St Pierre

It was probably on board an ancient sailboat that I reached for the first time, at the age of four, the small archipelago of Saint Pierre et Miquelon.

I lived there for four years, never more than a few hundred meters away from the sea... yet I was somehow blind to the magic of he ocean, of the waves, that immense space that froze once a year throughout the port of Barachois. I was more preoccupied by our children's games, by the "traîne" (it was the name locally given to (Mettre ici la traduction de "luge") that we sometimes tied behind a large Newfoundland dog ; or by the "bleuets" and "grains" ( local names for blueberries and cranberries) which our mother would turn into jam. As children, we knew nothing of Saint-Pierre's curious past, when Prohibition forbade the sale of liquor to Americans: the warehouses of Saint Pierre overflew with cases and barrels or bootleg alcohol, which large sailboats used to unload at night in the bays and estuaries of Northern America.

I returned to Saint-Pierre only 40 years later, during the summer of 1986, single handing my second sailboat, the small sloop Voyage. I had left the continent from North Sydney, where the ferry used to leave for the archipelago. The lighthouse of Galantry bade me welcome on a rare fogless day, and I've found practically unchanged the houses covered with planking or shingles, the guns at Pointe aux Canons, the small town square, and all of my childhood friends, now all over forty, who invited me to taste their lobster or codfish.
I have been charmed by the island, I could easily go back and spend a whole winter there, with my sailboat caught by the ice, for instance inside the vast lagoon that opens up in the long sand dune that connects Miquelon and Langlade.

1. Saint Pierre

Agrandir le plan

Saint Pierre and Miquelon : www. st-pierre-et-miquelon.com
St Pierre & Miquelon : www. grandcolombier.com