The far side: St-Pierre and Miquelon are a bit of France by eastern Canada

ST-PIERRE AND MIQUELON — The French tricolor flew above Place du General de Gaulle on a misty morning as white-gloved gendarmes in snappy blue uniforms, rifles across their chests, stood at attention and the band struck up "La Marseillaise." It was July 14, Bastille Day.

I was in France, surrounded by patriotic French, yet I was 2,800 miles and an ocean away from Paris, in St-Pierre and Miquelon. The two islands, 18 miles off the coast of Canada's Newfoundland province, are the only remaining French outposts in North America.

For three days, as the thermometer hovered around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, I had been peering through a low-lying fog that blanketed St-Pierre and its harbor. But someone up there must love the French, because on Bastille Day, the sun broke through. By midday, when a sizable number of St-Pierre's 6,000 residents gathered in the plaza to toast the motherland, the temperature had climbed to 70.

St-Pierre and Miquelon — the two small islands, separated by six miles of ocean, are referred to as one — once was a thriving cod-fishing community. St-Pierre, the capital and home to most of the islands' population, is French to its core. There are good French restaurants serving escargot and frog legs. Patisseries sell plump, flaky croissants. Peugeots, Renaults and Citroens dash through the narrow, potholed streets. Restaurant patrons puff away on their Gauloises. When friends meet, they kiss on both cheeks. French is, of course, the native tongue, and many locals speak little English.

Getting there

• Air Saint-Pierre has direct flights to St-Pierre from Halifax and other eastern Canadian cities. 877-277-7765 or www.airsaintpierre.com.

• SPM Express offers daily passenger ferry service in summer (with a reduced schedule the rest of the year) from the small town of Fortune, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland, to St-Pierre. 800-563-2006 or www.spmexpress.net. Be ready for rough seas.

More information

Tourism office: 011-508-410-200 or www.st-pierre-et-miquelon.info (click on the Union Jack flag for English). The Web site has links to hotels, B&Bs and more.

Seattle Times staff

It's not the easiest place to reach, which may help account for the paucity of first-rate lodgings. I flew to New York, connecting to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The next day, I boarded a turboprop plane for the 350-mile trip to St-Pierre, where I'd arranged for a rental car. Because of a mix-up, Garage Marie Norbert knew nothing of my booking but could offer me a car. The credit-card machine wasn't working (a common problem on the island), and I had no euros, but they handed me the keys — no questions asked — and asked me to drop by in the morning.

I decided I was going to like this laid-back place that calls itself "terre insolite" (unusual land).

I checked into Auberge de l'Archipel, a bed-and-breakfast on a residential street uphill from the harbor, one of several similarly modest accommodations. The no-frills room — no phone, no TV — had just enough space for a bed and small chest, but it was clean. (Nearby Chez Helene, which was highly recommended, looked more upscale but was full.)

For a different experience, I also spent two nights at Hotel/Motel Robert on the waterfront, where a little lobby museum in the original 1920s building is testament to St-Pierre's onetime prosperity as a transfer point for Canadian liquor smuggled into the United States during Prohibition. The collection includes a straw hat that belonged to Al Capone. I wondered whether public enemy No. 1 actually had stayed at the hotel. "Oui, oui," said the woman at the desk, holding up an index finger. "One night" (in 1927).

At St-Pierre, the liquor was taxed and warehoused — legally — until it was picked up by American rumrunners who smuggled it — illegally — by boat into the United States. As many as 300,000 cases passed through each month. When wooden cases proved too noisy, alerting authorities during offloading in New York, they were abandoned in St-Pierre in favor of jute sacks with straw. The wood helped build many a house, including a cottage called Villa Cutty Sark, made entirely from whiskey cases.

It's said that flags here were flown at half-staff upon repeal of U.S. Prohibition in 1933. The island went into economic decline and has never again been as prosperous.

Before there was whiskey smuggling, there was cod fishing. Its zenith was in the late 19th century; by 1992, overfishing had seriously depleted cod in the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia, and Canada imposed strict quotas. Today, diners will find fresh local scallops, mussels and salmon on menus.

At the contemporary Musee de l'Arche, overlooking the harbor, visitors can gain an understanding, through old-ship memorabilia and vintage photos, of life in the heyday of fishing.

Nearby is a World War I monument. These tiny islands sent more than 400 men to that war. One-fourth did not return.

Woeful weather

Had I not been lucky enough to be in St-Pierre on a glorious Bastille Day, I might have declared it rather gloomy. At times there was almost zero visibility on the roads, which haven't a single traffic light. (The island is only 10 square miles, so it's easy to cover in a short time.) On a cold, rainy day, I asked a young woman at the Musee de l'Arche, "If this is July, what's winter like?" She just smiled and said, "Worse."

Perhaps it is the weather that inspired residents to paint their clapboard houses in vivid blues, greens, yellows, pinks and purples. They're built out to the curb on the narrow streets above the harbor, and they typically sport lace curtains and tambours, enclosed front porches the size of a closet.

Wedged among the homes are shops selling French wine, clothing and perfumes and such oddities as "leather" goods fashioned from codfish skin. Local crafts tend toward nautical-themed kitsch.

It is St-Pierre's remoteness, besides its Frenchness, that makes it seem otherworldly. Television didn't come to the islands until 1967. Computers have arrived, but no Internet cafes. My cell phone, which works most places, didn't here. (I bought a French phone card.)

Discovered by Portuguese

The islands were discovered by Portuguese explorer Joao Alvarez Faguendes in 1520. In 1536, when French mariner Jacques Cartier visited, he found fishermen from France plying their trade.

Many of today's residents are descendants of the French who settled here permanently in the 17th century. Others trace their roots to Acadians, French who were deported from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755 during French-British territorial disputes.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, St-Pierre and Miquelon bounced between Britain and France; in 1816, the islands were returned to France.

The mother country, which islanders refer to as the Metropole, heavily subsidizes the islands, providing money for projects such as the new airport. Officially, St-Pierre and Miquelon is a self-governing territory. Miquelon, geographically larger than St-Pierre, has a population of 700 and is connected by a sandbar to Langlade, which is inhabited only in summer. No wonder. There's neither electricity nor running water, and in winter the temperature dips well below freezing. There's a small chapel, a cafe and a colony of summer homes. St-Pierrais come to hunt, fish and escape "city" life.

There's no better time to be in St-Pierre and Miquelon than on Bastille Day, when French celebrate the storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789, the event that signaled the start of the French Revolution.

A handful of World War II veterans were VIPs at last year's opening ceremonies in St-Pierre. I spoke with Fernand Lafitte, 86, a St-Pierre native who was studying in France at the time of the German occupation. He escaped through Casablanca, Morocco.

"We were on an old boat full of chickens and geese," he said. "We weren't sure we were going to make it — until we saw the Statue of Liberty."

He served in the U.S. Navy and, at war's end, came home and worked as an electrician on fishing boats.