9 June 2026 – No, no, don’t start multiplying those figures. It’s my shorthand for what got me from there to here. Namely: 6,085 km, over 2 days, through 4 time zones. And here I am: on Grande Entrée island, in Auberge La Salicorne (Salicornia europaea, Samphire aka Glasswort aka Sea Asparagus, in the northern curve of the stretch-C that is the Magdalen Islands.

A couple of moments, en route…

Dramatic clouds & contrasts as we climb out of Trudeau International Airport (Dorval Airport, in my childhood) for my second flight that first travel day, onward from Montreal to Quebec City…

and a happy hour of fresh air the following morning in Parc Robitaille, near my hotel in turn near Jean Lesage International Airport in Quebec City. A little googling and navigation brings me to greenery and a creek…

and a children’s playground that offers some intellectual exercise along with the physical.

Fill in the missing letters! (Which are helpfully listed on the right.)

Give it a try. Exercise your French.

That afternoon, back to the airport, meet some of the group who will also be on this week of eco-discovery, and finally our Ligne Pascan flight is called. I feel an absolute surge of joy when I realize we’ll be walking across the tarmac, and up the steps of a sturdy little twin-prop plane. Yes!!!

(It’s a Saab 3408B+, says the seat-pocket card, and I invite Lynette to tell us if, and if so why, this is a good aircraft choice for this kind of local run — in this case, 1 hr 40 min to a location known for fierce winds.)

Frédérique reads the usual instructions, in the usual official languages, and away we go.

And we leave the sunshine behind us. We land at fast-dropping dusk, in gusty drizzle. One last streak of setting sun as we motor off to La Salicorne…

and the day is pretty well done.

Next day, yesterday, our first day of activity and lots of us are doing it with heads still scrambling through the time zones. Tant pis! We don’t care, we are up for this.

(But you’ll have to excuse the fact my impressions of the day are few & scattered.)

Morning visit to La Musée de la Mer, tucked far south (some 100 km south) in the bottom curl of the C, where we stand ’round a splendid nautical floor map of the islands for the start of our private visit.

Quick highlights of history: visiting indigenous peoples from millennia ago, travelling back & forth from the mainland to hunt & fish; two significant Acadian settlement periods (after their expulsion from the mainland by the British conquerors); further accidental arrivals via shipwreck (helping to populate the anglophone pockets); further deliberate arrivals; waxing/waning/etc of fisheries; something of a current up-surge, including among young people choosing to stay and develop new small businesses.

Why does this tiny island chain out in the Atlantic belong to Quebec and not to one of the Maritime provinces? It all goes back to 1774 — when the British authorities were busy sorting out What To Do with their newest acquisition, New France. Yes, fold it into British North America. Ummm, what about these islands? While we’re sorting things out, maybe reassign them? Ohhhh, who cares… leave ’em with Quebec. And so an Act was passed, by Imperial authority, and les Îles de la Madeleine became, and are to remain, part of Quebec.

We pass two lonely wind turbines along the highway, and ask the backstory. Given this particular day has 35 km/hr winds gusting to 50 km, and given that although this is enough to keep some fishers in port, local people, les Madelinots, rank their strength as merely “moderate”… given all that, you’d think wind power would be a good option. No. Pilot project not pursued. Partly environmental issues (impact on birdlife), partly aesthetic (the whine, the visual impact on the landscape), partly demographic (very small population base) and very much financial. By the time the initial costs had been recovered, the turbines would have reached their life span and need to be replaced.

Nature on all sides, all day.

Cliffs…

and pebbly beaches…

and salt marsh pushing into the narrow interior of the islands, often up again forest.

And, and… the first Toe Tap of this trip.

Some of you may remember, during my fall trip last year to Winnipeg, up to the Arctic, back down and east to Toronto, that I made a ritual of tapping my boot toes in water all along the way. Pacific Ocean, Red & Assiniboine rivers; Hudson Bay; Lake Ontario.

Yesterday, on the sandy curves of La Grave…

I tap those boots into the Atlantic. Just as I promised them.

What more could I ask from Day 1?