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Taking a luxury cruise of Eastern Canada
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Isle de la Madeleine in the Madeleine Archipelago is home to 13,000 Acadians.
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TADOUSSAC, Quebec -- "Dancez avec moi?" inquires a jolly gentlemen as I step off the gangplank in Tadoussac, a little bit of a port at the confluence of the St. Lawrence Estuary and the Saguenay Fjord in Quebec province. Grizzled with gray at the edges and dressed in what looks slightly more comfortable than a canvas sack, he takes my hands with a big grin and pulls me into his small circle of companions, a group of actors hired to greet cruise visitors.
If you go
For more information or to book a cruise, visit www.ponant.com. Prices per person start at $4,273 and vary by cabin style.
This surprise request to dance on a rickety wooden dock momentarily takes me aback. But then I think, why not? With fiddlers sawing away at their strings, smiling women dressed in period garb clapping their hands to the music and giggling children leaning over an ice-laden, makeshift table twirling sticks of maple syrup into hardened candy, I figure a refusal would be downright unfriendly.
As so I find myself tooling along Canada's eastern coastline on the La Compagnie du Ponant's Le Boreal, a 264-passenger luxury ship sailing from Quebec City, around the Gaspe Peninsula and down to Boston Harbor. Le Boreal, at 466 feet long, has the advantage of dipping in and out of picturesque fishing villages and shallow ports larger ships can't reach.
Onboard, historians paint a picture of early explorer Jacques Cartier's relentless and frequently tumultuous search for the elusive Northwest Passage and his on again off again relationship with the Iroquois. And naturalists confirm this vast region is abundant with land and marine wildlife, creating opportunities for high-octane and reflective adventure.
Once onboard, it's no surprise I find myself amid dapper French tourists, bound together in search of a common history and some of the most stunning vistas in North America. This is because La Compagnie du Ponant is well known in Europe for its appealing routes and subdued elegance.
With me settled in my cozy yet luxurious cabin, Le Boreal glides up the St. Lawrence toward the Saguenay fjord, dropping anchor in the village of Tadoussac where I find my hearty welcome. The town, once France's first trading post on the mainland of "New France," is still the fjord's door keeper and as such is a hub of tourism for the estuary area.
Here, where the fjord's fresh water meets the salty St. Lawrence, a nutrient rich underwater environment becomes an important summer feeding ground for several whale species: fin, mink, belugas and blue whales, as well as harbor porpoises. It is, in fact, a mecca for visitors in search of whale-watching excursions by zodiac and hikers seeking the quiet, forested terrain surrounding the fjord. A stroll around town accompanied by an afternoon snack of tasty poutine -- a quintessential Quebecois dish of french fries smothered in gravy -- rounds out the day nicely.
But I have only a day in port, and by evening I have to be back onboard in time for dinner.
Although the ship flies the French flag, the food is pleasantly North American. And even the Anglophiles eat heartily. After dinner, however, the ship reveals its particular French sensibilities in a flamboyant Paris-style revue staged in the theater.
Ports come and go, but the Madeleine Islands, an archipelago in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is one of the most memorable. By the time we drop anchor, even in the bright sunshine of a September morning, there is a discernable chill in the air made more noticeable by the wind.
If it's this chilly in September, how bearable is it in the depths of winter, I wonder. "Oh, this is pleasant," our chipper, bilingual guide Hugo Petitpas tells me. But the tiny population -- only 13,000 Acadians -- tells a story of winters that are too long and too cold.
The trees were clear-cut over a century ago, producing a relatively flat terrain comprised of volcanic rock and sand dunes. A sweeping glance paints a grim picture of few defenses against what nature hurls at this picturesque chain of islands, where generations of families know and rely on each other.
The Acadians are survivors. By 1875, when the timber had all been logged, bundled up and sent back to Britain for use as flooring, lobster fishing became the islanders' primary livelihood. I'm told that today, millions of pounds of lobster are fished by these modern Acadians who survive on the profits during the off-season.
While some of the ports on our itinerary don't pull out the stops like Tadoussac, there is a potent charm factor in colorful Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
A masterful example of a bona fide British colonial settlement, Lunenberg, like most coastal towns in this part of Canada, has a waterfront that is the heart of the city. Fishing, shipbuilding and social life revolved around some of the richest stocks of both fish and fur -- including the now fished-out walrus -- when these towns were built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The same is true today, with the addition of tourism revenue.
Lunenburg's annual folk art festival is a popular event, a fact my fellow cruisers seem to know as they disembark in droves. Together we wander the orderly, parallel streets, wander through the historic Knaut-Rhuland Museum with its authentic period garb and reproduction rooms. A knitter, I'm drawn to the little shops selling handmade, heavy woolens designed to protect tender skin in zero-degree weather.
After a last stop in lively Bar Harbor, I disembark in Boston. Perhaps it was the clear night air wafting through the balcony door that I left open, but whatever the reason, I feel better rested than I have in weeks.
First Published February 10, 2013 12:00 am
