MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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Entry Island/Ile d'Entree, Emerald Beautyby G. Tod SloneEd., The American DissidentSpecial to the G21
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CONCORD, MA - We took off for the Iles-de-la- Madeleineor Magdalen Islands, the refrain fresh in mind from our last visit several years before... " pchez, pchez, les Iles-de-la- Madeleine ."
My mother had asked where the heck they were, and that was the point. Simply arriving at Souris in Prince Edward Island had put most of my job-hunting nightmares into cold storage. We waited for the ferry while the fat gulls circled, wedding automobiles honked in the distance, Irish reel music blasted from a vehicle next to ours and Quebeckers chatted outside their cars drinking beer.
Several years before, we'd sped like demons as soon as we landed on PEI (before the bridge was built) from Borden to Souris in the pitch black at 85 mph. We made it in an hour just in time for the 2:30 a.m. ferry. Only two crossings per day are effected, the other normally at 1:00 p.m... But problems with the hydraulic hatch had delayed the ship, which finally embarked around twilight. From the deck we watched PEI slowly shrink and eventually disappear. Inside, a bar, movie theater, pinball machines and tv's helped keep the passengers occupied. An Acadian band played French music --- the islands were settled by Acadians --- in the ship bar, hence " pchez,
pchez..."
The crossing was five hours long. The first time, we'd arrived at dawn to a magnificent pink horizon and homes here and there scattered on the archipelago islands, the prettiest of which was indubitably the incredibly emerald, pastoral and isolated Ile d'EntrŽe or Entry Island. We hadn't visited Entry because it was separated from the other islands, which were attached one to the next by stretches of dune, 20-30 km long. Entry was the main reason we decided to return.
The stars and island lights sparkled gloriously as we arrived around midnight. It was typically cool for August... in the fifties. The ferry debarked at Ile du Cap aux Meules, the most populated of the islands with about 1,650 people. We drove to the H™tel Bellevue where we'd stayed the last time, just a couple of minutes from the harbor with a "vue imprenable sur le port de Cap-aux-Meules et l'Ile d'EntrŽe."
In the morning, I carried in the provisions we'd bought on the mainland. The motel room had cooking facilities.
A woman followed me as I struggled down the long dimly lit hallway, asking over and over, "Je peux vous aider? Je peux vous aider?"
The islands were mostly French-speaking. Only two of them had English-speaking populations, Grosse Ileand Entry.
The woman continued on my heels, even after I'd told her I didn't need any help. "Mais o vous tes, monsieur?" she asked.
"La 107," I replied.
"Mais monsieur, il n'y a pas de 107 icitte!" she said.
"Jeanne!" I hollered in the hallway. "Jeanne!"
The door of room 114 opened. My companion-associate Jeanne appeared. I wasn't good with numbers and still couldn't remember my new phone or zip code. The woman in the hallway went back to the front desk.
"I think she thought I was a bagman. I couldn't get rid of her. And for once I'm shaven," I said to Jeanne.
Our motel room had a fifties ambiance to it with an old fridge and cuisinette. Both Jeanne and I were fluent in French, which was why we liked exploring the hinterlands of QuŽbec. We'd already been to Anticosti Island, the Lower North Coast by the Labrador border and the Lake Saint Jean region. The last time we'd visited the islands was in July. The multicolored lupin are beautiful and in bloom then, not in August. I'd found a small whale head , probably beluga, on the beach with a piece of fetid meat still attached to it, cut the meat off, attached a rope to the skull and dragged it along the sand dunes back to our car. It's at home now.
A paved roadway links the towns together. The dunes are replete with delicious blueberries.
On our first day, we took a six km hike (one way) along one of the dunes to the end of Grosse Ile, Pointe de l'Est. The walk was exquisite since we were the only humans on the whole beach. Seal heads bobbed in the dark waters now and then to observe us. There were many of them. It was just us and them, the gulls and cormorants. Most of the islands are bare. Only trees are found on part of Ile du Havre Aubert.
The next day it rained, which was not unusual for the north in August. We visited the islands' only mall in Cap-aux-Meules where Jeanne got her hair done... very, very cheaply considering the Canadian looney or huard.
In the bookstore, the bestsellers were Viagra and Princess Di titles.
