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Story and photos by Bob Henderson
Winter 2003 Issue
We’re going to Anticosti ... for
the shipwrecks, the deer, the fossils, the lobster, the high sea capes,
the pebble beaches ... and the stories of cannibals and the Chocolate
King.
It was always the same. “You’re
going to sea kayak on Anticosti Island? Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it.
Where is it again?”
Sure you’ve heard of it ...
On the day we were to begin our drive east to Rimouski, we met a friend.
“We’re going to Anticosti!” I said. The friend misunderstood
it as an invitation to join us for lunch at a local restaurant. It was
the same in Quebec. “It’s in the St. Lawrence somewhere,”
said a friend from Montreal.
Well indeed, Anticosti Island is well
“out there” where the St. Lawrence River is long lost to the
open sea. The western shore is 35 km (22 mi.) from Quebec’s Lower
North Shore and the eastern tip is 72 km (45 mi.) from Gaspésie.
The island is no minor obstacle to ships.
Prince Edward Island would fit inside Anticosti one-and-a-half times.
The island is roughly 8,000 square kilometres (3,100 square miles) –
56 km at its widest and 222 km long, with a 580 km (360 mi.) shoreline.
It’s not just big: it also has a reef that in places stretches out
a kilometre. Anticosti literally means (from the French), a place where
you can’t land a boat. (Often, you can’t land a sea kayak.)
400 wrecks and counting ...
The island is shaped like a football, and in the
sea it has played the mid-linebacker position, claiming approximately
400 shipwrecks from the 1600s to the last shipwreck in 1982. In the mid-1800s,
when a wealth of sea-going traffic moved up and down the St. Lawrence,
an estimated 2000 ships passed the island each summer. The reef was bad
news for them, but at high tide it can be good for sea kayakers. By paddling
close to shore, kayakers can watch scary breakers crashing in at 30 knots,
perhaps only 100 metres away.
From sea to sea
I first heard of the island from Edmonton friend,
Dan Haley, while paddling on the Pacific Coast. Dan’s great grandfather,
Edward Boudrieau, had been the postmaster for the island, delivering the
mail and groceries – “mostly cigarettes and booze,” Dan’s
mother told me once with a laugh. His boat trips to reach the single families
and lighthouse keepers at certain river mouths took, on average, ten days.
Dan had circumnavigated Anticosti in the 1980s. He and his wife Jacynthe
spent a month retracing family ties. But when he told me about it out
on the Pacific in the Queen Charlotte Islands, the thought of Anticosti
seemed too exotic, too distant. Where was it again?
Later, I read. Donald MacKay’s book,
Anticosti: The Untamed Island, is full of history and amazing local stories.
And naturalist Dan Strickland’s description of the hauntingly beautiful
Anticosti coastline and the sound of the surf on the pebble beaches brought
the place alive.
Have kayak, will travel
Logistics came together as well. The Relais Nordik,
a boat serving the Lower North Shore from Rimouski, Quebec, would take
us and our kayaks to Port Menier, Anticosti. We could rent additional
kayaks, and Sépaq, La Société des etablissements
de plein air du Quebec, helped us with transportation needs and lodging
on the island. (See the Trip Planner for details.) Since 1974 when the
Quebec government purchased the island, it has served mostly as a game
reserve for salmon fishing and deer hunting. Sépaq is the administrator
and outfitter for much of the island. (Safari Anticosti also administers
a chunk.) Tourism is encouraged with chalets, campsite services and organized
tours. But you must take note that sea kayaking is new on the radar screen.
Sépaq is actively exploring and developing how best to bring the
sea kayak holiday into their mix of initiatives for the island. Sépaq
must grant permission for you to travel by sea kayak and may insist that
Agaguk, as the island sea kayak outfitter, be involved. (From our perspective
this was a highlight given their local knowledge of the reef, capes, vetch,
swells, tides and winds, not to mention heritage folklore and legends
that books just couldn’t capture.) It may all sound confusing for
a mostly wild coast, but it is worth the extra time in planning, and it
all works so well.
The island’s first owner
The coastline is what it is all about for the
sea kayaker, particularly the beautiful north shore from Point Carleton
to Baie Innomie.
It’s a coast peopled with characters.
I’ll begin with a guy we should all know more about: Louis Jolliet,
who was awarded ownership of the island for his service to New France.
In 1673, he travelled south on the Mississippi almost to the mouth of
the Arkansas River before – like Mackenzie to the north about 100
years later – he realized the river would not take him to the Pacific.
From 1680 to 1690 Jolliet ran a successful fur trading and fishing business
from Rivière a l’Huile on the island’s north shore. In
1690, he was raided as an easy target by New Englanders in a siege of
Quebec City, a hard target. His economic holdings (which included the
Mingan Islands and much of the Lower North Shore) soon collapsed, but
for another 40 years his son divided and ran the island. It is worth noting
the island’s promise as a viable place to make a living.
From the 1730s to the arrival of the next
successful owner in 1895, the island was in flux, controlled by Quebec
or by Newfoundland and deemed worthless to most. But it was wealthy in
colourful characters.
Dining with the devil
Louis Oliver Gamache, who lived at Ellis Bay (later
Port Menier), was a larger-than-life prankster who told grand stories
to bolster his reputation. Once, he tricked an innkeeper in Rimouski into
believing his dinner partner was the devil. He farmed, manned the government
emergency supply depot, and saved victims of shipwrecks, salvaging supplies
often for his own use. Salvage was a common practice on Anticosti, but
he was accused of being a moonraker (purposefully misleading ships to
hit the island shore so he might reap the bounty from the wreckage). He
dominated the island from 1831 to 1857, and perhaps his self-promotion
as a sorcerer-bogeyman helped keep unwanted visitors away.
The hermit and Madame
We visited his probable gravesite at the edge
of his farm fields, and later found the grave of his contemporary, hermit
Peter MacDonald, in MacDonald Bay. Peter left Pictou, Nova Scotia for
the fishing on the island’s north shore, but grew to love the place.
His wife, after twenty years, gave him the infamous choice: “Me or
here.” He chose here, MacDonald Bay. As an old man thought to be
close to 90, he was coaxed into abandoning his exclusive beach property
for the village life of the now abandoned Baie Saint Claire on the island’s
west point. One January day in 1900, he decided to walk home. He was found
in the spring in his cabin in the bay sitting comfortably in a chair with
his feet resting in a small tub of solid ice. The walk would have been
close to 100 kilometres through the bush.
Madame Gitony survived for weeks on the
shore during the winter following a cabin fire. She built a lean-to shelter
and hunted for food until her husband returned from his trapline. Later,
again while her husband was away, she saw a crew of American sailors land
on the shore of her beach. Quickly she cropped off her long hair, dressed
in her husband’s clothes and entertained the party-going crew in
disguise.
The cannibal of Jinx Island
It is the shipwreck stories, however, that astound.
Anticosti has been called the “Graveyard of the Gulf” and “Jinx
Island”. The Granicus wreck is the most famous. In her historical
fictional account in the novel, Creation, Katherine Govier describes a
small crew as “taking the poor Irish settlers who’d failed in
America back to starve at home.” The ship, carrying less than thirty
with three children and two women, struck the reef in early November 1828
near Fox Bay on the eastern shore of the island. Amazingly most survived
the winter, thanks largely to the recovery of much of the ship’s
supplies. A calendar was etched into the wooden walls of one of the buildings,
and the ship’s log told the story until April 28.
On May 8, however, a sealing schooner
sailed into a strange silence at Fox Bay. Body parts were found in pots
and five bodies were suspended by ropes in another small building. In
all, twelve or thirteen bodies were found including the two women and
three children. Somehow, between April 28 and May 6 after five months
of survival, there was carnage. Lying in bed in one room was the recently-deceased
body of a well-built man thought to be only 48 hours dead. Clearly he
was the murderer.
I have only touched on the gory details.
We know much more thanks to the sealers’ testimony and to an official
report by Captain Bayfield, but no one could determine the cause of death
of the main perpetrator.
Unhallowed ground
We camped at Fox Bay and that night read
MacKay’s and Govier’s accounts. Although the recorded stories
of cannibalism here can throw a haunting aura over the place still, the
evening air was calm and our spirits light. We were elated at having rounded
the difficult Cape de la Table well outside the breakers despite big swells
from the previous day’s storm. It had been a wild paddle for us non-ocean-oriented
paddlers, and Fox Bay is a glorious sheltered harbour.
As a counterpoint to the Granicus story,
the transatlantic steamer, North American, ran aground on the south shore
reef in June 1867. All survived and in the fortnight till rescue they
enjoyed picnics of fresh trout (120 caught in one day), and the hospitality
of Mr. and Mrs. Burns, who as shipwreck survivors themselves fourteen
years earlier, had decided to stay. Their house was entirely furnished
with materials from other wrecks.
Another inspiring story is the unusual
tale of the Chocolate King of France. (See sidebar.) We could see why
he chose Anticosti as his paradise away from France. Our trip along a
section of the northern coast felt like a musical score: gentle pebble
beaches building into sedimentary rises and then to cliffs punctuated
by impressive capes, each with distinguishing features. There were many
crescendos.
The winds dictated our travel and we rose
early each day to beat the afternoon blow. We were only pinned on the
coast under the cliffs once in the eight days on the water, and even then
were protected from beach breakers by the offshore reef. Here we found
our best fossils, both large and small, on the beach and embedded in the
sedimentary rock.
