Saint-Pierre and Miquelon: Background information when reading Sweetland

Saint-Pierre and Miquelon

This article relates to Sweetland

At one point in the novel, Moses Sweetland travels to a nearby island to stock up on supplies. While there, he is questioned by the French authorities and asked for his passport. Readers might do a double-take when they read this section — the island in question is only a few miles off the coast of Newfoundland, after all — why would he need his passport.

The tiny islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, sixteen miles off the coast of Newfoundland, are governed and financed by France, which means that residents can vote in French elections and the Euro is the default currency (although Canadian and American dollars are accepted). French cars and pastry shops contribute to the islands' Old World feel. Saint-Pierre is the more populous island, with a population of 5500; Miquelon has a population of only 600.

The islands have a long and colorful history and are the only remaining vestiges of what was known as New France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, France ceded all its North American possessions to Great Britain and Spain, but the French population of about 2000 remained on the islands - until the American Revolutionary War when Britain expelled all of them. A couple of decades later, in the 1780s, the population of the islands had recovered to about 1500; but then the British returned in 1793 during the French Revolutionary Wars and once again expelled the French population in order to install British settlers. Three years later, the French sacked the fledgling British colony; and a few years after that, (in 1803) Britain reoccupied the islands. The 1814 Treaty of Paris formally returned the islands to France but that didn't stop the British occupying them yet again during the Hundred Days War of 1815. In 1816, France reclaimed the islands, by that time uninhabited with barely a standing structure, and new settlers started to arrive.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the region's economy depended heavily on fishing; smuggling was also a key activity, and became more so during the period of Prohibition in the United States, during which nearly two million gallons of Canadian whiskey traveled through the islands on their way to the US. A museum exhibit in Saint-Pierre is even dedicated to the islands' role in Prohibition. The museum also houses the only guillotine ever used in North America, to execute a murderer in 1889. The islands' colorful history is mirrored in the towns' houses which are painted bright and cheerful colors that contribute to the region's exotic and fanciful ambience.

Island scenery picture from Overseas Department of France

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to Sweetland. It originally ran in January 2015 and has been updated for the September 2015 paperback edition. Go to magazine.