In the summer of 1915, while the rest of the world was consumed by war, the people of Old-Harry on the Îles-de-la-Madeleine were busy making plans for a new church. But they needed wood, no small challenge in a largely treeless place where building supplies are limited.
Within a few months, their prayers were answered. A Norwegian freighter carrying a load of timber ran aground on nearby Brion Island during a storm. As if by divine intervention, construction on St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea Church began soon after.
The universe has long smiled on the people of these islands, called Madelinots, who have survived for centuries against all odds on this windswept, crescent-shaped archipelago of sand dunes, beaches and rugged cliffs. More than 500 ships have been wrecked on the dangerous shoals that surround the islands, providing important supplies to build homes, schooners and, yes, even churches.
An old fishing boat rests near St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea Church on GrosseÎle.
I travelled to the islands with an old friend, for the first time, in June. We’d both grown up in the Maritimes and yet as anglophones, the Maggies – just a five-hour ferry ride north of Prince Edward Island – might as well have been a far-off foreign country. While it’s long been a part of Quebec and a summer playground for francophones for decades, most of my English-speaking friends who I told about the trip had to Google where it was.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence, with its storms, blinding fog and endless wind, is also the thing that makes the place, called the Magdalen Islands in English, so special. Separated from North America by this massive body of water, the sea feels like a buffer from the rest of the world. You feel it as soon as the 750-person car ferry pulls away from the harbour in Souris, PEI.
It’s wash day for this resident of La Grave on Havre-Aubert.
Once aboard the CTMA Traversier, no one is talking about Donald Trump, tariffs or war in the Middle East. The concerns are more localized: getting the sangria to their seats on the sundeck before the fiddle band begins to play. Suddenly, in this environment, lobster poutine with Hollandaise sauce seems like a perfectly reasonable breakfast choice.
“When you get on that boat, you leave your troubles back on the wharf,” said Frédéric Myrand, an islander who left for school but returned as an adult.
Most Madelinots are French-speaking descendants of Acadians kicked out of the Maritimes by the British during the Expulsion in the mid-1700s, people who long ago learned how to adapt to the sea. Many from the small anglophone minority are the descendants of survivors of shipwrecks. They’ve lived through hurricanes, fishery collapses and isolation, things that have given islanders a determined sense of self-reliance.
“It’s all part of the deal with living here,” Michel Boudreau, manager of the Musée de la Mer, a local history museum in the quaint village of La Grave, told me.
The payoff is a place that’s often tranquil and unspoiled, unique and foreign enough without needing a passport. Outside of the busy months of July and August, it’s easy to find a beach all to yourself, an empty table at great restaurants or breathtaking hiking and bicycle trails you don’t need to share with anyone else. No wonder the poet Georges Langford called Bird Rock, the landmark island once famous as a graveyard for ships, the “exact address of solitude.”
Home to more than 12,000 people, tourism has become a major industry. Prior to the arrival of modern ferry boats in the 1970s, with their drive-on, drive-off service, you had to pay to have your vehicle hoisted onto a cargo ship and steamed to the islands. More than 63,500 visitors came to the islands in 2023, mostly by ferry. Because of self-imposed American travel boycotts this year, they’re expecting a jump in Canadian visitors.
We got by with our limited French, but unilingual English-speakers shouldn’t be concerned about language here. Most Madelinots are by nature friendly and welcoming, and many will switch to broken English if you ask. When we sat down on the grass outside Café des Lupins, surrounded by dozens of tattooed twentysomething hipsters sipping lattes and natural wines, no one blinked at the sight of a pair of middle-aged anglos crashing the party.
The café served up delicious sandwiches, along with cans of a local blonde ale made with sea water, brewed nearby at a converted crab processing factory. It was a perfect moment, like we’d somehow walked onto the set of a tourism commercial.
Everywhere, there were pleasant surprises when it was time to eat. Seal poutine at Café de la Grave in Havre-Aubert. Excellent lobster and salmon sushi from a food trailer by the beach. Roasted halibut at Resto Bistro Accents. A steaming bowl of chowder served in a former convent, packed with more scallops than a wharf in Digby, N.S.
Seafood has long been an important part of the Madelinot diet, even as the ocean changes around them. There used to be so much herring around the islands that the big bay turned white when the fish returned for their spring spawn. Today, there’s only one smokehouse, Le Fumoir d’Antan, still preparing fish in the old artisanal style, a three-month process done inside wooden barns built in the 1940s. They have to ship their herring in from Newfoundland now, after decades of overfishing and climate change have upended this once-bustling fishery.
“It’s always evolving, but it’s important to us to keep this alive,” said Éloi Arseneau, the fourth generation in his family to run the smokehouse, which gives daily tours and also sells a wide range of smoked seafood.
Eloi Arseneau sets fires to smoke herring inside the smokehouse, Fumoir d’Antan.
Almost every Madelinot has stories about how quickly the changing climate is altering their islands, where storms can reshape sandstone cliffs and make dunes disappear. When Hurricane Fiona tore through here in 2022, it washed away bike paths and beaches, clawed at the highway and flooded Cindy Poirier’s paddling shop and café, called Cindyhook Sports Adventures.
“It can be stressful sometimes, but we have no choice. We have to adapt,” Poirier told me. “It’s what we’ve always done.”
Most Madelinots are French-speaking descendants of Acadians kicked out of the Maritimes by the British during the Expulsion in the mid-1700s.
If you go
Visitors can fly to the islands from Montreal and Quebec City, but there’s something about the five-hour ferry voyage from Prince Edward Island that is part of the Maggies’ appeal. Entry Island, an English-speaking community accessible by pedestrian ferry, emerges from the sea like a beacon as you approach the archipelago. Crossings cost $110 per car and $59 per adult each way in the high season. Reservations are recommended. Travellers should show up 75 minutes before departure.
We stayed at the Château Madelinot, a newly renovated hotel that’s a short drive from the ferry terminal in Cap-aux-Meules. It has clean rooms, ocean views and a good top-floor restaurant that overlooks the sea. Rooms start at $197 a night, more in July and August.
Stop at Café de la Grave, housed inside a restored general store in Havre-Aubert, which has been serving up local seafood since 1980. The seal meat is slow-cooked, giving it a consistency like pulled pork, but with a mild gamey taste not unlike deer. At night, musicians sidle up to the piano and guests pack into the space for spontaneous jam sessions. It’s a quintessential Îles-de-la-Madeleine experience.
See www.tourismeilesdelamadeleine.com for more details.
The author travelled as a guest of Le Québec maritime. It did not review or approve this story.
