Une Tournée dans les Parages

Built in 1901 and now listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, this brightly-colored cottage was once the home of the Blanchette family, a typical Gaspesian household of the day whose patriarch, Xavier, made his living catching, drying and selling the cod he caught in the waters of Gaspé Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Blanchette House has been painstakingly restored inside and out with rooms furnished in authentic early-20th century style, and it's staffed daily in season by tour guides in period costume who'll lead you through the house, fish shed, and woodshed. Tours conclude in the barn, where the short interpretive video, "We Always Looked to the Sea" (On regardait toujours vers la mer), is screened continuously.

Home to successive generations of the Dolbel and Roberts families from 1915 until 1970, this restored building is now a museum whose permanent exhibit, "Gaspesians from Land's End" (Ces Gaspésiens du bout du monde), covers the rich tapestry of communities who have made their home over the years at the east end of the Gaspé Peninsula: from the Mi'kmaq Indians who have lived here from time immemorial, to the intrepid Québécois and Acadian settlers of New France, to the British, Irish and Channel Islander fishing families who moved in after the conquest of Quebec in 1760, to newer arrivals such as Italians and Jews. As well, with the cooperation of a number of former residents, the museum also tells the unfortunate and still-controversial story of the families whose homes were expropriated by the Canadian government in 1970 to create the national park.

Built by William Hyman, a Russian Jewish merchant who settled in Grande-Grave in 1864, this duo of handsome buildings on the shore of Gaspé Bay were a centre of the town's community life in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Out of these premises Hyman operated a business that was eventually the main employer in Grande-Grave: an enterprise comprised of the town's main general store, selling imported household goods of all kinds, as well as a fishing business that was the chief rival in the region to the Paspébiac-based Charles Robin Company which controlled a great majority of the Gulf of St. Lawrence cod fishery at the time. Today, the interior of the store has been restored to its late-19th century appearance, with antique goods on the shelves ranging from clothing to porcelain table service to patent medicines to farm implements. As well, museum exhibits are contained in the former Hyman family living quarters on the second floor of the main building as well as the fish warehouse a few steps down the hill, which detail the various ways of life practised by Grande-Grave residents of the day, extracting their needs from the land and sea on a seasonal basis through fishing, logging, and small-scale farming. There's also a short film, "Time and Tide Remembered" (Mémoire de sel), screened in a small room just off the floor of the general store.

Standing atop seaside bluffs that loom 95 m (310 feet) over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cap-Gaspé Lighthouse marks the final "land's end" of the Gaspé Peninsula. Built to ward incoming ships away from Flowerpot Rock, a reef located just off the south shore of the cape, the current Cap-Gaspé Lighthouse is the third to stand on the site: built in 1950 to replace a shorter wood-frame structure that collapsed four years earlier, which in turn was a replacement for the original 1873 lighthouse that was lost to fire. Today, the lighthouse is fully automated and run on solar power, and accessible on foot or by bike.

Quebec's only fully preserved World War II-era shoreline battery, Fort Peninsula was one of the three fixed defences that comprised HMCS Fort Ramsay, a naval base established in 1942 by the Canadian military to defend against Nazi U-Boat attacks, to ensure the safety of merchant vessels passing through the region, and to serve as a refuge for the British Royal Navy in the event that Hitler's forces were to successfully conquer the UK. Naturally sheltered by the rocky spits and shallows of La Penouille and Sandy Beach, nineteen warships were based here, serving a key role in waging the Battle of the St. Lawrence which saw 23 Allied vessels sunk by German subs off Canada's east coast. Today, visitors can walk through the underground corridors of the fortification and observe the vintage gun mortars and other artillery still pointed seaward, and read descriptive panels along the way that explain the strategic military importance of the Gaspé Peninsula during the Second World War. Outside, there's a pleasant seaside picnic area.

At the end of the moderate-difficulty hiking trail up Mont-Saint-Alban lies an observation tower 10 m (33 feet) in height, affording hikers 360-degree panoramic views over Forillon and the surrounding area — including Cap-des-Rosiers Lighthouse, Cap Bon-Ami, Cap Gaspé, and, of course, the open waters of the St. Lawrence Estuary, Gaspé Bay, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On a clear day, you can even see Bonaventure Island and Percé Rock in the far distance.