Bonaventure Island (officially in French: île Bonaventure) is a Canadian island in the

Gulf of St. Lawrence The Gulf of St. Lawrence () is the outlet of the North American Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. The gulf is a semi-enclosed sea, covering an area of about and containing about of water, at an average depth of . ...

located off the southern coast of Quebec's

Gaspé Peninsula The Gaspé Peninsula, also known as Gaspesia (; ), is a peninsula along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River that extends from the Matapedia Valley in Quebec, Canada, into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It is separated from New Brunswick o ...

, southeast of the village of Percé. Roughly circular in shape, it has an area measuring .

History

Bonaventure Island (Île Bonaventure), with Percé, was among the early seasonal fishing ports of New France, and was associated with the lineage of Nicolas Denys. Settlers from southern Ireland came in the early 1790s. Peter Du Val, a native of Jersey, set up a fishery company on lot number one before 1819, population rose to an apex, but the company endured until 1845. The island became a migratory bird sanctuary in 1919 due to the 1916 Migratory Bird Convention between Canada and the United States. The Province of Quebec acquired ownership of the entire island by act of expropriation in 1971, evicting the whole population. At this time approximately 35 families were forced to move elsewhere, all residents were evicted. Later the Province of Quebec grouped it together with Percé Rock into the Parc national de l'île-Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé (Bonaventure Island and Percé Rock National Park) in 1985. One of the largest and most accessible bird sanctuaries in the world, with more than 280,000 birds, Bonaventure Island is a major tourist destination with boat and island tours from May to October. The aircraft carrier HMCS ''Bonaventure'' was named after the island.

Birds

218 different species of birds have been recorded as visiting, migrating to, or living on Bonaventure island. The most common bird found on the island is the northern gannet. The island is home to one of the largest colonies of gannets in the world, with 51,700 pairs in 2011. Other populous colonies include the

black-legged kittiwake The black-legged kittiwake (''Rissa tridactyla'') is a seabird species in the gull family Laridae. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae'' as ''Larus tridactylus''. The English ...

and the common murre. Terns,

black guillemot The black guillemot or tystie (''Cepphus grylle'') is a medium-sized seabird of the Alcidae family, native throughout northern Atlantic coasts and eastern North American coasts. It is resident in much of its range, but large populations from the ...

herring gulls Herring gull is a common name for several birds in the genus ''Larus'', all formerly treated as a single species. Three species are still combined in some taxonomies: * American herring gull (''Larus smithsonianus'') - North America * European he ...

, great black-backed gulls, razorbills, Leach's storm-petrels, great cormorants, double-crested cormorants,

Atlantic puffin The Atlantic puffin ('), also known as the common puffin, is a species of seabird in the auk family. It is the only puffin native to the Atlantic Ocean; two related species, the tufted puffin and the horned puffin is found in the northeastern ...

s, boreal chickadees and blackpoll warblers can also be observed on Bonaventure.

Poetic landmark

Bonaventure Island has been an important source of inspiration to numerous artists and poets. The surrealist writer

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

declared that, while working on his novel ''Arcane 17'', as he stayed in Percé (1944), he would never tire watching the birds of the Island. The island never ceased attracting painters and writers : the American painter Frederick James (d. 1905), Franco-Germans Claire et Yvan Goll (1946) — by the sixties several artists would spend the summer on the island, and would stay over the summer with the inhabitants—descendants of Irish and Norman settlers—the best known of whom was the naturalist William Du Val. Among these inspired visitors: painter Jacques Hurtubise and

Kittie Bruneau Kittie Bruneau (12 October 1929 – 6 April 2021) was a Canadian painter and printmaker. Life and work Bruneau was born in Montreal on 12 October 1929. She studied at École des beaux-arts de Montréal from 1946 to 1949. She studied for a ye ...

, the sculptor Morton Rosengarten, the poet Michaël La Chance. Artists and landowners were evicted in the seventies.Thierry Haroun, « Une autre Gaspésie », ''Le Devoir'', 23 aout 2003.

References

External links

Environment Canada's Bonaventure Page
{{Coord, 48, 29, 42, N, 64, 09, 54, W, region:CA_type:isle, display=title Gaspé Peninsula Coastal islands of Quebec Seabird colonies Landforms of Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine

History

Birds

Poetic landmark

See also

References

External links