The Mingan Archipelago

 

Our first stop at the mouth of the St Lawrence was Havre St Pierre. It was cold, the rain unrelenting, but it was good to get off the ship, or so we thought at the time—especially since we had a destination: a Tim Hortons coffee bar. To be honest there was nothing else in walking distance. A mile or so along the waterfront and turn left. It seemed easy enough. And to  be walking where the St Lawrence met the sea.

The rain ultimately dictated otherwise. Nevertheless, we persevered for a time, trudging, heads bowed low,  along a grey and dismal waterfront, a line of pretty looking bungalows to our left. Ultimately common-sense broke through along with the rain. We were sodden and had yet to face an excursion to the Mingan Archipelago in the afternoon. We never did enjoy a Tim Hortons coffee, (though ironically we drove past a branch in Warrington a few weeks later in the UK)

 

The journey to the archipelago was an adventure in itself, a twenty-five-minute boat journey through heavy seas and a thickening drizzle. Dressed in orange, fluorescent waterproofs, we looked formidable – The SAS on a mission, or perhaps a branch of the RNLI out on a jolly.

 

The park ranger, a merry French woman, guided us over the island, speaking fractured English through loud bursts of laughter.  

The landscape was bleak, the merriment welcome 

The island oozed melancholy though she assured us it was beautiful in summer. I wasn't convinced—and there'd be midges.

Eventually, we reached what I had been dying to see, and where, despite the drizzle, I could have stayed longer. 

 

The archipelago we had sailed through and what we now walked on are mind bogglingly ancient. In the words of a botanist, I’d never heard of before: ‘…the Mingan Islands are daughters of the sea; they are fragments, pieces of an ancient land slowly deposited in the bottom of the ocean…’

The North Shore Canadian shield itself is nearly a billion years old. Vast rivers once crisscrossed the land, eroding and carrying rock particles into unknown seas. This sediment, combining with the remains of marine organisms, slowly formed a limestone sea floor. 

 

Millions of years later the earth’s crust shifted, and this limestone seabed emerged as a large plateau. Limestone is friable and over time, the criss-crossing rivers carved deep into the limestone plateau. turning it into a series of discrete and separate entities—the Mingan islands. 

The monoliths, now dominating the beaches are examples of time and erosion creating natural works of art.

A mere 20,000 years ago, great icesheets, two and a half kilometres deep covered the whole of North America and the archipelago. The ice pressed the land down. When the earth grew warmer, the ice melted, and water levels rose, though slowly (ten thousand years ago the present archipelago was still 85 metres beneath the sea.)

2,800 years, later the islands fully re-emerged and the erosion really took off. What we walked around are the results––monoliths of friable limestone carved by ice,  rain and wind 

The sea, here quite placid, has worn the land down leaving the  limestone silent sentinels.

An alien landscape like three dimensional Rorschach patterns, you see what you want to see: from a distance cyclopean ruins, closer up, unearthly monstrosities, alien beasts and alien runes.      

A dog, back of a giant cat, rhinoceros, gargoyles and monsters. I tried to imagine walking through them at night under a full moon.

        

 

A naked torso dominating Cthulhuian walls

Close ups of erosion in action, definitely alien script in one form or other

Warmth and luxury in sight.

And here, an epiphany. A dolphin no one else saw but me (my wife says she believes me) as we were setting off I just casually looked over my shoulder. A few feet away a dolphin surfaced and slid silently back under water. The thrill of the sudden.