There’s a new crime drama on CBC that takes place on St. Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands located just 12 miles from the south coast of Newfoundland.
I wonder just how many of CBC’s viewers are aware that a small piece of the European nation of France exists just off the shores of eastern Canada.
The two small linked islands, approximately 242 square kilometres in size, that are St. Pierre and Miquelon have been in French hands since 1815 after numerous wars with England, and they are the only part of New France in North America that remains under French control.
The islands came under the rule of the Nazi-controlled Vichy France regime after the German invasion of France in 1940, but few of the approximately 4,000 people living there at the time, who were predominately fisherman, wanted anything to do with Adolph Hitler and his Nazis.
So late on Christmas Eve, 1941, a Free French task force consisting of sailors and marines in full battle dress that were loyal to Charles de Gaulle slipped past the undefended entrance to the harbour of St. Pierre, which is where most of the population of the islands live, and stormed the town intent on seizing its key administrative centres, including the town hall, post office, telegraph station and radio transmitter.
If the assault force was expecting any resistance, they received none as many of the residents took to the streets waving Free French flags when they realized what was happening and joined the sailors and marines in the attack.
The islands’ 11 gendarmes, the only ones supposedly working for the Vichy government there at the time, surrendered without a fight and not a single shot was fired nor a drop of blood spilled, so the islands became part of the Free French government in exile until the end of the war when de Gaulle became president of France after the country's liberation.
The fact is the people of St. Pierre and Miquelon grew up right next to Newfoundland and eastern Canada (Newfoundland was an independent country until 1949), so their political beliefs and philosophies were much more in line with democratic nations, like most of their countrymen in Europe it should be said, rather than the Fascist regimes that were running most of France and much of the rest of Europe during the war.
Fishermen from Newfoundland and St. Pierre and Miquelon have been peaceably sharing the same fishing grounds for countless generations and developed many close relationships with each other, and even some illegal ones.
For at least the last 100 years, people from Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula have been crossing the short but bumpy stretch of ocean to the islands to purchase cheap French booze and cigarettes from their neighbouring friends and sometimes relatives, and bringing them back to Newfoundland, all the while skirting coast guard and navy vessels intent on stopping the practice.
As well, St. Pierre and Miquelon had a 13-year economic boom from 1920 to 1933 when the Americans introduced Prohibition and the islands became a prominent base for alcohol smuggling into the U.S.
Those boom days died along with Prohibition, but the smuggling continued, albeit on a much smaller scale, between the Burin Peninsula and St. Pierre and Miquelon, and it still continues to this day.
I remember when I was a young teenager and the government liquor stores in Newfoundland (there were no private ones at the time) went on strike, smuggling liquor from the French islands began to take off again in a big way.
I was working for a company that owned a number of restaurants and bars in the St. John’s area, and management had connections with some of the smugglers from the Burin Peninsula, who were always perceived as sort of Robin Hood characters by many.
I was given the job of transferring the booze from the smuggled bottles that came from the islands into Canadian liquor bottles so they appeared to be legally purchased, and then put the empty French bottles into a burlap sack and smash them to smithereens so they couldn’t be identified.
That may seem pretty sketchy to some of the readers of this column, but that was the way business was done at the time so I didn’t give it a second thought.
Anyway, if anyone is looking for a European vacation this year without having to go through all the travelling and trouble of actually going all the way there, remember that there is a small and friendly French community, with the baguettes and cafes that you would expect to see in France, just off Canada’s shores that would be more than happy to host you.
