The scenic Gaspé Peninsula has always been sparsely
inhabited and poor, its remote communities eking out an existence
from the turbulent seas and the rocky soil. Still, it functions as
a major summer holiday spot, especially busy during the last two
weeks of July for Québec's construction holiday ; if you
travel during this period, book your accommodation and activities
well in advance.
The people of the peninsula are predominantly and proudly
Québécois, though there are pockets of long-established
English-speaking settlements, particularly in and around
Gaspé town, while Carleton and Bonaventure are
centres of Acadian culture, established in 1755 in the wake of the
British deportation of some 10,000 Acadians from around the Bay of
Fundy in Nova Scotia
. Neither of these communities has created visually distinctive
villages or towns, however, and the Gaspé looks as French as the
heartlands of rural Québec.
Bounded by the Gulf of St Lawrence to the north and west, and by
the Baie des Chaleurs to the south and east, the peninsula
is roughly 550km long, with a chain of mountains and rolling
highlands dominating the interior and the northern shore. These
provide some wonderful scenery of forested hills cut with deep
ravines and vistas of craggy mountains tumbling to the jagged
coastline fronted by the St Lawrence. The landscape makes the
winding coastal drive along Hwy 132 a delight, although the
principal towns strung along this shore - Rimouski, Matane
and Gaspé - are in themselves less appealing than smaller villages
like Bic, Mont-St-Pierre and busy Percé .
The Gaspé Peninsula also has two outstanding parks: the
extravagantly mountainous Parc de la Gaspésie , inland from
Ste-Anne-des-Monts , and the Parc National de
Forillon , at the tip of the peninsula, with its mountain and
coastal hikes and wonderfully rich wildlife. Just to the south of
the Forillon park, the village of Percé is famous for the offshore
Rocher Percé , an extraordinary limestone monolith that has
been a magnet for travellers for more than a hundred years. East of
here, stuck out in the middle of the Gulf of St Lawrence, the
Îles-de-la-Madeleine are most easily reached by ferry from
Prince Edward Island
. This windswept archipelago has majestic, treeless landscapes,
fringed by fine beaches and crazily eroded sandstone cliffs, and
appeals particularly to cyclists, walkers and people who just want
to lie on a beach in complete solitude.
The south coast of the Gaspé is, for the most part,
flatter and duller than the north but the resort of Carleton, where
the mountains return to tower over the coast, is an agreeable place
to break your journey, especially as it's near the extraordinary
fish and plant fossils of the Parc de Miguasha , a UNESCO
World Heritage Site.
The Gaspé is well served by bus , with regular services
travelling both the north and south coasts of the peninsula from
Rimouski, Rivière-du-Loup and Québec City. The interior and the
peninsula's parks are, however, difficult to explore without a car.
VIA Rail links Montréal by train with Rivière du Loup and
Rimouski, then follows the southern coast of the peninsula to
Carleton and Percé, terminating in Gaspé town after 17.5 hours -
there's no service between Gaspé and Rimouski on the northern
coast, though. Be warned: some stations (like Percé) are miles from
the towns they serve.