While in Saint-Pierre
I should back up. My sister, Patty, and I couldn’t find a direct flight from the U.S. to the French collectivity of small islands in the North Atlantic called Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. So, we first flew to Toronto, then onto Nova Scotia where we hung out for a few fabulous days before catching our flight to the capital, Saint-Pierre. I had to do research for my novel, The Fisherman, which is set there during the Prohibition.
Our flight to Saint-Pierre was at 9:30am. We cleared customs at the Nova Scotia airport, which meant we went through a door in Canada and magically stepped over a line on the floor into French territory. We walked out onto the tarmac, boarded the small plane, and settled in. The stewardess greeted us.
“Bonjour,” she said.
“Bonjour,” we replied.
“Voudriez-vous tous les deux le vin rouge ou blanc?” (Would you like red or white wine?)
It was 9:25 in the morning. Patty and I looked at each for a second then said, “Rouge, s’il vous plaît.”
The stewardess brought back a small bottle of red wine each for us and a warm chocolate croissant. After we savored the croissant and wine, she came back to check on us.
“Le vol est retardé. Nous partirons dans vingt minutes. Voulez-vous un autre vin?” (The flight is delayed. We will depart in another twenty minutes. Would you like another wine?)
Patty and I looked at each other and smiled. “Oui, merci!”
As she walked away, we clinked glasses. “Vive le France!”
She came back with two more bottles of wine and two more warm chocolate croissants. That will go down as the best breakfast in history.
Once we landed in Saint-Pierre, we took a cab to our Bed&Breakfast and checked in. The village of Saint-Pierre is very small with narrow winding streets and brightly colored houses. We had traveled to St. John’s Newfoundland a few years earlier, and the houses looked about the same. After we dropped off our bags, we hit the streets.
There is only so much one can Google. I wrote several drafts of the book and described the village as best I could by looking at the images on the internet. But that never does the story or the experience justice. I believe you have to walk the streets, taste the food, and listen to the music of a place to get an idea of the people who live there.
We walked straight to the shore. In one of the first scenes in the book, my protagonist, Daniel, stands on the shore looking out at the harbor waiting for his father to return home after a long day fishing. I wanted to see the actual stones, taste the water, smell the salt in the air. Like Daniel, I found a flat stone and skipped it across the water. Here is a picture of those stones!
I gathered handfulls of the stones into my pockets to take home with me. Needless to say, coming back home I had a lot of explaining (and begging and pleading) to do in the security line at the airport. I keep the stones in a jar on my bookshelf.
After waking along the shore, we decided to visit the Saint-Pierre Historical Museum, Musée Héritage. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this picture. It was my character, Daniel, exactly how I had imagined him! The photo even shows a schooner in the harbor!
As we walked through the museum, I asked one of the guides a few questions. After the fifth or sixth question, the boy gave me a look as though he wondered why I was so curious.
“I’m writing a book that’s set here,” I said.
“Let me show you through the museum,” he said. “I’m Jacques.”
Afterwards, Jacques walked us back to the shore and explained how the fishermen raised their dories out of the water up onto wooden rails. The fishermen attach a rope to the bow, then someone onshore cranks the wheel and the dories roll up the wooden rails.
“Would you like to go out to L’Île-aux-Marins or The Island of Sailors,” he asked.
“Yes, please!” I said.
L’Île-aux-Marins is a small island just off the coast of Saint-Pierre. It was a commune until 1945. Before 1931, it was known as L’Île-aux-Chiens or Dog Island. It once had a population of 700, but the last family left the island in 1965. With the exception of a few people who venture over seasonally, it’s a ghost town. You can still see the bow of the wrecked ship Transpacific on the northern side of the island.
We followed Jacques to a dock, climbed into his inflatable boat, and sailed out to L’Île-aux-Marins.
The small boat skidded to a stop along the stony shore, and we got out. The wind whipped across the tall grass, salt hung heavy in the air. The sun was just beginning to set, casting a warm glow over the ancient island. A gilded hour. I took this picture.
That day happened to be our father’s birthday. He had passed away a few years before and would have just loved this trip. After we got back to town, Patty and I decided to go to a bar to raise a glass to our father, Bob Collins, before we headed back to the B&B for the night. We sat at the bar and ordered a Jameson and coke. The man sitting next to us interrupted us.
“Excuse me. I couldn’t help but notice you were speaking English,” he said. “Where are you from?”
“The New York and Washington, D.C. And you?”
“I’m from Florida, but I live here now with my wife who is from Cuba.” He held out his hand. “I’m Bob Collins.”
Seriously, the hair stood up on my neck. What were the odds?
After our drink, we met up with a woman named Betty Sutton. She and her husband, Paul, were staying across the hall from us in the B&B. We told her about our Bob Collins encounter.
“Hey, Betty,” I said, “you’re from the Yukon. Our father’s favorite poet was Robert Service. He was born in England, but was famous for writing about the Gold Rush and the Yukon. Are you familiar with his work?”
I should first say that Dad could recite most of Service’s poems from memory. His favorite poem was called The Cremation of Sam McGee which is quite a long poem, maybe 14 pages long. It starts, “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by men who moil for gold.”
As soon as we said Robert Service, Betty paused, looked up at the full moon, and started to recite The Cremation of Sam McGee! It was so eerie. Patty and I looked up to the sky and yelled, “We get it, Dad! You’re here with us!”
They say there are no coincidences in life. I can’t explain what happened that night. Instead, I prefer to think that anything is possible. Dad would have loved to have been on that trip with us. And he was. Indeed, there are strange things done in the midnight sun.
