Tour of Miquelon Island
After lunch we resumed our tour and drove to the island of Miquelon (see my post of 30 August 09) which is the island on the top part of the map above. The name Miquelon comes originally from the Spanish Basque language and was noted on a 1579 map. This island is a part of France and I explained the history of St Pierre et Miquelon in my post of 21-August-09, part one. There are about 700 people living on Miquelon, most are descendants of Normands, Bretons, Basques and Acadians. The history and culture of Miquelon is very similar to the one of Acadie. The story of the Acadians from the Maritimes area of Canada is a very painful one which I won’t attempt to recount here. You may read it here. The British either placed the French Acadians in jail for many years or expelled them if they did not pledge allegiance to the British Crown. Several years after the “Grand Dérangement” (Great Expulsion) from Acadie in 1755 a few hundred of them went to Miquelon and stayed there. Most of the Acadians were shipped back to St Malo and Brest in France later on. Some settled in France some were shipped back to St Pierre et Miquelon again but many went to Louisiana where they are called “Cajuns.”
As I explained in an earlier post when I was playing cowboys and Indians as a little girl in Paris I called myself a “Micmac” Indian – a name I thought I had invented. So I was very surprised to see an information billboard talking about the First Nation of Mi’kmaqs in Miquelon.
Records indicate that there was a Mi’kmaq presence in St Pierre et Miquelon centuries ago. They traded with the French and got along well with them. In the 17th century they cooperated with France to fight the British and even brought back 20 British prisoners to Miquelon where they received a good ransom for the lot. In 1767 France sent two Jesuit priests to minister to the French population. Parish records contain various acts involving Mi’kmaq baptisms, marriages and burials. This went on for at least a 100 years (until there were Catholic priests in Newfoundland.) We visited the Miquelon church, pale blue on the outside and in the shape of a boat inside, with beautiful stained glass windows.
Janot drove us around the island in his van and close to a granite hill called Cap Blanc where Miquelon’s light house is located.
The sea is omnipresent – sometime calm and sometimes furiously assaulting the coast. There have been over 600 ship wrecks around these islands. Langlade (Petite Miquelon) and Miquelon (Grande Miquelon) are the right places to go if you are a nature lover in search of beauty and peace. As for sailing its water – you better be pretty good at it.
Now I’ll talk about something my French speaking readers may not be aware of (if they live outside the USA.) Last year while I was researching information about Miquelon island on the Net I found a site called “Miquelon.org” and thinking it was about the island I started reading it. It is not a tourism site but called “The Fighting French” and it says: “Miquelon.org is a watchdog group dedicated to documenting Anti-French activity in politics, news and entertainment.“ (If you click on the Miquelon.org site you can watch a clip with example of French bashing jokes.)
I am French (dual French/US citizen) and went to school in England for awhile so I was aware of the Anglo-Saxon francophobia and knew that some segments of the US had inherited and embraced it but still did not know that there are web sites addressing it. For example many TV entertainers like Jay Leno uses french bashing jokes often to the delight of their audience. Many of the jokes I read tend to portray French people as weasels and cowards. My father lost a limb in World War II and many in my family were in the Resistance. My mother faced certain death if she had been found by the Gestapo saving as many Jewish girls as she did. Usually I just listen to all this and step back so I won’t get myself involved in negative thoughts but I still would like to mention a few facts.
France fought 3 wars within 3 generations. During World War I the US lost in France 117,465 men or 0.13% of the US population, France lost 1,697,800 or 4.29% of the French population (see Wipikedia) – for the American population of 1914 that would have been like almost 4 million casualties! By 1939 there were not many healthy French men left since a full generation had been wiped out. French soldiers were in the first Gulf War and are still dying right now in Afghanistan. France has 2,900 troops in the NATO-led international coalition battling Taliban guerrillas. This morning, Friday 4 September 2009, one French soldier was killed and nine others wounded when a booby trap exploded against their armored personnel carrier as they carried out a reconnaissance in the Showki region, north of the Afghan capital Kabul. The Francophobes forget the decisive battle of Yorktown in 1781 where Americans troops fought alongside a larger amount of French soldiers. French casualties were about 500 men in the Yorktown campaign (twice as many French casualties as the US.)
Painting of the Siege of Yorktown, Musée de Versailles (painted for French King Louis XVI)
I have heard people say “French people don’t like us.” I have gone to France with my English speaking husband many times and we did not speak in French yet we never encountered unpleasantness (but I did here in the US.) French people may distrust the US Government (at least the last one) but not the US people.I read this from “Our America History”: “The most decisive naval battle of the American Revolution was fought under French commanders with French ships and French sailors and marines”. The American War of Independence almost bankrupt France. Rear Admiral de Grasse came with an armada of ships. His command ship was the Ville de Paris, which was a gift of the people of France to America. It was the largest war ship in the 18th century. If France had not been there during that war America might have been British for a lot longer – wasn’t it until the 1980s that Canada ended their last legal link with Britain?
The ship La Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris.
French jokes have become so ingrained in the American culture that no one will challenge them. After Colin Powell made a speech about the certainty of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Fox News reported: “… Only an imbecile or perhaps a Frenchman could be insensitive to Colin Powell’s arguments.” Just think what the Irish would have said if the word Frenchman had been replaced by Irishman, or Israeli or Japanese! If the US public would denounce these openly French bashing jokes politicians like John McCain, entertainers and newspapers would have to apologize. It is easy to say “just ignore it” but the problem is that in a country were few people travel overseas this type of racism, repeated so often starts to shape their perceptions, and it is unjust and deplorable.
I had forgotten about Miquelon.org but researching for my post this week I found it again and this is why I thought to write about all this. I just would add that the people I know here in the United States do not have anti-French sentiments; it is just a vocal minority of uninformed people who believe in bad stereotypes.
Well – we arrived in St Pierre for our last night before ferrying back to Newfoundland. I was very sad to leave these French islands nestled so far away in North America. They are fragile and vulnerable in a way but genuinely French. I shall talk about beautiful Newfoundland in future posts.