FRANCE IN NORTH AMERICA: ST. PIERRE ISLAND by Thomas C. Jamrog (published Motorcycle Tour and Travel July '95) I rode my motorcycle to France this summer, celebrating Bastille Day in grand style. I even had a nice nap on the short boat ride out from the mainland. Say what? France in North America - St. Pierre Island. The decision was an easy one. The timing of Bastille Day, vacation, and another tug on my heart strings from the Canadian Maritimes was reason enough to head for southeastern Newfoundland. That's where France's last North American holdings remain on the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. This is not Quebecois culture, but the real thing: francs, tiny imported cars, squid sausage and French cheese. It's relatively easy to get to, but be prepared for a night time ferry passage, wind, possible rain, and big open country. This trip goes everywhere. Not only do you get a chance to plaster stickers from Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland on your saddlebags, but you can do so in one twenty four hour period. We did when we departed Lincolnville, ME at 6 am and reached North Sydney, Nova Scotia some 620 miles and 14 hours later. We entered Canada through the Calais/St. Stephen border crossing, and slabbed along Rt. 1, linking up with the Transcanadian Highway at Sussex. My travel partner Alan and I have made this same run a half-dozen times, so sightseeing wasn't necessary. You reach Newfoundland on the huge Caribou ferry, leaving North Sydney at 11:30 p.m. Motorcycles are always sent to the front of the line, so move when you hear any garbled loudspeaker announcement, because you need to be ready to motor up into the cavernous hull and run for the tiedowns to secure your bikes. If you don't know how, park next to somebody that does. Do it quickly, or send a member of your party up to the main passenger level to save floor space with sleeping bags, pads or personal gear. The game plan is to use the travel time to sleep. Soon it will be 4:00 a.m. when breakfast is served. When we docked at 5:30 the sky was clear, bikes were dry, and we were ready to go. Alan and I hunkered down and proceeded to make time so that we could make our ferry reservation to St. Pierre Island the next day. By nightfall, we covered 500 miles on the TCH. We camped at a free primitive (no services but outhouse) campsite at Piper's Hole River. It looked as if it might serve as a hellraising place for locals on the weekend, but we had a quiet night there. The final mainland approach to St. Pierre is down the 150 mile Burin peninsula, a long arm of desolation that juts out into the Atlantic between Placentia and Fortune Bays. There are no services on most of the Burin, few houses, but dramatic rocky lichen-covered terrain dotted with countless little black ponds. We explored a dull 10 mile dirt road that paralleled Route 210. Back again on pavement, we experienced the terrors of Canadian public works just after the sign man slowed us down and said "Take it easy, the road ahead's just been tarred". Read oiled. These guys had just sprayed a film of slimy black goo all over the road and the only way we escaped dumping the bikes or being coated with the stuff was to ride on the very far edge of the pavement where a 12" strip escaped the limits of the sprayers. Next I survived a harrowing ride through the fog by gluing my bike to Alan's taillight who was gluing his to the car ahead. When we pulled off to collect ourselves, the car's driver stopped and came back to greet us. John was making his rounds as a plumbing/heating salesman. Once a motorcyclist always a motorcyclist, and this native Newfoundlander said that a few years ago he and a cousin rode bikes down south in the US. He lived up near St. John's and told us to look him up if we ended up staying there. We did, but that story comes later. Eventually we reached our destination at the tiny town of Fortune. The St. Eugene V runs daily between Fortune and St. Pierre. This is a high speed, comfortable hydrofoil passenger vessel capable of holding 200 people, with a 55 minute crossing time. Upon arrival in St. Pierre we were awaiting passage through French customs, when I remarked to Alan about the friendly black Lab retriever who was poking through the crowd. Alan clued me that Blackie was a drugsniffing dog. When it was my turn to go through the checkpoint, I was searched. I was wearing a black belt wallet. The agent made me take it off and he explored each compartment with a pencil. He was very thorough. Soon I was through. What do you do when you arrive in a foreign port with no idea where to do, what to do, or who to contact? We started at our hotel, where there was an information reception/ wine party at the Hotel Robert. We were told that St.Pierre/Miquelon islands are the site of 850 documented shipwrecks and that the 7 mile sandbar that exists between