Anticosti
| Île d'Anticosti | ||
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| Waters | Gulf of Saint Lawrence | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 30 ′ N , 63 ° 0 ′ W | |
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| length | 217 km | |
| width | 48 km | |
| surface | 7th 892.5 km² | |
| Highest elevation | (unnamed) 312 m |
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| Residents | 281 (2006) <1 inh / km² |
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| main place | Port Menier | |
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Île d'Anticosti or Anticosti Island is an island in the Canadian province of Québec .
It is located west of Newfoundland and north of the Gaspésie peninsula in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence . With an area of about 7890 km², it is 217 km long and 16 to 48 km wide. From 2001 to 2006 the population increased from 266 inhabitants (in 140 residential units) to 281. The only larger town is Port Menier in the west, with 263 of the 281 inhabitants of the island (2006 census). The map shows a second place Rivière-aux-Saumons in the east, for which a maximum of 18 inhabitants remain.
The island had never been settled by Indians . It was first discovered by a European in 1534 by Jacques Cartier . From 1763 to 1774 it was part of the British colony of Newfoundland , later changing ownership several times between Newfoundland and Québec, where it has remained since 1825. In 1937 the German Reich tried to buy the island. Today it is a provincial park .
history
Early history and colonial times
For millennia, Anticosti was a hunting ground for the indigenous people living on the mainland. The Innu hunted otters every spring on the island , and Mi'kmaq also went to the islands, but no people seem to have lived there permanently.
On his first voyage (1534), Jacques Cartier only saw the island from a ship and named it l'Assomption (Assumption of Mary) the next year . The Latin version Anticosty first appeared around 1609 . Occasionally French , Basque and Portuguese fishermen landed here , but they largely left the hunting grounds to the Innu.
In 1680 King Louis XIV gave the island together with the Mingan Archipelago to the north of it to the discoverer Louis Joliet . In 1681 he had the trees felled on two acres in the northwest of the island to build a trading post. The company bought fish and seal oil from the Innu and sold it to Québec . After Joliet's death in 1700, his son Charles took over the Seigneurie over the island, but after his death the post was given up.
With the Paris Peace of 1763 , which also ended the Seven Years' War in North America , the island came into British possession. It initially belonged to the Newfoundland colony , but was given back to Québec in 1774 . She changed affiliations two more times, but finally came to Québec in 1825. Although Anticosti was sold to a consortium of companies, it was never used by the British.
Privately owned
That changed after the founding of Canada. In 1872 the Anticosti Company , better known as the Forsyth Company , acquired the island. Some Acadian and Newfoundland families settled on English Bay, at Lance au Cutter and on Fox Bay. But a little later the company went bankrupt. Nevertheless, the settlers stayed, even though the provincial government wanted to bring them back. In 1884 the island was bought again, this time by Francis William Stockwell, a British, and two Quebecers. But this company also failed and the Canadian government refused to buy back Anticosti.
In 1895, French chocolate entrepreneur Henri Menier bought Anticosti for $ 125,000 . He renamed the English Bay Bay-Holy-Clare and George Martin Zede ran the business. Menier now demanded a levy from the Newfoundlands who were still living there, but they refused to pay. He then sued the families for piracy in 1896 , but finally had to apologize to them after a lawsuit. Menier imported 150 hinds from Virginia so that he could at least make a business of hunting. The introduced white-tailed deer has spread rapidly since then, and the population is estimated at more than 150,000 specimens. However, the settlement of American bison and elk or red deer failed. In 1899 the tide turned to the detriment of the Newfoundlands, as the Canadian government now demanded their withdrawal. However, these defended themselves, in the end by force of arms. John Stubbert, the operator of the telegraph station, was imprisoned for some time. As in the first trial, the Presbyterian Church represented the defendants this time .
The Canadian government eventually forcibly relocated the families to Renfrew and Perth , Ontario and Dauphin , Manitoba, respectively . Since it was mainly French bureaucracy that opposed the English settlers, there were heated debates in the press.
Meanwhile, Henri Menier married and built Port Menier and his house with a view of the bay. There were now 200 people in Bay-Holy-Clare, 127 in L'Anse au Cutters and 14 on the Fox River. Menier died in 1913, followed by his brother Gaston Menier as the owner of the island. He sold it in 1926 for $ 6.5 million to the Anticosti Corporation , a consortium made up of the St. Maurice Valley Corporation , the Port Alfred Pulp and Paper Company, and the Wayagamack Pulp and Paper Company . The company flourished until 1929 and cut down a considerable part of the forest. But in 1931 Anticosti had to be sold to the Consolidated Paper Corporation . She continued to fell wood, but also tried her hand at fishing and - for the first time - tourism.
Germans are negotiating to buy the island
As early as 1918, when German submarines appeared in the St. Lawrence Estuary during the First World War , Martin-Zédé, Director-General of Anticosti Island, warned against underestimating the strategic importance of the island, which is the entrance to Canada's largest river could block.
