Summer Provinces
by the Sea

A description of the Vacation Resources of Eastern Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, in the territory served by the Canadian Government Railways:—

INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND RAILWAY

CONTENTS

Page

1. Introductory 5

2. Historic Quebec 28

3. Summer Resorts of the Lower St. Lawrence 68

4. Across the Base of the Gaspé Peninsula; and Some Superb Fishing Streams 105

5. The Bay of Chaleur 120

6. The Miramichi River and Nashwaak Valley Districts 142

7. Fredericton, and the Upper St. John River 153

8. The City of St. John, and Lower St. John River 173

9. St. John to Moncton and Point du Chene 192

10. Prince Edward Island 203

11. Moncton to the Atlantic, over the Halifax Division 229

12. Halifax, an Ocean Gateway 246

13. Nova Scotia, North and East 260

14. Cape Breton Island 271

15. Where to Go—Recommended Places 299

Chateau Frontenac, Quebec

INTRODUCTORY

One glance at a map of the Western Hemisphere is all that is needed to show the splendid situation of Eastern Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Canada as the natural summer recreation centres for the people of a continent.

Communicating with the world’s greatest system of inland waterways; washed by the salt spray of the rolling Atlantic; blessed with innumerable lakes, majestic rivers, dashing waterfalls and sparkling brooks; clothed with noble forests; featured by towering mountain chains, and swept by cool health-bringing breezes—these delightful domains are surely the summer provinces of all America.

Who has not read with fascination and delight the thrilling pages of Canada’s romantic history; or has not been stirred with deep emotion over the adventures of that trio of great explorers: Cabot, Cartier and Champlain!

The desperate struggles of the early colonists with the savage Iroquois Indians; the long and fluctuating conflict for supremacy between France and Great Britain; the incursions of the New England Colonists; the mixed settlement of Colonial Loyalists, French, English, Scotch and Irish; the Acadian Expulsion—all have combined to make Quebec and the Maritime Provinces a field that is rich in interest and quite unlike any other part of the continent.

Here buried treasures of legend and story are on every hand, promising rich reward to the happy discoverers.

There is a fascination in seeing places where the people of long ago have lived, and where epoch-making events have occurred; for there we may learn at first hand and from personal observation many things that cannot be read in the printed page.

How delightful to stand where Jacques Cartier planted his symbolic cross with its emblazoned shield bearing the royal lilies of France, and to remember that here his banners were first unfurled to the breezes of this western land. And while the loyal sons of St. Denis saluted the fluttering flags as the guns were discharged in joyful salvo to mark the birth of an empire beyond the seas did the wondering Indians understand the full meaning of the ceremony, or realize that this handful of men was but the advance guard of a mighty host propelled by a still mightier force—the power of civilization—that would compel the poor “sons of the forest” to give way before the irresistible onrush?

This sixteenth century invasion of Canada seems very remote to us; but long before Columbus, Cabot or Cartier set foot on the Western Continent, other Europeans had visited it.

From the first contact of the white man with his red brother, the Aboriginal tribes living along the North Atlantic coast had well defined and century-old traditions of a wonderful ship that had been cast ashore manned by strange white men who were all drowned. In Norse history, also, there is the Saga of Eric the Red relating to the discovery of the east coast of North America, before the Christian Era was a thousand years old. Whittier refers to this in his legendary verses, “The Norsemen”: