Explore/The Island Nobody Knows

Welcome to Anticosti, where you’ll find sweeping beaches, deep caverns, fish-filled rivers and lots and lots of deer.

But hardly any people Story and photos by

Leslie Anthony

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I bag my first deer on Anticosti Island from a plane. ringed by a high fence. But it’s not for security; it was specially designed to keep out the deer. Anticosti has at least 166,000 of them, which—at more than 20 deer per square kilometre—means the island has the highest density of Odocoileus virginianus anywhere.

I’ve come to Anticosti because I’m fascinated that an island some 50 per cent larger than P.E.I. could remain virtually unknown in Canada—and also virtually unvisited.

Strange then, that my first observation of this almost uninhabited wilderness is that it seems, well, a tad crowded.

When I was a school kid looking at the classroom map of Canada, there were certain shapes and patterns that struck me:

AUBERGE McDONALD

PORT-MENIER

PARC NATIONAL D’ANTICOSTI

AUBERGE CHICOTTE-LA-MER

ANTICOSTI ISLAND NFLD.

E

N

C

E

RI

VE

R

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE

ATLANTIC OCEAN

. L A

W

R

QUEBEC

ST

P.E.I.

N.B.

Hudson Bay and its swollen appendix, James; the sinister eye in the west-facing wolf’s head of Lake Superior; and, in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, just above the unfurling tongue of Gaspé, a large pink pill, seemingly about to be gulped. I found out that the name of the pill was Anticosti Island. But that’s all I learned. Over the years, Anticosti remained a complete mystery. What the hell was on it?

In graduate school, while studying amphibians one April in Atlantic Canada, I sought to make an exploratory voyage to the island. But all inquiries were met with f lat discouragement. Don’t bother. The ferry to Anticosti doesn’t run until May. There’s no way to get around. Nowhere to stay. It’s only open during hunting season.

So I’d put the idea on the shelf for another couple of decades.

In the meantime, Google came along, and I was able to discover that Anticosti is chockablock with intrigue. Over time, the island has been variously exploited, controlled or owned by the Montagnais-Naskapi Innu, the Mi’kmaq, France, Britain, Newfoundland (twice), a chocolate baron, a dozen lumber companies and Quebec (which bought the 8,000-square-kilometre island from lumber giant Consolidated-Bathurst in 1974).

Even Nazi Germany had tried (unsuccessfully) to purchase what has been the largest privately owned island in the world.

Despite this considerable transit, no more than a few hundred people have ever called

g a r y d av i d s o n

Not, like most of the visitors here, with a high-powered rifle, but with sadly underpowered irises. And I’m not even trying.

Glasses off, I am gazing out the window of a Dash 7 that has hopscotched for hours along the ever-widening St. Lawrence River, when a lawn ornament appears—a perfectly poised whitetail deer, head cocked to the side, unperturbed by the high-pitched whine of a descending turboprop.

Then I see another deer. And another.

A dozen. At least.

There’s an old adage in travel writing about never starting the story at the airport. But I’m starting from the air, because that’s where I begin witnessing the wonders of Anticosti—wonders both natural and, like the deer, not so much.

Like other airports, the airfield at PortMenier—the only town on Anticosti—is

From far left: MarieJosée Legare poses in the truck; riding near Chicotte-laMer; the remains of a 90-foot blue whale; hiking along Rivière Chicotte’s fossil-rich banks.

Anticosti home. Indeed, long stretches saw only squatting fishermen, hermits, criminals or the castaways tossed with frequency upon a shore that, claiming 400 known shipwrecks, was most often called the Cemetery of the St. Lawrence. (When Jacques Cartier sailed past the island in 1534, he cursed the pernicious reefs of “the land God gave to Cain.”)

The island’s history includes tales of piracy, disease, starvation, cannibalism, lunacy and sorcery, which is why others have called Anticosti “the Strangest Island in the World.” But one of the most interesting chapters began in 1895, when French chocolate baron and multi-millionaire Henri Menier purchased Anticosti from a British lumber company with the intent of turning it into a private hunting and fishing paradise. You might say he succeeded, though biologists would argue that he actually turned Anticosti into the world’s largest wildlife experiment—a lesson in the dos and don’ts of boreal ecology.