Little and Big Miquelon is built entirely on wrecks that occurred between those islands. The farmers and fishermen were known to supplement their cupboards through speedy salvage work. The bounty of one 1970's German freighter wreck resulted in the placement of one or more Wurlitzer jukeboxes into many of the inhabitants' households. In the period of U.S. prohibition, the principal export shifted from cod to liquor. Three hundred fifty thousand cases per month were exported to the waters off the eastern United States. One of the visitors to St. Pierre island was none other than Al Capone. Some of Al's memorabilia is in a small museum in the Hotel Robert. The mountains of leftover packing crates served as fuel for the islander's wood stoves as well as construction material for a number of the island's "Cutty Sark Villas". On this trip, your motorcycle stays on Newfoundland, because there is no regular vehicle passage to the island. There's less that 15 miles of road on the whole island. I asked the hotel manager if there were any motorcyclists that I could interview and he put me in contact with Thierry, who was presently working in the kitchen at our hotel. Thierry rumbled in on an immaculate black Sportster. There are about 10 motorcycles on St. Pierre, and Thierry motors around every chance he gets but still is only able to amass 2-4,000 kilometers a year. There are about a dozen French restaurants on St, Pierre, and they are open from 7 until 10pm. Average price is from $15 to $24 US dollars per meal. We ate supper at Chez Dutin, a small fixed price establishment that was homey and simple. Mademoiselle Dutin provided turnip/carrot soup, scallops, Bouche' a la Reine (Beef in Pastry), filet of Beef with mushrooms and Poulet Chasson. Good stuff. Bastille Day. Here I was listening to lazer karaoke Bob Dylan doing Knock Knocking On Heaven's Door, trying to talk with to a bunch of people eating barbecued stuffed squid bodies, downing $1 glasses of French wine on a little island off the coast of a godforsaken peninsula 1,000 miles from home. When we arrived at the center of town at 11:30 a.m. the place was already awash with dancers fueled by free glasses of high octane punch. A big part of the day's features was alcohol. French wine was cheaper than juice. There was enough Heinekin that I watched one guy replenish a bowl for his dog several times. Food booths sold barbecued chicken, chili, and pasta salads. The most popular tune of the day was Achy Breaky Heart. We met Jean while sitting at a picnic table. He wore green work clothes and his cracked and blackened hands were the mark of a St. Pierre fisherman. He was able to jump start a conversation with me even though he knew little English beyond "Pretty good, huh?" We struggled to converse after I bought him a beer. There was a couple that acted as translators who helped us out over the rough spots. He fished for squid, and took us down to the harbor to see his boat. It was a massively braced twenty foot dory with a electronic fish finder and an inboard diesel motor. We learned that the fishing season was comparatively short, running from April to the end of July. Monthly checks from France arrive during the off season. Jean fishes for cod from long lines with jigs and also uses lures for squid. Then came the sharing of wine, a bottle of which he fished out of a pile of rubble in the back of his fish shack. He found three grimy glasses and we toasted our companionship. The warmth of his fish shack was a welcome haven from the windy cold. We left the island the next afternoon. We linked up again with the wind and the vastness of the terrain on the Transcanadian Highway , splitting off to explore the Avalon Peninsula. Route 100 was the best road of the trip, particularly late in the afternoon with the sun drooping away into the Atlantic Ocean. We pulled into our destination at the Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve which features the second largest gannet colony in North America. Gannets are a large white sea bird, and the unique placement of an isolated pinnacle rock rising over 300 feet into the air allows you unusually close viewing of the 53,000 seabirds that nest on the rock. This is a total sensory experience. You don't just see the birds, you hear the cacophony of deafening shrieks, cries, and howls, feel the cool updraft with it's overpowering smell of bird droppings. We received permission from the caretaker to put our tent up on the soft green cushion on the side of the parking lot. We slept overlooking the vastness of the ocean with the constant din of the birds making counterpoint to the deep hoot of the lighthouse horn. The next evening we reached Petty Park in the city limits of St. John's, the oldest city in North America. It was a very rainy day, and we needed to pull deep on our foul weather camping experience to function in the windy blowing