more adventurers don’t know about the island since it’s a wonderfully wild and truly unique place to explore. On the other hand, the very fact that it’s so unknown proved to be part of what made exploring the island so special. Those who do make the journey are presented with a vast natural playground without throngs of tourists, where finding accommodations even during a summertime long weekend is no problem. Driving around the island for days, visiting its most fascinating sites, I encountered very few fellow travellers and only occasionally ran into friendly SEPAQ workers – the folks who manage and maintain Quebec’s provincial parks and wilderness areas. Imagine emerging from the woods to discover Baie de la Tour: kilometres of spectacular white beach framed by towering cliffs, lapped by turquoise waves, and utterly absent of any
other souls. There are few places on the planet where you can drive to within a few metres of a scene like this and find it vacant on such a warm, sunny day. The island is filled with such places to explore, or simply sit in quiet awe of the natural beauty and collect one’s thoughts. Earlier in the season, the volume of water cascading over Chute Vauréal would have been thunderous, but it was merely a trickle during my visit. Even still, watching it plunge 76 metres to the canyon floor below is quite the spectacle. (For perspective, that’s 25 metres taller than Niagara Falls.) A brief stop to admire the crystalline Jupiter River revealed schools of trout and salmon, some as thick as my thigh, lingering in the pockets and pools of the swift-moving water, making me lament having forgotten my rod and reel. This must have been what life was like here in the 1500s when Jacques Cartier first sailed along Anticosti’s shore. Despite a few earlier settlers using this place for logging, Anticosti Island has long been a recreationalist’s paradise. In 1895, French chocolatier Henri Menier purchased the entire island and set about constructing the village of Port-Menier, with many of the town’s buildings still in use today. Although he hoped to profit from a seafood cannery and the harvest of local minerals and timber, Menier’s real intent was to create a hunting and fishing utopia for himself. He introduced a number of animal species to the island with the likes of bison, caribou and elk proving unsuccessful. White-tailed deer, on the other hand, flourished without any predators, and the original group of 200 animals brought over in 1896 has grown to an estimated population of 160,000, outnumbering the island’s human residents 800 to 1! The abundance of deer is evident almost immediately upon arrival, with many of them sauntering around, largely unbothered by their human cohabitants. Each day, a few regulars would arrive at the door of my bed and breakfast looking for morning sustenance (and often receiving lettuce, carrots or other goodies from the innkeeper).
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