Menier’s agents introduced elk, moose, caribou, buffalo, snowshoe hare, mink, grouse, red fox and beaver. Most notably, in 1896 and 1897, they uncrated 220 Virginia whitetail deer. Of the large mammals, only the whitetail prospered on the harsh but fertile island. By 1934, the population

had soared to around 50,000. Today, you can’t take five steps on Anticosti without almost literally running into the results of Menier’s experiment.

Back to the airport. Sorry. But that’s where the monster truck rally starts. During my tour of Anticosti, I’ll be accompanied by Marie-Josée Legare. Marie-Josée (MJ) works elsewhere for Sépaq—Quebec’s park service, which now oversees most of the island—and even she is taken aback by

Au revoir! Bonne chance!

With the next plane seven days away, you have a week to check off as many sights and experiences as possible. Often you are the only one seeing and experiencing. In three hours of driving that day, we will see a grand total of two other trucks. Mostly because, like us, everyone is headed away from Port-Menier on the dusty, 220-kilometre TransAnticostian road. (Last week’s visitors have already cleared off in the turnaround flight.) My second observation of

in 1895, french multi-millionaire henri menier purchased anticosti with the intent of turning it into a private hunting and fishing paradise the leviathan pickups, which every visitor to Parc National d’Anticosti now requires.

The vehicles have giant tires and roll bars and metal deer-catchers mounted in front of the grille like the old cow-catchers on locomotives. When a Sépaq employee walks you out of the air terminal to introduce you to your rig, it’s like some reality-TV treasure hunt is about to begin. Here’s your truck. Here’s your spare tire. Here’s your map. Here’s a radio to call for help.

Anticosti: This place will never get crowded.

With people.

Leaving the airport, we drive to PortMenier proper, where we stock up and tour the town: a general store, an artisan shop, an eco-museum and, of course, a liquor depot. In the plaza fronting what seems a massive church for a population of 200, a totemic sculpture stands over a plaque paying homage to Saint Menier.

It says—and I’m paraphrasing—Thanks m ay 2 0 1 1 explore 4 7

N.S.

Henri, for filling the island with non-native animals that have thrived and turned this into an awesome place for wildlife viewing.

Through a rifle scope!

Three deer watch impassively as I read this. How can they not know?

During lunch at Sépaq’s Auberge PortMenier, a utilitarian hotel that once housed Consolidated-Bathurst’s lumbermen, waitresses hover in Sépaq ranger uniforms, suggesting it’s still a company town. Outside the window, a large buck nibbles the lawn down to a putting green. A fawn wanders into the scene, cavorting nervously; unlike the adult, it seems ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.

As we bounce out of town on stiff springs designed to deal with the gravel washboard, I continue to count the deer.

They’re everywhere. By the time we reach the seaside lodge at Chicotte-la-Mer two hours later, the tally is up to 60 healthy, decidedly relaxed deer—plus four skulking foxes and five panicky hares. Oh wait, the four cervids munching quietly around the compound—including one with its wet nose in my pocket—make 64. I go from patting deer to the dining hall, where the venison steak on the menu has suddenly lost its appeal. Until I find out it’s from some farm elsewhere in Quebec; Anticosti’s deer are considered wild game, which can’t, by Canadian law, be sold in a restaurant. Bon, moi je prends l’entrecôte venison s’il vous plait!

We’re clopping along a raised beach, our shaggy horses sidestepping mounds of seaweed. Though a full-fledged ocean here, the Gulf of St. Lawrence is as still as a pond under clear skies; with the reflection of the evening light, it looks like the best maple syrup—clear, warm, rich, amber. When

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the horses stop to reconnoitre a crossing of crystalline Rivière Chicotte, the silence and bizarre depth of field make it feel like we’re standing in a museum diorama. We should be, for this island is a museum in every possible way. In one gallery are artifacts of Anticosti’s many human iterations, such as the failed industries and Menier’s enterprises. In another, nature’s bounteous contribution: rare plants, 160 bird species, dolphins, seals, whales and untold lesser sea life. There’s also the rich geo-

buoys between mats of kelp. Far beyond their curious crania, a ship materializes on the horizon, then drifts slowly along, a lingering thought in the sunset.

Next morning, to beat the building heat—the average July temperature here is 15˚C, but this week it reaches 30˚—MJ and I leave early to hike up Rivière Chicotte.

It’s remarkably quiet, as if the canyon’s porous rock dampens even the sound of rushing water. Maybe clearer water makes less noise: There’s nary a speck of organic

these days, private-plane-flying customers are the island’s bread and butter, the legacy of Menier’s vision of a sportsman’s paradise logical history, and even a hint of past and present converging—atop a nearby bluff lies the bleaching, fossil-in-the-making of a 90-foot blue whale washed up in 1991.

Despite logging, animal introductions and a painful history of quasi-occupation, Anticosti remains redoubtably pristine. Were our institution to require a savvy, touristdrawing title, it might be the Museum of Enduring Wilderness.

Not far from Chicotte-la-Mer, dozens of harbour and grey seals usually haul out to bask. This late in the day, however, they simply bob offshore, strung like whiskered

From left: A salmonfilled pool on the upper Jupiter River; admiring the view at Baie de la Tour; two of the island’s many, many frogs.

Opposite: The 250foot Chute Vauréal.

matter in the icy stream. Stepping in up to my knees, the view to my feet is as if no intervening liquid were present. You want to drink this elixir but you can’t: The water table on the island is contaminated by the prodigious daily shit of the 166,000 deer.

The rock along the river is marbleline, eroded into a series of polished flutes and hollows by the swift currents. Pretty, yes, but also a short geology course. Anticosti lies just north of Logan’s Line, a whimsical stitch separating two distinct areas: To the south lie rocks that were affected by the

colliding tectonic plates that created the Appalachian Mountains; to the north the rocks were unmolested. Anticosti’s rocks have thus lain undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years. There are seven different Ordovician and Silurian strata, and at this spot the Chicotte Formation, youngest on the island, lies exposed. According to University of Ottawa geologist André Desrochers, who has researched here since the 1970s, the Chicotte has the most fossils of any rocks in North America, crowded with brachiopods and cephalopods, crinoids and corals. Even a few trilobites crash the party. It’s just like going to the beach— 445,000,000 years ago.

We continue toward the seal colony, gaining a height of land that renders a magnificent coastline even more so. In unusually steamy air, the still sea lies aquamarine over reefs; it could be the tropics save for the heaps of umber kelp gathered on sharp, tilted ledges—the very material responsible for tearing boats asunder. As we circle back to the lodge, deep in the cool woods, a pair of deer and two spotted fawns move not an inch as we brush past. Well, excuse us. By the end of the day the deer count is up to 106—and number 100 was a trophy buck with a 12-point rack.

We’ve got a big day of shorter hikes planned.

First stop is at Brick-la-Roche, a hut overlooking Rivière Brick, praised by hikers for its deep-sided canyon and fossil riches, renowned by anglers for its runs of sea trout.

We freestyle along the shallow watercourse, turning plates of fossils here and there, avoiding the blistering sun by aiming for patches of shade.

There are lesser stops and some long hours in the truck, but the day’s gem is the valley of the Jupiter River, Anticosti’s largest and most beautiful watercourse, spoken of with reverence in Atlantic salmon-fishing circles. Fishing guide/photographer René Bourque, who first came here in 1974, knows Jupiter well. We meet him at the river’s mouth, where, over sandwiches on a high gravel bar, he explains how Henri Menier’s Cleopatra boats of yore—long, canopied, flat-bottomed vessels with runners on the hull—were pulled upriver by horses through areas too shallow to pole or paddle. The pool known as Jupiter 6—pools are numbered sequentially from the sea—was midway for these hauls; Jupiter 12—the most famous salmon pool—was a six- to seven-hour journey. Now home to a sprawling, wellappointed lodge in the wilderness, Jupiter 12 has been visited by U.S. presidents,

heads of state, and a raft of celebrities who don’t wish it to be known that they found their way there. True anonymity veils this outback operation, and people like René keep mum on the subject of who comes and when. After all, these moneyed, private-plane-flying customers are the island’s bread and butter, the legacy of Menier’s vision of a sportsman’s paradise.

From water level, it’s hard to get a sense of the piscine creatures at the centre of all this, but later, from a bridge over the upper Jupiter, I gaze hard into sun-glinting water, trying to discern fishy shapes in the currents wending over the multicoloured cobble. It’s like looking at one of those weird 3-D puzzles where you have to let your eyes go out of focus; and when I do, I see them.

Finning in an eddy behind a boulder, like remoras on a shark, five or six salmon— massive, olive-backed, wavering in a timeless flow.

We head next for the more modern Auberge McDonald, on the island’s north side, which was built mostly to serve the fall hunting crowd. By now, I’ve seen nearly 400 deer, and I decide to stop counting.