spit. We each had large tarps that we stretched with ropes and bungee cords over a picnic table that allowed us to stand out of the rain and cook, change clothes and live our life on the road. While in the bathroom/shower house, I noticed clothes had been thrown in the trash. We were puzzled as to why someone would throw away dry duds on a rainy day. Then I met a K75 BMW rider named Jeff who was holed up in a tent a few campsites down. Jeff was a high mileage fanatic from western Canada. Despite the size of Newfoundland, motorcyclists tend to cross paths, and there's kind of a loosely strung network of who is on the road and for how long and where are they going next. Jeff had met up with three other Maine friends and had actually spent a night with them. Before he retreated back to his tent he disclosed one of his high mileage travel secrets- simplify your life on the road by bringing your oldest clothes. Instead of slowing down and washing them, toss 'em in the trash- no detergent costs, no down time in the laundromat. When this guy buys a souvenir T-Shirt it's because he really needs one! Next we pulled on our rain suits and checked out the harbor. St. John's has 200 bars! But it was still early so we decided to go back to the campsite. Before we did Alan stopped at a phone booth to follow up on John's offer. (He guided us through the fog on the Avalon.) I rolled on up to the campsite to lay down in the tent for a bit. A half hour later, John arrived at our campsite in a warm car and dedicated the next 8 hours of his life to hosting two guys from the States. John first tried to get us "Screeched In." Screech is the official rum of Newfoundland, and generally turns up if you are socializing on the island. In one particular establishment, you get Screeched when you down a shot of the stuff and then kiss a codfish on the lips, or plant a wet one on the butt of a puffin, if the fish supply is low. There's some incantation that goes along with the ceremony and thank God the official Screech high priest was away for the night. After a general walking tour of every type of bar imaginable we settled for the traditional and hunkered into the Blarney Stone, the place for traditional Irish music in North America and purveyors of Newfoundland waltzes, participatory jigging, stouts, and other hallmarks of good natured drunken revelry. Alan had been over to Ireland a couple of years before and said that the Blarney Stone experience there bar was indistinguishable from pubbing in Ireland. John was real Newfoundland and we were his eager students. He knew several people in the bar, and was helpful with introductions when the Newfoundland women's national championship softball team slid in right beside us. First came lessons on Newfie phrasing and terminology; "Hey buddy!" "Baymen", "Heave on the music", "What are you at?" , " How's she goin' boys?" and next pronunciation lessons of key terms. Newfoundland is pronounced with the accent hard on the "land". Any female is generally responsive to being greeted with "Missie". And" boy" is a more familiar term exchanged between close male friends, but pronounced more like a quick "bye". We danced, we sang, we tried to be good international neighbors and I think we passed the test. We gave John our addresses and told him he would be welcome in our homes anytime he ventured stateside. The next day, our goal was to take a boat trip out to the Witless Bay Ecological Preserve - a trio of offshore island thirty miles south of St. John's. There are several companies that run these tours, with boat rides of roughly one to three hours with costs ranging from $15 to $30 Cdn. We rode on the Codjigger tour which cost us $15 each, and appeared to be the least commercial (no canned humor or live music) with a working-class captain who even invited us into his house after the tour to refill our canteen and to examine a frozen puffin that he pulled out of his refrigerator freezer. We circumnavigated Great Island, home to 662,000 seabirds and site of the largest nesting colony of Atlantic puffins. Our captain was skilled at maneuvering close to the 200 foot cliffs, and entered several coves, and archways . We were surprised to learn that puffins nest in earth burrows, which means that they need a habitat with grassy slopes, generally found near the top of cliff faces. We made an all day ride back to Port-aux Basques. Our return ferry trip was made more interesting by the presence of a dozen Harley-Davidson riders of the Bacchus motorcycle club. But that is another story for another time. Alan and I got along fine with the Bacchus guys. We all rode off together into the clear black night when the ferry docked at Nova Scotia at 4:30 A.M.. I encourage you to check out France in North America, but before you leave don't forget to pick up the saddlebag sticker that proves that you too rode your motorcycle to France.