"The rugged tip of Gaspé Peninsula " a Gaspé Travel Page by Bwana_Brown

In late May, 2007 my wife and I set out from our home in Fredericton, New Brunswick on what turned out to be a 2000-km six-day driving trip around the rugged eastern tip of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. Due to various time constraints, we had made a two-day/one-night stab at the peninsula 9 years earlier and had enjoyed it so much that we vowed to return one day. Finally, after a long winter and then 7 straight days of rain or showers in mid-May, I saw an upcoming break in the weather, with sunshine and mid-20 C temperatures forecast, so away we went.

The first official European explorers to sight the Gaspé Peninsula were led by French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1534, although he was very surprised to find the local natives able to converse with him in a pidgin form of the Basque language from the Spanish/French Bay of Biscay shores in Europe! This is believed to have been the result of Basque visits there due to their annual fishing expeditions to the nearby Grand Banks off Newfoundland, beginning in the late-1400s. The rugged coast, mountainous and heavily forested interior combined with severe winter weather made the remote Gaspé area of Quebec a difficult place to settle, taking centuries for different waves of immigrants to gain a toe-hold. These included the French discoverers (~1650), a different batch of ‘Acadian’ French settlers evicted from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by the British (1755), British Channel Islander fishermen after all of French North America was lost to English forces (1759), British ‘Loyalists’ fleeing north after the loss of the American colonies (1783) and finally potatoe famine refugees from Ireland and Scotland (~1840). Just the melting pot of these cultures alone makes the Gaspé Peninsula a very interesting place to experience!

Geographically, the Peninsula marks the end of the ancient Appalachian Mountain chain on continental North America, starting about 4500-km away in Alabama before it plunges into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The highest mountain in the rugged interior is Mont Jacques-Cartier at 1268-m (4160-ft) but there are several others nearing this height. The interior is still heavily forested and crisscrossed by deep river valleys, resulting in almost all habitation being located on the coastline, bounded by the St. Lawrence River to the north, Gulf of St. Lawrence at the eastern tip and Chaleur Bay to the south. As shown on the map in my ‘General Tip’, our route from New Brunswick took us along the south shore a short distance before we headed for the north coast along the Cascapdia River valley and through the central Chic Choc Mountain range. From there we headed east on the spectacularly rugged north coast, explored Forillon National Park and ‘Pierced’ Rock (Rocher Percé) at the eastern tip and then completed the circle on the ‘softer’ southern coastline. My thanks to both 'Sim1' and 'Jefie' for inspiring me onward after reading their pages on this geological wonder!