Les secrets du Saint-Laurent

Allo,

Don't have long here at la Bibliothèque St. Jean-Baptiste; on a juste une heure par jour, et j'ai déjà utilisé la plus parte de l'heure.

I've been attending this week a conference, free to the public at Musée de la civilisation (as were two other conference events I attended before beginning this blog, but will tell you about some time soon, I hope).

Les secrets du Saint-Laurent is all about the St. Lawrence river, as we call it, but consequently about the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, other rivers connected to the St. Lawrence, and even about the Gulf of Mexico, because the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico have similar problems. This conference comes at the 20th anniversary of the Canadian Plan Saint-Laurent, a concerted effort to research and effect ways to save the world's youngest and 15th largest river.

Today, the second full day of lectures by researchers, I met Louise Gratton, Science Director for Nature Conservancy of Canada, Quebec Region. She asked a question after a talk by someone from Environnement Canada entitled Les espèces exotiques du fleuve Saint-Laurent: de la belle à la bête and in doing so told an anecdote about water chestnuts -- Châtaigne d'eau (Trapa natans, an invasive species -- with mention of Vermont. I thought I'd understood what she said but checked afterwards with her, mentioning that I didn't always understand French so well. She immediately switched to Canadian English and answered my question.

Was Vermont cooperative when she called to say she'd seen the invasive species on the Richelieu, and thus possibly headed for Lake Champlain? Yes, indeed. In fact, the governor of Vermont at the time (this was 1999 or 2000) called the Canadian government to tell them they had to deal with this, not just let it happen, and that Vermont of course would cooperate in any way possible.

At the very top of the little program -- one sheet of paper, a week of day-long programs, all free, the latest research given by the researchers themselves -- it says in very small print, "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime...."

That's I've loved you for a long time.

Anyone who has ever seen the St. Lawrence, le fleuve Saint-Laurent, loves it on first sight, I think.

Un fleuve, by the way, is a river that goes to the sea.