Learning a lot about Quebec's woods and waters

Author: By Peter Aiken, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, May 10, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

It was persistent and noisy.

I turned back and called my Indian guide.

``Wilfred, there's something moving around in the trees over there. Might be moose. Or bear. Maybe an enemy tribe.'' Wilfred Jackson rose from the cookstove, walked over and cocked his ear.

``That's the echo of our fire in the trees,'' he said, and started laughing. His laughter echoed in the trees across the river, and I knew I was the biggest greenhorn to hit this part of the country in quite some time.

Later, we found an ancient hunting camp. I learned how campsites were so important. How breezes and campfire smoke helped, what vegetation mosquitoes swarmed in, and how muskeg ground cover could become like a down mattress. I was eating wild berries from the ground -- strawberries, blueberries, knuckleberries -- and becoming like the muskrat, as Wilfred called me, soaking in cool river water up to my neck after a hard day's canoeing.

One afternoon, Wilfred pulled his canoe to shore and motioned to me to follow.

``We can take a shortcut here,'' he said. ``I see the river just over the tops of these trees.'' We made a portage through an almost invisible path to where the river looped back after a long detour.

``Indian path?'' I asked.

``This is where the beaver cross,'' Wilfred said. ``Sometimes they don't want to go so far, either.'' I wondered if I would see this path if I were alone, or, even better, how long I would last out here without an Indian guide. I'd last awhile if it were warm, only hours in a howling northern snow.

The Province of Quebec has urban destinations like Montreal and Quebec City but often overlooked is that, in the huge country of Canada, Quebec is the biggest province. It stretches from the borders of New England to the frigid waters of Hudson Strait. The variety of its terrain is astonishing, and great areas of it remain pure wilderness.

Over 90 percent of Quebec is public land. And there remain over 70,000 native people, from Inuit and Cree in the far north to Mohawk and Micmac further south.

One way to experience the countryside of Quebec as its natives have for centuries is to take advantage of First Nations (Canadian for Native American) tours. They include canoeing with Cree north of Montreal to fishing with Attikamek above the St. Lawrence. There are tours to the Inuit of the far north where one can choose kayaking, wildlife viewing, or exploring ancient archeological sites. Tours are year-round, with dogsledding, snowshoeing, and ice fishing offered in colder months.

But there are closer, and less expensive, places to interact with natives in Quebec than the Arctic. One can take Route 1 in northern Maine and turn onto Route 17 across the tip of New Brunswick to the Gaspe Peninsula.

Near where the provinces meet, at the Matapedia and Ristigouche rivers, is the newly built Fort Listuguj.

There are three languages in this area: French, English, and Micmac.

As elsewhere, natives are changing the spellings and pronunciations of place names once thought to have been recorded for posterity by early explorers. Using a name like ``Peking'' dates one as an oldtimer. Here in Gaspe, ``Ristigouche'' was French for the Micmac word ``Listuguj.'' Both names are now on maps, and Micmac itself is also ``Mi'gmaq,'' as it sounds in the language.

``Listuguj Mi'gmaq Gespe'gewaq'' refers to this band of Micmac on Gaspe.

``Gespe'gewaq'' means ``People of the Last Land'' and a quick look in an atlas at the Gaspe Peninsula will show why it's named thus. It sticks out like a thumb hitching to Newfoundland.

Fort Listuguj opened last summer. I met its creator, Joe Gray, a Micmac who speaks, in addition to French and Micmac, English with a soft Boston accent. He left Listuguj at 19 and returned 29 years later, after working in construction in Boston. He lived in Somerville, not far from his friend, Representative Tip O'Neill, who was across the line in Cambridge. He was successful enough to retire comfortably. But, back in Gaspe, he had a dream at 3 one morning and the vision of a fort from the past rose out of a fog. He couldn't get back to sleep and started drawing plans. His retirement ended, and he put his own funds down to back the fort's construction. Both Quebec Province and federal Canadian funds were added to his own, and building began.

Gray may have imagined a fort that actually stood nearby. The last battle between French and English for control of Canada took place in 1760 at the mouth of the Ristigouche River. As a child, Joe showed tourists Ristigouche Historical Battle Site Park, where remains of the French frigate Le Machault were displayed. Micmac had allied with French soldiers and Acadians, who had been moved from New Brunswick by the English five years previously. The British won, and descendants still maintain English-speaking farms in beautiful Gaspe river valleys. It was like that after the victory at Quebec City by General Wolfe in 1759. But there many British soldiers settled along the St. Lawrence and married French women. Along this north shore, you can find households listed under Jean Baptiste Kirkpatrick or Pierre Fraser that speak mainly French.

Gray used half-Indian and half-French workers on construction because they were allies at the time of the original fort. And he made a deal with local authorities for a work/release program for Micmac youth in jail. Once he got the young men working, there was never a problem with either the work/release program or the mixed construction crews.

Children love the completed fort. It's not just a museum, although it's built to scale with strong cedar logs. You can live in this fort, unlike fort reproductions elsewhere in Canada, and choose either bunk beds in double rooms in soldiers' barracks or sleeping bags over spruce boughs on wigwam floors. Within the stockade of the 60,000-square-foot fort is a Micmac meeting tepee, a chapel museum dedicated to Recollet and Capuchin Fathers, a smokehouse burning maplewood for preserving fish and meats, and a sweatlodge.

The largest building is a restaurant serving traditional foods like ``lusgnign,'' a Micmac bread, fish smoked on site, and game meat from farmed caribou, partridge, and deer. Beaver, a once overly hunted animal that is plentiful again, has also been served. Bowing to modern times, the fort offers a vegetarian plate. But remember the farther north one goes, the more meat and fish are consumed. You can't grow rice up there.