On Ile du Havre Aubert was the historical site La Grave, which comprised old fish houses converted into boutiques and cafes. One of them was still operant as a boucanerie, or smokehouse, and sold smoked salmon. Another specialized in sealskin clothing. Odile, the owner and craftswoman of that one, expressed a different opinion from that of Brigitte Bardot. For her, sealing had been her father's livelihood and making clothing from the skins had become hers. Because there was a moratorium on hunting, she got her skins from Norway. She mentioned how everything she did reflected her ancestors and culture. She recalled going out seal fishing with her father.
Towards the end of our week's visit, we finally took the local passenger shuttle at eight in the morning from Cap-aux-Meules and arrived an hour later in the small port of Entry Island.
When we debarked, I stopped to take a few photos of a sizeable heap of junk cars by the dock. Even on Entry, they had automobiles, yet one could easily walk around the island.
There, a man came up to us and introduced himself: "Hi, I'm Brian Josey. I own the restaurant. Isn't this terrible? They could have dumped these cars further down instead of right behind my place. Environment Canada won't do anything about it..."
It was difficult for us to envision that an island so far away from civilization with only 40 some odd families on it would have any problems at all. Entry was incredibly beautiful with its steep red sand cliffs, towering green hills, cattle dispersed along the summits, old wooden dwellings and silent dirt and pebble roads. The views overlooking the other islands were magnificent and from any vantage point, though especially from Big Hill, the highest in all the archipelago.
Brian told us about the puddle of oil spilled on the beach by Hydro-QuŽbec and, even more serious, the municipality's approval of a project to re-bed the roads with stone quarried from the island's own beautiful green hills.
He had actually taken the mayor, Norman Backs, to court on Ile du Havre Aubert, just across the bay where the archipelago's only Palais de Justicewas located. His contention was that no environmental study had ever been carried out to examine the impact on the island of quarrying, which was already taking place on Lot 149 known as Pete's Hills, technically common land. The heavy equipment used to quarry the stones was being driven across Lot 145, which was owned by Brian's family. The court sided with the mayor and ordered an injunction against Brian and his family from trespassing on the construction site or speaking to or getting in the way of any of the project's workers even on Lot 145.
Brian argued that the other islands had their rocks shipped in from Nova Scotia. "Cost 'em more to get it here. But why should we lose the beauty of our island? We have nothing for tourists except that."
He hinted that Entry, being Anglophone, was not being treated fairly by the QuŽbec government. It was difficult to imagine the proverbial linguistic battle was being waged in the middle of the Saint Laurence estuary. Indeed, several years before Jeanne and I had stopped for coffee at a cantine at Harry's Cove on Grosse Ile. Jeanne had asked, "Vous avez du cafŽ?" The female attendant had grumbled, "we don't speak French here!" When she realized we were Anglophones and chilled out a tad, she mumbled a few unpleasantries relative to her French-speaking neighbors.
After hiking to the top of Big Hill and walking along the tranquil island streets of yesteryear, we stopped at the Maclean B&B, the only one on the island ,and spoke with Mary Maclean, who gave us a tour of the house, the little fish museum in the basement and the bedrooms upstairs, which were occupied by Hydro-QuŽbec workers. She was extraordinarily kind and hospitable, offering us juice and biscuits.
We continued our exploration of the island and came across the Municipal Council building, the center of the polemic, which had no windows and was considerably smaller than a one-car garage. Brian drove by in his old red car, offered us a ride (but where to?) and stopped to tell us more, mentioning that he was appealing the court decision and that despite the fact he was unilingual Anglophone, his entire hearing had been in French, even though the judge and lawyers were bilingual. In addition, he mentioned that the local tourist office at Cap-aux-Meules wasn't advertizing his restaurant and continually told tourists to bring their own lunches when they visited the island. His aunt, Mary Maclean, seemed to be having similar problems advertizing her guest house. Interestingly, we were unable to obtain much information at all about Entry when we'd asked in Cap-aux-Meules, as if it weren't even inhabited.
For information on the Magdalen Islands: www.ilesdelamadeleine.com
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Over the next few days, we drove around the islands, visiting the sights, including an abandoned fish plant, the red cliffs of Belle Anse, the quaint towns of Fatima and Grand-EntrŽe, beautiful pastel colored houses on Ile du Havre aux Maisons and of course the long isolated beaches of the dunes.