On July 29, 1937, a financier from Montreal received an option to buy the island, which he passed on to an Alois Miedl in Amsterdam . During the summer thirteen Germans visited Anticosti and inspected the island. On December 2nd, the Montreal Gazette speculated for the first time about "Germans Negotiating Purchase of Anticosti". William Glyn, who happened to be staying at the same hotel with the 13 men, identified “Dr. Wollert and Captain Mueller ”as leaders of the group of visitors and as confidante of Hitler . He reported this to the government and requested that the activities of the President of Consolidated Paper Corp. , LJ Belnap, who met with an Undersecretary of the State Department in early 1938. A memorandum was sent to Prime Minister Mackenzie King on December 14th . Still, nothing happened, especially since the company promised up to 2,500 jobs in the underdeveloped region.
That changed with the occupation of Austria by Germany in March 1938. War Minister Ian Mackenzie warned that Germany would either procure raw materials via the island or even set up a military base. The US government was concerned, Hermann Göring wrote to Mackenzie King. He replied on May 12th that there were no restrictions on the export of wood, but this may not apply in the future. In addition, the province of Québec has just banned the export of timber.
In the meantime, the general meeting of the still-owners of Anticosti had approved the sale on April 27th. On May 17, the Prime Minister was asked directly in Parliament whether it was in Canada's interest to sell the island, which the Prime Minister denied. In late July, after rumors of the alleged presence of a confidante Hitler surfaced in the press, a delegation on HMCS Skeena was sent to the island. But the team found nothing that could have indicated provisions, building fortifications or other military preparations.
With the beginning of the submarine war , the sale was taken off the agenda without much ado. In 1953, the Consolidated Paper Consortium Limited burned the Menier House down for alleged security reasons.
From provincial park to national park
In 1974 the government of the province of Québec bought the island back for 26,363,000 dollars and in 2001 turned part of the island into a provincial park , the Parc national d'Anticosti or Anticosti National Park . It covers 572 km², plus two ecological reserves , namely Pointe-Heath (19 km²) and Grand-Lac-Salé (24 km²).
The island, which formed part of the seabed for about twenty million years, is now covered by a layer of sediment up to 1000 m thick, which offers numerous sites for paleontologists . During the last ice age , the island was covered by such a heavy layer of ice that it sank up to 150 meters and then slowly reappeared. Melting ice and flowing water left numerous ravines on the island.
In addition to the well over 100,000 white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ), there are 24 rivers that contain salmon . Before colonization, there were only seven mammal species on the island: the American black bear ( Ursus americanus ), the North American otter ( Lutra canadensis ), red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ), the spruce marten ( Martes americana ), the deer vole ( Peromyscus maniculatus ) and two species of bats from the genus of the mouse -eared bat , the Little brown bat and the Northern long-eared myotis ( Myotis lucifugus and Myotis septentrionalis ).
Since then, the aforementioned deer, elk ( Alces alces ) (9,000 of whom are allowed to be shot annually), the snowshoe hare ( Lepus americanus ), the Canadian beaver ( Castor canadensis ) and the muskrat ( Ondatra zibethicus ), called muskrat , have been introduced .
The bird population differs only slightly from the neighboring mainland, but one of the largest colonies of bald eagles ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus ) in all of North America exists here . Reptiles and amphibians were not originally found here, but several species of frog have been introduced.
With the exception of smaller logging, which began earlier, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the typical North American deforestation began. Four phases can be distinguished: 1908–18 (1,800,000 m³), 1926–1930 (1,300,000 m³), 1946–1971 (145,000 to 360,000 m³ per year) and since 1995 (starting with 100,000 m³ per year, 1999 and 2000 increased to 150,000 m³, since 2005 increased to 175,000 m³).
In 1978 the moors on the eastern edge of the island and the cliffs there, which are an important breeding area for birds, were placed under protection. The Réserve écologique de la Pointe-Heath was created . In 1996, the Réserve écologique du Grand-Lac-Salé was set up on the south coast to protect the largest salt marshes in the Anticosti-Minganie region, the so-called "Great Salt Lake".
literature
- Donald MacKay: "Paradise Found" Anticosti, Editions Press 1983
- Dale C. Thomson: The island of Anticosti - A geographical-political contribution to a German-Canadian episode in the twentieth century ", in: Der Nordatlantische Raum , Ed. Frank N. Nagel, Hamburg, Stuttgart 1990 (communications from the Geographical Society in Hamburg, Volume 80, pp. 207-223)
Web links
- Sharon Chubbs ransomware, Anticosti, 1997/2005
- anticostiphotos (English and French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Statistics Canada .
- ^ Robert H. Thomas, The German Attempt to buy Anticosti Island in 1937, in: Canadian Military Journal, (Spring 2001) 47-51, digital (PDF, 428 kB): La tentative allemande d'acheter l'ile d'anticosti en 1937, Globe and Mail, August 1, 1938 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ See Anticosti Island , vd Université Laval .