A beaver story in the Canadian news illustrates its comeback. In the city of Montreal is a museum called Musee Pointe-a-Callieres, just off the river in Old Montreal, where new trees of an expensive variety were planted by the city. When six were maliciously cut down, city authorities suspected vandals and set up camera monitors. Not many mornings later, the vandals were seen -- two beavers hungry for young wood.

Fort Listuguj can sleep up to 150 people. Children are taught Micmac games in the central quadrangle and learn Indian songs to the beating of drums. Ancient crafts, like building canoes and making snowshoes, are demonstrated, and Acadian and Indian dance steps are taught.

Acadian musical skills, familiar to Americans from music halls in Louisiana, reverberate off the fort's cedar walls.

Although Fort Lustiguj is open daily mid-June through October, Gray envisions off-season groups experiencing what sleeping in tents in winter is like, and will reserve the fort for parties of snowmobilers, cross-country skiers, and snowshoers.

While in Gaspe, don't confine yourself to the fort -- continue driving along the south coast. Its scenery is so picturesque that a local artist set up a huge empty frame along the road so drivers could see art in a moving panorama of Gaspe horizons inside it. The forested valleys of the Matepedia and Cascapedia and Bonaventure rivers are world famous for trout and Atlantic salmon. Bostonians take note: Red Sox legend Ted Williams's favorite fishing river in the world is the Cascapedia.

Route 299 crosses mid-peninsula to Parc de la Gaspesie, passing isolated farmsteads. You can tell by the architecture and flags flying whether English or French speakers live within. The English Loyalist house has a peaked roof with dormers and a red barn behind or beside it. The French farmhouse roof is stable shaped, two angles to each side, and the blue and white fleur-de-lis flag of Quebec flies nearby. The red Canadian maple leaf waves over Loyalist homes.

Parc de la Gaspesie is unique in several ways. The Gaspe Peninsula itself stands out when you look at it on a map because there is so little development in the interior. The towns are all on the coast. The park reserve is distinctive in having the last caribou herd left south of the St. Lawrence River, and, on the summits of the Chic Choc Mountains, moss and lichen usually seen in arctic regions. The caribou have been protected from hunting here since 1947 so it is possible, in the park, to see deer, moose, and caribou on the same day's hike.

I saw moose, one great antlered moose, on my hike in the park, and a spruce grouse believing tenaciously that its camouflage colors protected it so well it didn't have to move as I approached. I learned the bird was called ``Fool Hen'' in English parts of Canada and I knew why.

I witnessed two styles of moose-calling: one in which a park ranger held moose horns and rattled them against underbrush to imitate a male rival and another where the caller tried to moo softly like a female.

Neither style worked as well as a brief walk into the woods a human female made in lieu of a bathroom. She was shocked to hear shuffling in the foliage and turned to see a gigantic male moose and two females looming behind her. She ran and called. Those lucky to be in hearing range then watched the moose trio feed and regally saunter off into deeper woods.

From the windy summit of Mont Joseph-Fortin, I held on to a viewing platform and looked down on shimmering Lac aux Americains, named for two geologists who were poking around it for minerals a century before.

I cursed my luck that I couldn't spot caribou anywhere, but they only numbered 250 and this was a huge park. Park rangers were building a trail from the highest peak here, Mount Jacques-Cartier at 4,200 feet, to the border of Maine, where it would link up with the Appalacian Trail by the year 2000. Maybe I could return for that celebration. The caribou weren't going to be leaving these eroded old granite mountaintops anytime soon.

Gaspe Tourism (800-463-0323) can provide the fine details.

``Hiking in Quebec'' by Yves Sequin is published by Ulysses Guides, $13.95, in English and French, and is extensive, listing trails by difficulty and distance.

``Canada'' by Lonely Planet Guides, $21.95. With nearly 1,000 pages, this is the best general introduction to the country.

Getting there: Air Canada (800-776-3000) flies from Boston to Montreal, where there is a customs check, and then on to Quebec City and Gaspe. Or, you can drive through Maine to Gaspe. I've driven to Gaspe from Cape Cod in two days, with a night's stopover in northern Maine.

Tours: INNU Societe Touristique (418-843-5030, fax 418/843-7164) offers various tours with Attikamek and Innu bands along the north shore of the St. Lawrence.

Inuit Adventures (800-465-9474) is developing tours for 1999 in the Inuit section of Quebec called Nunavik, above the 55th parallel.

The Cree, at the village of Ouje-Bougoumou, offers fishing and hunting treks into the wild. Phone Bernie Pearlman at 418-745-3906.

Arctic Circle Tours (403-589-2804) are Wilfred Jackson's canoe and fishing adventures outside Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories.

It's fun to visit Fort Listuguj, 1 Pacific Drive, C.P. 214, Listuguj, Quebec, Canada GOC 2RO; phone 418-788-1760, fax 418-788-2120, http://www.johnco.com/-fortlistuguj, open daily mid-June to the end of October, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m, $5 admission. Guided tours and winter lodging on request.

Gite du Mont-Albert, Parc de la Gaspesie, 418-763-2288.

In the middle of the Chic Choc Mountains works a chef specializing in game cuisine. Even if you don't stay here, make a detour for lunch or dinner. The caribou ravioli with smoked duck and rosemary sauce I tasted was fit for the royal courts of France, and it was just one of the appetizers at $6. A double room is $90 Canadian, which translates to about $65 US -- not bad for a very comfortable room in the country.

Parc de la Gaspesie information -- Centre d'interpretation, Rte 299, CP 1066, Gaspe, Quebec GOE 2GO; phone 418-763-9020, fax 763-2516. Guided excursions, 3 to 8hours long, daily from June 24 to September. Also, winter guided excursions in cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and telemark skiing.