Saguenay Fjord National Park

Saguenay Fjord National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

The Saguenay Fjord is one of the longest fjords in the world and one of the most southerly in the northern hemisphere, a dark, cliff-walled arm of the sea that runs for more than a hundred kilometres into the forests of Quebec from the north shore of the St Lawrence estuary, which it joins at the village of Tadoussac, about two hundred kilometres, two and a half to three hours by road, north-east of Quebec City. The national park that protects both of its banks is one of the provincial parks of Quebec, managed by the province's outdoor agency, which charges a daily entrance fee per adult, bought online or at the gates. It is long, narrow and divided into three sectors, separated by considerable distances, since the fjord has no bridge below the city of Saguenay and only a ferry at its mouth.

The Baie-Eternite sector, on the south shore near the village of Riviere-Eternite, is the heart of the park, with the main discovery and visitor centre, campgrounds and cabins at the head of a deep bay enclosed by the two greatest cliffs of the fjord; from it start the classic walk to the statue on Cap Trinite, about seven kilometres and three to four hours return, with a steep climb, a via ferrata on the rock face in three routes of graded difficulty, guided sea kayak outings and boat cruises along the fjord. The Baie-Sainte-Marguerite sector, on the north shore, is the place to see beluga whales from land: an easy path of about three kilometres leads to a viewing platform over a bay where they gather in summer. The Baie-de-Tadoussac sector, at the mouth, has short trails over the dunes and headlands, from which whales are watched in the St Lawrence. A long-distance trail with huts follows the south shore for several days, and a boat shuttle links the villages of the fjord in summer.

Visiting Saguenay Fjord National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1983 and covers about 320 square kilometres of the shores of the fjord, while the water itself, with a large area of the St Lawrence estuary, has been protected since 1998 as the Saguenay-St Lawrence marine park, managed jointly by the governments of Canada and Quebec. The fjord occupies a rift in the ancient rocks of the Canadian shield, a block of the earth's crust that dropped between two faults, which the glaciers of the ice ages, up to three kilometres thick, deepened and straightened into a trench; when the ice melted, some ten thousand years ago, the sea flooded in. It is about 105 kilometres long, one to three and a half kilometres wide, and up to 275 metres deep, with walls of gneiss and granite that rise sheer from the water to three and four hundred metres, the highest, Cap Trinite and Cap Eternite, facing each other across the mouth of Eternity bay. Its water is of two kinds. On top lies a thin layer of brownish, brackish, relatively warm water, brought down by the Saguenay river from Lac Saint-Jean; beneath it, separated by a sharp boundary, is cold, clear, fully salt water of arctic character, which enters from the depths of the St Lawrence over a shallow sill at the fjord's mouth with each tide, and in which live creatures of the far north, Greenland sharks, arctic cod and deep-sea redfish, a thousand kilometres south of where one would expect them.

The meeting of these waters, and the upwelling of cold water where the deep Laurentian channel ends abruptly at Tadoussac, produce a bloom of krill and small fish that makes the mouth of the Saguenay one of the best places in the world for watching whales: minke, fin and humpback whales, and the occasional blue whale, come to feed from May to October, and the beluga, the small white whale of the Arctic, lives here all year, an isolated population left behind by the retreating ice, which numbered perhaps ten thousand before it was hunted and now stands at fewer than nine hundred, endangered by pollutants, noise and disturbance, for which reason boats must keep four hundred metres away from them and the bay of Sainte-Marguerite, where the females bring their calves, is closed to navigation in summer. On a ledge of Cap Trinite, 180 metres above the water, stands a statue of the Virgin, nine metres tall, carved in pine and sheathed in lead, which was erected in 1881 by a commercial traveller, Charles-Napoleon Robitaille, in fulfilment of a vow made when he fell through the ice of the river and survived; it was hauled up the cliff in sections, and passing boats still sound their horns and play the Ave Maria beneath it. Tadoussac, where the French established in 1600 their first trading post in Canada, was for centuries the meeting place of Innu hunters and European fur traders. The forests, of spruce, fir, birch and, on the dry cliff tops, red and jack pine, hold black bears, moose, beavers, lynx and peregrine falcons, which nest on the cliffs.

Saguenay Fjord National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open all year, but its services, boats, kayaks and the via ferrata operate from about mid-May or June to mid-October. July and August are the warmest months, 20 to 25 degrees, the busiest, and the best for belugas in the bay of Sainte-Marguerite and for kayaking, though the water remains very cold; campsites, cabins and activities should be reserved well ahead. The whale-watching season at the mouth of the fjord runs from May to October, with the greatest numbers from August to early October.

From mid-September to mid-October the hardwoods on the slopes turn red and gold against the dark conifers and the grey rock, one of the great autumn spectacles of Quebec. Winter, from December to March, is cold, minus ten to minus twenty, and snowy, and the park offers snowshoeing, backcountry skiing to heated huts, and ice fishing in villages of cabins on the frozen fjord. Blackflies and mosquitoes are troublesome in June and early July. The weather on the water changes quickly, so kayakers should go with a guide unless experienced. Allow two to three days. Tadoussac and the whale-watching cruises are an hour and a half from Riviere-Eternite.