But the clamming is a serious industry. On it hangs the success or failure of the mackerel-fishing. Only so can M’sieu start out in the little boat early in the morning to fish. Only so can the “Mackerel from the Madeleines” arrive in Halifax to keep busy caulkers and brine-boys, and keep flowing the stream of Canadian export trade in fish.
But not until one passes on the highway at Grindstone some morning when it is too rough for the “Amelia” to make her call at Etang du Nord, and meets the procession of island-carts with their loads of barrels going overland to the public wharf on the lea-side of the island, does one carry any idea of the vast number of “Number Ones” which actually go out from here to Halifax, and thence, to the tables of the world.
It is on “shipping days” that one realizes that Madeleine, no less than Evangeline, is a sport, risking all her business success on the turn of the “barrel”.
But fish is everywhere—a summer trade. And summers pass all too swiftly. It is in winter that Madeleine is thrown in upon herself; cut off from the world by the ice for six months of the year.
It is then the Mesdames of the islands—Amherst, Grindstone, Alright, Coffin, Grosse Ile and Entry—settle down to the loom, take the old spinning wheels between their knees; and make the Catalognes, the Catalognes, the equals of which are seen nowhere else in all Quebec. It is in winter the island-artizans choose and blend the colours that make the prettiest “couverts” to use and to lay away in the old sea-chests.
In winter, spinning by the window, madame looks out upon long endless stretches of ice-imprisoned sea, solid masses of the Gulf ice that closes navigation and separates herself and family from habitant families ashore. Yet because “the Sea” is in their blood not one of these Islanders would change places with the people ashore. “What of adventure,” inquire they, “is there in inland lives compared with ours, literally held in the sea’s hand? Mais, non.” The Amelia makes her last trip a few days before Christmas. But even so, although no one can get off the islands after that, news still comes and goes by way of the Telegraph Cable and “Miss Johanna” becomes a figure in the limelight, as operator.
* * * *
Lying to the North and somewhat apart from the main pearls of “The Necklace” are “The Bird Rocks”.
On the largest of these a lighthouse stands, an aid to navigation. It is a very lonely spot and no one except the lighthouse keeper and his family live there. But these desolate rocks have a claim on Romance through the thousands of wild sea-birds, who in summer make them their habitat and nesting-place. These sea-birds, chiefly the beautiful cafe au lait coloured gannet, have three major haunts in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, at these “Bird Rocks”, at Percé Rock and at Bonaventure Island off the Percé-Gaspé shore.
The first signs of human life the lighthouse keeper sees in the spring are brought by the Sealing ships coming into the Gulf after seals that frequent the ice pans.