Along the way we take a break to cruise an extensive marsh for rare flowers and find…frogs. Are they green frogs, mink m ay 2 0 1 1 explore 4 9

frogs—or both? Hard to say. But one thing is clear: They were introduced, and like the deer there are tens of thousands, run amok thanks to a lack of fish or snake or turtle predators. A genuine plague. And, apparently, exactly what Menier envisioned when he had his minions sow the island with frogs fetched from the mainland— an amphibian swarm to control the usual boreal insect swarm. He may have succeeded; Anticosti is the least buggy wilderness I’ve visited in Canada, which is especially surprising given a latitude comparable to Winnipeg.

A long drive in the morning lands us in Baie de la Tour, a huge parabola lined with stunning cliffs. The Telegraph circuit hike leads up and along the high cap for several kilometres. MJ and I walk a chunk, take some shots on one of the many overlooks, and then powwow on our next move. She wants to go back the same way while I want to continue as far along the bluff as possible before deciding how to return, so we split. In less than a kilometre, I reach the end, where the main trail turns back west; but I notice a narrowing path dropping off the other side. I reason that this will likely terminate in a precipitous point, and that, humans being humans, regardless of where we’re directed, there will be a trail to the end. Sure enough something—the deer, maybe castaways—has beaten in a tortuous route through the dense, wind-twisted 5 0 explore m ay 2 0 1 1

From above: The Grotte à la Patate; the wreck of the Wilcox; a few of the island’s whitetail invaders.

conifers crowning the point. I pop out on a knife-edged ridge with sketchy footing and crumbling rock, where, judging by the constellation of eggshells, seabirds regularly nest. It’s windy and refreshing, the cerulean sea stretching the imagination; not only can you see the far side of Baie de la Tour and further promontories to the west, but you can also see the same to the east—soaring cliffs linked by curv-

million years. When we hit Rivière Vauréal, we steer upriver, and are quickly engulfed by towering walls boasting thousands of layers of marine sediment; it isn’t the easiest going as the rocks underfoot wobble and challenge with every step. A bazillion trillion rocks—and each has a fossil.

Hikers pass us coming out. Some are wading downriver, others sticking to the banks and taking off their boots at each of

we hike into grotte à la patate, a cave that was discovered by a hunting guide in 1986. at 2,100 feet, it’s quebec’s third-longest cavern system ing beaches and backed by dense, uninterrupted forest.

After MJ and I meet up again, we set out for Chute Vauréal. It’s a seven-kilometre hike to the base of the falls, the first part following the staircase bed of a rapidly drying stream that steps down through layers of rock. At points we cross lengthy limestone shelves riddled with trace fossils—tracks of ancient marine organisms dating back 400

the 10 or so necessary crossings. We just plunge in, revelling in water far warmer than any of the rivers on the south shore of the island. When we reach the end, I’m not ready for the sight of Chute Vauréal itself. The falls cascades 250 feet—50 feet more than Niagara—and what’s left of its misty plume showers a deep, black pool.

As though in a scene from a South Pacific Continued on page 58

the island nobody knows

Continued from page 50 epic, we swim into the middle of the huge and welcoming pool. Afterwards, sore and satisfied, we make our way out of the canyon, happily pointing the truck back to McDonald base.

Needing a break from the relentless, heataddled hiking, we spend the next morning kayaking to Anticosti’s most accessible shipwreck—the Wilcox, a decommissioned World War II minesweeper that arrived from

Vancouver via Panama in 1946. In those days, there were no roads on the island, and the ship delivered supplies up and down the coast to lighthouses and river keepers. It foundered in a sudden storm in June 1954, and the crew swam to shore. They were unable to dislodge the Wilcox at the next high tide and it was stripped and abandoned.

Further storms have driven it hard against the bluffs atop the beach. A campground and launching point for kayak expeditions have sprung up around it.

Afterward, we hike into Grotte à la Patate,

an enormous cave discovered by a hunting guide in 1986. At 2,100 feet, it’s Quebec’s third-longest cavern system, and it boasts several chambers. Sweeping our headlamps through one cavity we catch a foot-long cephalopod, an ancient relative of today’s squid and octopus, bulging from the wall. No one knows how Grotte à la Patate remained a secret for so long— perhaps because it was concealed by vegetation, or just because it was isolated along a river that received little attention. Since this is the Strangest Island in the World, at least some believe it was not created by natural forces. After strict calculations of latitude, longitude and the sun’s angle at the solstice, one “archaeologist” is convinced that this cavern—with its 30-foothigh entrance opening onto a vault that arcs in perfect symmetry—could only have been designed by aliens.

