The American Canada Watch: A Northern Miscellany
Edited by James Eldin Reed and Deborah Addis

JAMES REED AND DEBORAH ADDIS drive around the peninsula, finding wilderness, fishing villages and fine restaurants

The spectacular seascapes, wild Appalachian mountain valleys and glistening salmon streams rushing down to the sea make the road circumnavigating the Gaspé peninsula one of the classic North American summer vacation routes.

Then there is the air, perhaps the cleanest, softest and loveliest anywhere. Writing in 1936, a Gaspé native, Olive Willett Smith, began her travel book Gaspé the Romantique this way: "In summer, as the thermometer hovers in the nineties and the humidity tags along, go to the Northland; to Gaspé, that eastern arm of the Province of Quebec stretching out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the air is like champagne."

Besides the air, the essential point about the Gaspé is its distance from the rest of Canada -- around a thousand kilometres northeast of Montreal and many decades, perhaps a century, back in time. It is this that gives the Gaspé its character and historic charm.

Over all, the Gaspé peninsula is one vast mountain wilderness fringed by a sequence of 19th-century fishing villages, strung like a necklace of rough-cut gems around the Bay of Chaleurs, the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, and along the great river of Canada.

Its ambience is down-home, unaffected, and basically noncommercial, though there is a good tourist infrastructure of fine hotels and superior French restaurants, affordable cottages and camping sites at strategic points around the peninsula. And everywhere there is the oft referred to "traditional Gaspésian hospitality" -- with its easy affability and authentic personal relationships -- in which the residents of this distinctive region maintain an exuberant pride.

You will want to begin your tour of the Gaspé a few hours north of Quebec City by leaving the fast lanes of the TransCanada Highway for old Route 132, which will take you virtually everywhere on the peninsula.

Route 132 is the main street of the Gaspé. It begins at Ste-Flavie on the lower St. Lawrence and winds its way through the lush valley of the Matapédia to the estuary of the Restigouche -- which has some of the best salmon and trout fishing in the world -- to the Bay of Chaleurs, so named for its remarkably warm waters by Jacques Cartier on his first voyage of discovery in 1534.

Route 132 is a deliberately slow road, ideal for touring the coast of the Bay of Chaleurs, with ever-changing panoramas of the deep blue waters to the right and, to the left, agricultural country segmented into long, narrow strips of land -- seigneuries under the French regime -- running down to the sea.

Keep your eyes open. On the ocean side, there are vestiges of the Gaspé's once-flourishing cod fishery, 19th-century fish houses, most of them now boarded up, and open-air, elevated fish racks where salt cod still lie drying in the sun at the few fishing establishments still in operation.

On the land side of Route 132, it is still possible to catch a glimpse of old-style Gaspésian agriculture. Occasionally you can see a solitary farmer in leather harness strapped to his hand-held plow tilling the soil with a team of horses. To see the Gaspé at its most traditional and unmechanized, even for a moment, is to measure the world we have lost.

Yet the Gaspé's charms are by no means merely pre-modern or folkloric. On the Bay of Chaleurs at Carleton, where a sandy beach and tepid waters combine to produce a long-established summer resort, the Hotel Baie Bleue offers comfortable rooms overlooking the sea.

It has a splendid restaurant, La Seigneurie, where the new chef, Robert Léssard, prepares a variety of fish and shellfish delicacies, including seafood soups and chowders and bisques, the legendary bouillabaisse, coquilles St-Jacques capable of satisfying refined palates from metropolitan France and, inevitably, the renowned Gaspé salmon.

Interestingly, while the menu and wine cellar are French, the waiters and waitresses dress in traditional Scottish attire, reflecting the bilingual and bicultural heritage of the towns along the Bay of Chaleurs.

From Carleton, the road continues on to the historic Loyalist redoubt of New Richmond. Here the Governors-General of Canada from Lord Stanley to Lord Minto, fleeing the oppressive humidity and close quarters of the official summer residence at The Citadel in Quebec, presided over a sumptuous viceregal cottage, Stanley House, which is well worth taking in.

From New Richmond, Route 132 runs along the edge of the low-rise, red-clay cliffs of the Bay of Chaleurs to the old Anglo-Quebec town of New Carlisle, with its many fine examples of 19th-century residential architecture.

