I finally figured out how to make anal retentiveness work in my favor.
This is Chaleur Bay, separating Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula from New Brunswick’s North Shore. We’re on the New Brunswick side here, looking northwest.
The largest city on this section of the bay is Bathurst, at the mouth of the Nepisiguit River, in the far right of the picture.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
The Ile d’Anticosti (“Ile” is “Island” in French) lies in the middle of the . . . well, on the east end of the island it’s the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the west end it’s the St. Lawrence River. Specifically, the Jacques Cartier Strait lies to the north of the island, and the Honguedo Strait is to the south (visible here). So I guess it’s surrounded by all sorts of bodies of water.
The point at the top of the picture is the Point du Sud-Ouest (Southwest Point). Down from there is a dent in the shoreline, which is a bay called Baie des Sables (Sandy Bay) and I come to find out that there’s another Great Salt Lake in the world, the second one being just behind a sandy spit in this small bay.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
The white band is the frozen Natashquan River, and just to the right of its mouth is Natashquan Reserve, an Innu village. To the right of that, across the marshy area (with all the parallel lines) is the town of Natashquan.
Natashquan is at the spot where the Gulf of St. Lawrence becomes the Jacques Cartier Strait. The coastline west of Natashquan (all the way up to the top of the photo) makes up the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
The river is the Petit Mecatina and beyond it, just to the right, is Lac Hakluyt.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
This is the Lower North Shore of Quebec, just north of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The lake in the center is Lac Aticonipi, and the river is the St. Augustin. In the top right you can see a sliver of the Petit Mecatina river and two lakes — Donquan and Fourmont — over the border in Newfoundland and Labrador.
I figured this area is sparsely populated because it’s the “Frozen North,” but it’s actually farther south than Edmonton, Alberta. So I don’t know why it’s so sparsely populated.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
I would make an enemy of a lot of my Facebook friends by saying what a moron Glenn Beck is, which is why I’m not posting this there. But it’s true, I feel it with all my heart, and Jon Stewart beautifully demonstrates why in this clip.
The little sliver of white is an ice-covered body of water called Reed’s Pond. In the top right is an inlet called Stoney Arm, and an Island called Narrow Island.
This is on the mainland part of Newfoundland and Labrador, which until 2001 used to be called just Newfoundland (although the mainland part was actually Labrador).
This is the same view in Google Earth.
The claw-shaped piece of land is Indian Island, and how cool is it, with that ridge going all the way around it? I’d like to visit it in the summertime. And I’d like to know how it was formed.
The dark area at the bottom left is water: Rocky Bay. The white area in the top left is also water: an arm of Rocky Bay called, appropriately, Stoney Arm. The piece of land up and to the left of Indian Island is a peninsula called Musgrave Land. To the right is the North Atlantic.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
The bit of land on the right side (directly above the dark smudge) is Roonah Point, with a ferry that goes to Clare Island, the farthest small island in the center of the picture. The island in front of that is Inishturk, and beyond those two, separating Clew Bay from Blacksod Bay to the north, is Achill Island.
Clare Island was once home to Grace O’Malley, known as the Pirate Queen. Achill Island regularly received visits from such famous people as English writer Graham Greene and American artist Robert Henri. Don Allum, the first man to row across the Atlantic Ocean in both directions, landed at the island’s Dooagh Beach at the end of his journey.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
Galway is the city in the bottom right corner. In the top right corner is the northern half of Lough Corrib. The small lake in the center is Ross Lake, and the one in the bottom left is Boliska Lough. (I get the impression that “lough” means “lake.”)
Lough Corrib is the second largest lake in Ireland. The first canal in the country, called Friar’s Cut, was cut in the 12th Century between the lough and the sea at Galway.
This is the same view in Google Earth.
