The Cascapedia River Museum is a vital part of the little community of Cascapedia-St. Jules, on the Gaspé Coast of Quebec. It represents the life surrounding the Cascapedia River and is a reflection of the pride that not only belongs to the world-famous river, but also to the people who worked and lived beside it all their lives. Cascapedia-St.
Bonaventure Island is, without a doubt, one of the gems of the Gaspé Penninsula. The island, which is a little over four square kilometres in area, and which lies off the Gaspé coast about five kilometres from the town of Percé, within sight of Percé Rock, was first sighted by Jacques Cartier in 1534.
Billed as "the world's most travelled lighthouse," due to the fact that it spent twenty years in the Port of Quebec, the Pointe-à-la-Renommée Lighthouse is by far one of the most spectacular maritime sites on the north Gaspé coast.
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Introduction:
The Grand Cascapedia River tells a fascinating tale about the lives of the men and women who shared a time on one of the most famous Atlantic salmon fishing rivers in the world.
The Cascapedia River begins as two fast flowing streams high in the Shick Shock Mountains. The river born of these two branches flows over a series of falls and through narrow, rocky passages, and continues on through the broad valley of Cascapedia-St. Jules. It flows over a distance of 139 kilometres (87 miles) before emptying into the Bay of Chaleurs.
Princess Louise, who was the sixth child of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and wife of the Marquess of Lorne, governor general of Canada from 1878 to 1883, first came to the Cascapedia in 1879 on a fishing excursion with her husband.
Unlike Ottawa, which was not to her liking, Princess Louise fell in love with the Cascapedia wilderness almost immediately. And she loved the sport of fly fishing.
The Atlantic salmon is one of the most fascinating fish in the world. For hundreds of years the Atlantic salmon has generated a rich cultural heritage, based on sport fishing and on the mystique of the fish itself. This silvery creature is a world traveler that spawns in fresh water but spends much of its life at sea. It can jump a 3-metre waterfall and has become a symbol of the environment and of healthy river systems.
“Such a beautiful country is not an accident. God must have created this wonderful wilderness, where all is happiness, all is peace.”
Fishing on the Grand Cascapedia by Edmund W. Davis, 1904.
A gun shot was fired on the morning of June 19, 1908. The sound must have disturbed the tranquil stillness of a morning on the Cascapedia River.