Anticosti
By Sharon Chubbs-Ransom
In the spring, Montagnais of the Northern Coast of the St. Lawrence would
drive out to what they called Naticousti,
“territory
of hunting otter”. Jacque Cartier viewed
the Island from his ship on his first
voyage in 1534. On his voyage the following year he named the island Il’Assumption. In the next year Jean-Francois
navigator
with Roberval in their distant passing
viewed and
named it for its high tower like cliffs, Ascension Island. Towards the end of the
century in 1609 the islands original name was Latinized to Anticosty.
Up to the last half of the 17th century the Island remained uninhabited aside
from the Amerindiens who went there to
hunt. The
French, Basque and Portugese would land
there on
occasion.
For three centuries the Island remained private property.
In 1680, Louis XIV gave Anticosti Island, along with the Mingan Islands in Seigniory,
to the explorer Louis Jolliet. It was a
reward for Jolliet’s discovery of Illinois and his voyage to Hudson Bay. The following spring,
Louis Jolliet cleared two acres of forest
on the
north-western coast and built a fort. He established trade with the Amerindiens and created a company where he sold
fish and
seal oil to the inhabitants of Quebec. When Louis Jolliet
died in 1700 his son Charles was named Govenor
of Anticosti. Following
his death Anticosti was abandoned.
In 1763 with the signing of the Treaty of
Paris, New France yielded all English Islands to the colony of Newfoundland. However, in 1774 by the
Act of Quebec, Newfoundland gave Anticosti back to Quebec. This exchange back and
forth between these two governments would take place twice more with Anticosti returned to Quebec finally in 1825. After the
British conquest, a group of English business men purchased Anticosti with the intention of
developing it, but this venture never did come to fruition. Then, in
1872, the Anticosti Company better known
as the Forsyth Company
bought the Island to colonize and develop it for the fishing
industry. Some Acadien families and
several families from the southwest
coast of Newfoundland settled at English Bay. Other Acadien
families settled at Lance au Cutter and other Newfoundland families settled at Fox Bay. Not long after this, the Company
declared bankruptcy. The Quebec government tried to
evacuate the Newfoundlanders but they refused to move and remained. In
1884,
Francis William Stockwell, a British
business man
along with two Quebec business associates bought Anticosti. The venture to try to
colonize it by the Govenor and this
Company met with
disaster. They tried to sell the Island to Canada but Canada didn’t want it.
Anticosti has a very colorful
history. From the intrigue of Capt. Louis Olivier Gamache,
the self styled and self proclaimed “wizard” who lived and worked as
lighthouse
keeper on Anticosti, to the shipwrecked
Harrington, a mulatto that went beserk and
murdered
crew and passengers of the Irish Barque, Granicus. The stories go on and on. It has
always been a
place to fear, not unlike Sable Island with its rich history of
shipwrecks.
In 1895, Henri Menier
purchased
Anticosti for $125,000 and became the owner. He
changed the
name of English Bay to Bay-Holy-Clare in memory
of his mother. The legal framework of the business was run by George
Martin Zede, Menier’s
manager. He
established an industrial and commercial enterprise with offices in Quebec. He levied and imposed land
taxes on the inhabitants, which the Newfoundland settlers, who had been
enticed to settle there, refused to pay. In 1897, Menier
imported 150 female deer and stags from Virginia. He annually invested a
quarter million dollars in his project. From 1896, Zede
continued to advocate the evacuation of the Newfoundland families from Fox Bay, because they continued to
refuse to pay the levied land tax. Zede
also accused
the Newfoundlanders of piracy and poaching! The piracy charge was taken
to the
courts by the Presbyterian Church in defense of the people, and a
retraction of
the accusation ended with an apology. It was about this time the
Canadian
government sent in Quebec magistrates to talk the Newfoundland people into moving. It
became an ugly scene and John Stubbert the
telegraph
operator is reported to have chased the magistrate off with a gun. He
was
jailed but the Presbyterian Church appealed on his behalf and he was
released.
In 1899, the Newfoundlanders lost their case in the courts and the
Canadian
government removed them by force and settled these families in Renfrew
and Perth Ontario and as far away as Dauphin,
Manitoba. It was an ugly time in the press with
accusations
back and forth between the English and French in Quebec, Canada and France. Henri Menier
married and continued to build and make changes to the Island. He built Port Menier
and a large house overlooking the Bay. In that year,
there were about 200 inhabitants at Bay-Holy-Clare, 127 at L’Anse
au Cutters and 14 at Fox
River. With the death
of Henri Menier in 1913, his
brother Gaston Menier inherited the Island. In 1914, with the outbreak
of WW I, Zede returned to Europe. In 1926, Gaston Menier
sold Anticosti for $6,500,000 to the Anticosti
Corporation a consortium consisting of Wayagamack,
St. Maurice Valley Corporation and the Port
Alfred Pulp and Paper Company. The Island became a vast supplier of
building supplies and pulp wood. They flourished until 1929. In 1931,
the Island was sold to Consolidated
Paper Corporation. This Company continued to cut pulpwood while at the
same
time developing tourism in hunting and fishing.
In 1937, a Montreal
financier with Dutch and German interest tried to exercise a business
option to
buy Anticosti.
Mackenzie King,
then Prime Minister of Canada, prohibited the sale. In the winter of
1942,
during WWII, the Germans had upwards of twenty submarines in the Gulf
of St. Lawrence. Many people affirmed having witnessed
submarines
in the area. In 1953 for “safety measures” the Consolidated Paper
Consortium
Limited burned the Menier villa. In 1974 the Quebec
government repurchased Anticosti
for $26, 363,000. It became public property and is now a provincial
park.
Ref. “Paradise Found” Anticosti by MacKay, Donald,
Editions Press,
1983.
“Labrador et Anticosti”, V. A. Huad,
C. O. Beauchemin & Fils,
Montreal, 1897
http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vol2/no1_e/history_e/history1_e.html
“The German Attempt to Purchase
Anticosti Island
in 1937”
“Secrets of the North Atlantic”,
Snow, Edward Rowe, Dodd, Mead and Co., New York,
1950
Date entered on the Web: 13 March 2005