Yvon and I drove to Saguenay in the summer of 2022. I had long wanted to see this city so far in the north of Quebec, which has a seriously remote feel to me. Saguenay is the result of multiple waves of mergers, mostly recently of the three cities Chicoutimi, Jonquière, and La Baie. These three were themselves results of mergers, so that, for instance, in La Baie you can see where the former centres were for Grande-Baie, Port-Alfred and Bagotville. I enjoyed trying to "read" the city this way. Nearby is the spectacular Saguenay Fjord, the most southerly fjord in the northern hemisphere, and we explored this from multiple directions, on foot, and in the truck.
Photo List (Total 313 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Chicoutimi (102 photos) - Chicoutimi is the largest of the three cities that were merged to form Saguenay, and it feels the most developed. These photos show the waterfront, the downtown, the Musée de lat Petite Maison Blanche (a house that withstood the extreme flooding in the city in 1996), and the lovely Pulperie de Chicoutimi, a large complex of industrial buildings housing a museum and art gallery.
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La Baie (53 photos) - La Baie is on the eastern side of the city. It's the smallest of the three cities that formed Saguenay, and because it had multiple centres, there isn't really a "downtown" per se. However, the area around the cruise ship terminal has been developed into a modern district that is quite pleasant. This gallery has photos from across the city.
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Jonquière (35 photos) - Maybe this is unfair, but Jonquière feels a little like the sad sister of the three cities. Maybe it's because it feels the closest to its industrial heritage, maybe because instead of being on the fjord or the large Saguenay River, it's on the smaller Riviére aux Sables. The downtown area felt a little under-appreciated, but the Centre Cultural de Mont-Jacob was a lovely place.
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Lac Saint-Jean and Val-Jalbert (42 photos) - Yvon felt we really needed to drive around the entire Lac Saint-Jean. This area is flat and has a lot of farmland. The towns on the south end of the lake, closer to the city, are very touristy and there are campsites, trails, shops. The north end of the lake is less touristy. The photos in this gallery of the lake and town are fairly ordinary, but most of these are of scenic Val-Jalbert, a former company town built all at once in the first years of the twentieth century, then abandoned in 1927.
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Saguenay Fjord and Park (81 photos) - The Saguenay Fjord, running from the St. Lawrence River at Tadoussac up to Chicoutimi, is a dramatic and beautiful landscape of mountains dropping off precipitously to the sea. This gallery includes photos from both the north and south of the fjord. On the south, we mostly saw the fjord from the Parc-National de Fjord-du-Saguenay, where we hiked the Statue Trail. On the north, we took the ferry from Trois Pistoles to Les Escoumins, and drove Highway 172 (three times, actually).