We swam in the shallow rivers and surfed
on a few more waves that some (me among them) would have liked with strong
tail winds. We pondered Anticosti’s impressive history, but most
of all, as any sea kayaker must, we delighted in the dynamic coastline.
It was a visual splendour near and far. We walked the beaches and celebrated
the good cheer of food, friends and campfires. On our return to Auberge
Port Menier, Chef Denis Poirier treated us to a feast of grilled lobster,
well deserved after over 200 kms on the trans-Anticosti dirt road. We
even had time to sightsee till the Relais Nordik carried us back to Rimouski.
Sépaq guides Francois Lanctot and Valerie Messier were charming
hosts and outfitters. Expedition Agaguk were exceptional in coaxing along
our ocean kayak skills and knowledge and telling all the local folklore
tales we could absorb.
An interesting footnote: the French Government
authorities had told the Chocolate King Henri Menier that Anticosti was
merely a “geographical expression.” I think it is still a “geographical
expression” but the meaning behind this phrase has shifted with the
times. It’s a highly expressive geography — just what we kayakers
with a love of history had in mind.
Bob Henderson, the KANAWA
heritage specialist, teaches Outdoor Education at McMaster University.
Email him at bhender@mcmaster.ca
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Paradise Island
 In
1895, the Chocolate King, Henri Menier, purchased the island for
$125,000. He had searched the globe for ten years with his friend
Martin Zédé for their own private game reserve island
paradise. In Zédé’s words, “Henri Menier
and I had only one idea and that was to find an island with a good
harbour for a yacht, where no one could interfere with our life
of sport and adventure.”
Menier established the rules: no hunting or fishing,
no alcohol, no firearms. There were 28 rules in all for “Anticosti
– Propriété Privée,” and if the 300
inhabitants in farming and fishing villages didn’t like the
rules, they were free to leave.
Many left but more stayed. Menier was keen on
modern innovation and saw the island as an experiment in modernization.
Until his death in 1913, Menier poured millions of dollars into
roads, a railway, electricity and an overall economic plan and survey
of the resources. He also introduced many animals in experimental
fashion: elk, beaver, reindeer from Lapland, rabbit, moose and even
two buffalo.
In 1896, he had 220 white tailed Virginia deer
delivered. Today there are an estimated 125,000 deer on the island
with about 20,000 dying of starvation each winter and 5,000 taken
by hunters in the fall. The deer have eaten the island’s balsam
fir, leaving an unusual monoculture of spruce.
The baronial hall
At the turn of the century, Menier built
a massive villa which cost $130,000, $5000 more than the island’s
purchase price. Built in Norman and Norwegian style, it was a four
storey, 30-room mansion with paging bells to summon summer servants
to the massive baronial hall, which measured 60 ft. long, 30 ft.
wide and 30 ft. high (20 x 10 x 10 m).
Strangely Menier only stayed in the completed
villa twice and only visited his island paradise six times. I’m
certain he was satisfied with his visits though. The deer hunting
was good and the salmon fishing up the Jupiter River exceptional.
His guests from France had a pampered experience like no other.
After his death, Zédé continued
to run the place until it was sold in 1926 to a pulp and paper company.
The villa was intentionally burned as a hazard in 1953, and some
twenty years later the island reverted back to Quebec and is now
largely in the control of Sépaq.
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Anticosti Trip Planner
Trip planning notes: The coast
is mostly wild with the 300 inhabitants of Anticosti centered mainly
in Port Menier. Sépaq Anticosti must grant permission for
you to travel by kayak. There are now camping permit fees for part
of the island.
Note that in fall, deer hunting is king. The
Auberge Port Menier offers an excellent post-trip celebration feast
of lobster in fine dining style.
Maps and guides:
For guiding information and general inquiries contact Sépaq
Anticosti, C.P. 179, Port Menier, Anticosti, Quebec G0G 2Y0. Tel:
418-535-0122. www.sepaq.com
Expedition Agaguk operates from the mainland.
Expedition Agaguk, 1062 Boreal, Havre-Saint Pierre, Quebec G0G 1P0.
expeditionagaguk@globetrotter.net
We gladly hired on Gilles Chagon and Pierre Saint-Hilaire
of Agaguk to join us — a wise acceptance of their suggestion.
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SUGGESTED READING
Anticosti: The Untamed Island, by
Donald MacKay. McGraw Hill, 1979.
Creation, by
Katherine Govier. This historical fiction concerns naturalist John James
Audubon’s and Capt. Henry Wolsey Bayfield’s expeditions on Quebec’s
Lower North Shore. The Granicus story is well told within (pps 219-223).
General Map of Quebec Canoe
Routes : Canot et Kayak, published by the
Fédération Québecoise du canot et du kayak. $8.95
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