 2012

Storm stayed for a day Aug 11/12 (part one)

..... maybe you would like to know ... about the Saguenay Fjord

The width of the Saguenay Fjord varies between 2 km and 4 km.
The highest peaks along the Fjord rise to about 350 m. The cliffs, for their part, have an average height of 150 m.  Cape Trinite and Cape Eternite, bordering Baie Eternite, are the highest rack faces.  The Fjord has an average depth of 210 m, with a maximum of 270 m located somewhere between Baie Eternite and L'Anse-Saint-Jean. (where we are now)
Underneath all that water is a sediment layer of varying thickness that can reach an amazing 1,400 m !  By adding the maximum peak height, water depth, and sediment layer thickness, the vertical dimension of the trough is about ... 2 km !

The waster is  a bit salty tastingFresh water , most of it from Lake Saint-Jean, flows along the surface.  The salt water from the St. Lawrence River flows under the fresh water layer and makes up to 93% of the total water volume.  The surface water is not that cold.  The surface fresh water can reach temperatures in the range of 15 C to 20 C during the summer, while the bottom salt water layer is 1 C.

Of the 2,130 known Fjords worldwide, only 38 are 100 km or longer.  Stretching over 105 km from Tadoussac to Saint-Fulgence, the Saguenay Fjord fits in that category of the world's great fjords.  It is also one of the rare fjords to flow into an estuary.  However, what distinguishes most the Saguenay Fjord is not its length, but its southern location.  The only fjord in southern Quebec could also be the longest at such low latitude, in both Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Notre-Dame-du-Saguenay Statue
During the winter of 1878, a merchant names Charles-Napoleon Robitaille and his horse-drawn load  fell through the ice on the Saguenay River.  Appealing to the Virgin Mary to save his life, he miraculously managed to keep from drowning.  The man became deathly ill, but against all odds he cheated death once again.  Wanting to pay tribute to the Virgin Mary, he decided to erect a sculpture on Cap Trinite, for which he commissioned the sculptor Louis Jobin.  But hauling a 7.5 m statue up the rocky capes of the Fjord was no easy task!  Finally the statue had to be cut up into fourteen pieces, and then reassembled at its present location.
With the base it measures 9.75 m tall.  This sculptured statue was rough hewn from wood then coated with lead and hoisted into its present position in 1881.




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