[BRIEF NOTE] The Iles-de-la-Madeleine

[rfmcdonald]

Over at The Epoch Times, Bruce Sach has a nice little travelogue ("The Maggies – Canada's Best Kept Secret") about the Magdalen Islands, known in French as the Iles-de-la-Madeleine. Connected most directly by car ferry to Prince Edward Island, the Magdalen Islands constitute a uniquely isolated and self-contained human community in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, almost entirely Francophone and largely of Acadien origin. The Magdalens' presence, like that of the Acadians more broadly, serves (among other things) as a reminder of the fact that eastern Québec--roughly speaking, the modern regions of Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Côte-Nord, and Bas Saint-Laurent--is closely tied to Atlantic Canada by virtue of shared cultural origins, common demography, and the same economic marginalization. I visited the Magdalens once, in the summer of--can it be so long?--1992; I'd love to go back.