After New Carlisle comes Newport, the native place of the Gaspé's most revered daughter and Quebec's most celebrated chanteuse, La Bolduc. Her signature tunes, and the Gaspé folk songs she popularized, are still sung at community festivals throughout the peninsula. If you don't know the words to "La Bastringue" -- "Honky-Tonk" en anglais -- be sure to learn them for your trip "down Gaspé."

As you round the bend at Cap d'Espoir, where the Bay of Chaleurs merges imperceptibly into the vast Gulf of the St. Lawrence, there is a dramatic view of the Percé seascape, with enormous headlands of limestone and shale plunging straight down into the sea.

The town of Percé -- usually pronounced "Percy," even by local francophones -- is less prepossessing. As a leading Gaspé historian laments, "the scent of French fries is more and more replacing that of the codfish," and it is true that the town has more than its share of tourist kitsch. But the traveller can profitably linger for an hour on the Percé waterfront, puzzling out the peculiar fascination of the iconic Percé Rock over a bowl of soupe aux poissons (fish soup), before continuing north along a magnificent stretch of coastline to the unpretentious but well-equipped town of Gaspé, with its fine regional museum, and the natural climax of the Forillon peninsula.

Leaving Route 132 at Forillon National Park, one of the most diverse in Canada (black bear, moose, fox, white-tail deer, beavers and small mammals galore), cut north across the densely forested peninsula and, in a few minutes, you will catch sight of the mighty St. Lawrence as it enters the sea.

A short but strenuous hike will take you to the summit of Mont Alban. Looking north, you will see the magnificent promontory of Cap Bon Ami, with hundreds of sea birds circling its cliffs, crying in the sharp winds that whip this coast, and plunging into its frigid waters in search of supper. To the south, the St. Lawrence coast stretches to the horizon, indented here and there by small coves typically teeming with seals, all the way to Quebec City.

On your way home, down the littoral of the St. Lawrence on Route 132, you will pass more than a dozen classic French Canadian fishing villages, most of them modest affairs built on a small rise of land or tucked into a tiny cove, invariably dominated by an old Catholic church with a silver steeple. Rivière-au-Renard with its working waterfront, Grande-Vallée and its broad vistas, Gros Morne with its perpendicular cliffs, La Martre with its stunning, fire-engine red lighthouse, and Cap-Chat, with its rocky promontory, which really does resemble a cat: Each village is unique.

On the long drive home down the St. Lawrence, with the full moon rising over the ocean-like river, the air is indeed like champagne.

On the road

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

Hostellerie Baie Bleue: 1-877-778-8977, Route 132, Carleton. 95 units range in price from $60 - $174. Rooms are basic but spotless and all have a view of the Bay. Excellent restaurant. http:/​/​www.Quebecweb.com/​baiebleue.

Auberge Fort Prével: 1-800-665-6527, Route 132, St-Georges-de-Malbaie. Choice of motel room, chalet, or room at the Inn -- all with views of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Motel rooms start at $101; cabins overlooking the St. Lawrence are $179 a day in high season. Various packages available. Amenities include an 18-hole golf course, a heated pool and direct access to a beach where dozens of seals bask on the rocks. Excellent restaurant. http:/​/​www.sepaq.com/​ct/​pre/​en

FOR TRADITIONAL HOSPITALITY

Giles Côté Gallery and Studio: 1004 Route 132, Barachois, 418-645-2746. This local artist's studio welcomes visitors. Côté specializes in Gaspésian landscapes. Meet the artist and pause for a cappuccino at the coffeehouse on the premises.

La Ferme Chimo: 1705 boul. Douglas (Route 132), Douglastown, 418-368-4102. Stop by the picturesque farm and meet owner Bernard Major, who moved to the Gaspé in 1979 and entered agriculture after a career in the Quebec civil service. Try his famous cheese and yogurt, pet the goats, and pick raspberries.

Artisanat Gaspésien: Home of Bernice and Egide Bernatchez, 2046 Route 132, St-Georges-de-Malbaie, 418-645-2503. Here you will find a home-based bakery specializing in meat and fish pies and breads.

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JAMES REED is a Harvard historian and a recent Fulbright Fellow in Canada. He and DEBORAH ADDIS, a consultant in Boston, have written for the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications.