Photos progress from east to west and were taken WB unless I specify otherwise.


The road starts out heading more or less north from Gatineau to Val-des-Monts. (Valley of Mountains? Redundancy, anyone?) The water in the second photo is Lac McGregor.


EB from Wakefield to the other side of the QC 307 concurrency. Click on the second photo for a closeup of the QC 366 shield. I promise you that it's cracked and somewhat old.


What a difference a season makes. The first two photos look south at Pont Wakefield in September, and the last looks south almost a year later in August. Notice how much more popular the bridge is as a local swimming hole when it's still a summer month. Even though September 11 is still technically part of summer, this far north the weather is rarely hot enough for a dip in a river.


Closeups around the bridge. Pont Wakefield may be as new as 1997, but its history goes back to Pont Gendron, an original covered bridge that, like every other bridge in Québec, was not maintained well enough to stay open. While Wakefield and its residents were trying to find a way to save the old structure after stopgap measures failed to keep the rickety, wavy bridge open (it was dipping between its pier supports), arsonists got to the bridge in 1984. Far from being a modern travesty, the bridge represents the dedication of the community to preserve their history.


Now across the modern bridge. Both signs speak for themselves.


Leaving Wakefield and heading to Lac des Loups and the town of Lac-des-Loups (towns get hyphens, water doesn't), also known as "the only somewhere in this nowhere."


Ladysmith is really more of a nowhere than a somewhere, notable only for this junction. The last photo faces EB.


Did I mention most of the road west of Wakefield is dirt? It's a fun drive, but with no pavement and no reassurance markers, you start to wonder if that iffy turnoff 30 km ago was actually the main road. Lac Sparling is on the north side of the road in the first photo, and the other two are approaching the end of QC 366 at QC 301.

Autoroute 5 and QC 366/A-5/QC 105

Onto QC 307
Onto QC 301
See more covered bridges
Back to Québec Roads
Back to Roads