It’s a long drive back to Port-Menier, where we spend our last night. I want to see the location of the island’s original settlement, Baie-Sainte-Claire, about 10 kilometres northwest of town. It turns out to be a pastoral half-moon waterfront reminiscent of much of the Irish coast, a spot of surpassing beauty. But the long, tidal flats of exposed rock made for an impossible port, which is why Menier moved the town. Only two houses remain, along with a lime oven and a few cemeteries.

About 100 deer (yup, I counted) are grazing in the waist-high grassy meadows nearby. I’m struck by how animals adapt when constraints are removed. This is a protected area with no hunting, and of course there are no predators. Freed of the need to hide in the forest as individuals or small groups, these deer have formed a bona fide herd, sweeping across a grassland interrupted only by patches of spruce. It’s like the Serengeti.

There’s one final place I want to visit, the site of Menier’s former house, a magnificent building that was abandoned in the 1930s and burned to the ground in the 1950s. Menier bought Anticosti for $125,000; he built the house—a Scandinavian-style mansion with wood-carved wall murals—for $130,000. Despite only making six visits to the island before his death in 1913, his ownership tenure is now referred to as the “Menier Epoch.” Indeed the Roi de Chocolat poured considerable resources into making the island more habitable and less lawless, but he also ran

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it as a fiefdom, expropriating all land and homes in return for guaranteed employment in one of his commercial enterprises.

He paid lighthouse and river keepers both for their work and to run off poachers and squatters. He allowed no opposition to his grandiose plans.

Today the house footings remain, the angles and doorways apparent, the rooms labelled like some giant blueprint. Beside the site is a small tower built to emulate one of the turrets of the old mansion. Standing atop, gazing out with the sea air in your nose, you realize how Menier must have felt overlooking his world.

We dine that night with Denis Duteau, a deer biologist who is also the mayor of Port-Menier. We have an interesting conversation about the fall hunt, both its economic and biological roles. The island’s economy has come to rely on those three months, and the 8,000 to 10,000 deer killed off each fall makes not the slightest dent in a continually rising population; it’s far less than the 20,000 to 30,000 that will die in a particularly savage winter. The mild, snowless winter of the previous year has

the Anticostians alarmed: winterkill was way down, boding for a sharp rise in the deer population. And, according to Duteau, the recently adjusted estimate of 166,000 is probably low—there may actually be more than 200,000.

Of course, the effect of all those deer is not entirely positive. They eat practically everything in sight, which explains the unusual appearance of many of the trees I’ve seen. Even birch trees, left behind after selective logging had razed their coniferous cousins, are decidedly non birch-like.

Instead, they resemble tropical arbours with bunched crowns swaying 40 feet off the ground; when these trees were younger, deer stripped their lower branches, leaving them to sprout into green lollipops.

Elsewhere, deer have sculpted spruce into pyramidal bonsais and “ballerina trees” with noticeable waists. Balsam fir, the once-dominant tree of this boreal ecosystem, has been scarfed outright; none has grown naturally on Anticosti since the 1930s.

Previously, the only indigenous animals eating vegetation on the island were mice

For more information on Anticosti Island, visit sepaq.com/pq/pan/

and black bears. By the 1970s, however, bears were almost non-existent; the bruins couldn’t find enough fall food to fatten up for hibernation or gestation—berry-loving deer had cleaned off the once-abundant crops and grazed the bushes to the ground.

Bear birth rates fell and winterkill soared until they were officially extirpated; the last bear was seen some 15 years ago. Biologists believe this to be the only known case of a herbivore putting a large, well-established omnivore out of business.

As far as I’m aware, there’s no prohibition about ending a travel story at an airport.

Which is a good thing, because on our final morning, we’re stuck at the tiny, empty airfield, unable to take off. It’s pea-soup foggy—shipwreck weather—after days of glorious sun. Not that I’m complaining. I’m in no hurry to leave. I’ve enjoyed my week, finally discovering some of the secrets of the pink pill on the map. And besides, it’s not like there’s nothing to do. Looking out through the fence and through the fog, I can always count the deer. e Leslie Anthony is a regular contributor to explore and the author of Snakebit.

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