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Out on the Gaspe the fishing boats still put out from the coves for cod and halibut. Tourists could also put out from the little bays for a day of deep-sea fishing for swordfish and tuna. Perce Rock still stood, angular and orange, out of the blue water. The thousands of birds still nested on Bonaventure Island.
In the Baie de Chaleur, touring fishermen could still catch salmon, measured in feet, not inches. At Murray Bay's swank Manoir Richelieu, the service was still superb, and there was more than enough fun to go around.
New Sounds. But there had been a change in the picturesque land. In old Quebec Province, the conservative, independent, devoutly Catholic habitant had developed his own culture on his farms. Its cornerstones were the church and the big family, an economic necessity in the rural economy.
Never forgetting that they were a defeated group, they had fanatically defended their right for 200 years to speak their own language, to keep from being absorbed by English Canada. They felt no ties for either France (the France they remembered was that of the 18th Century) or Britain. And when English Canada, feeling those ties in the war, had tried to conscript the French Canadians to fight abroad, there had been riots and bitterness.
But the habitant's world had not been able to keep the world out. World War II brought new factories and industries to Quebec. The tourist, his eye out only for the quaint, would miss them—the huge new power plant on the Saguenay, the new plywood plant at St. Therese, the new plastic plant at Brownsburg.
These new industries have caused a profound change in old Quebec's 17th Century culture. As the world came in, much of the old, fanatical nationalism and isolationism with its distrust of English Canada has gone out. Now, there is a greater feeling of cooperation between French and English Canada than ever before.
The 3,000,000 French Canadians, over one-third of Canada's population, can afford to take the long view. The best protection for their culture lies in something no tourist can miss—the swarms of children that play about the old outdoor ovens and the creaking, great-winged windmills. Quebec's birthrate, which has long outstripped the rest of Canada's, may some day make the French Canadians the majority in the Dominion. The habitant calls it the "victory in the cradle." Time, and the long winter nights, are on French Canada's side.
*Barbotte is a fast-action dice game in which the players bet against each other, with the house taking a cut from each bet. Balbo, a variation of barbotte, is played with cards instead of dice.