Percé Rock (, , ) is a huge sheer rock formation in the
Gulf of Saint Lawrence
The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a gulf that fringes the shores of the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, plus the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, possessions of France, in ...
on the tip of the
Gaspé Peninsula in Québec, Canada, off
Percé Bay. Percé Rock appears from a distance like a ship under sail.
It is one of the world's largest
natural arches located in water and is considered a geologically and historically rich natural icon of
Quebec
Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
. It is a major attraction in the
Gaspésie region.
Etymology
The massive rocky cliff is called by several names, such as ''le Rocher Percé'', Pierced Rock, Pierced Island, Split Rock or Percé Rock. The name is attributed to the pierced rock that formed an arch high on its seaward southern end, as though a needle had cut through the rock.
It was named ''Percé'' ("pierced rock") by Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain (; 13 August 1574#Fichier]For a detailed analysis of his baptismal record, see #Ritch, RitchThe baptism act does not contain information about the age of Samuel, neither his birth date nor his place of birth. – 25 December ...
in 1607, in reference to the holes he had seen in the massive block of limestone
Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...
, which over the years has become a major attraction in the province of Quebec.
Legend
The Percé Rock, described as "the monstrous giant; pierced through by an immense eye, now green, now gray, now blue or violet, according to the moods of the sea", is linked in legend to a young man of a noble French family.
Another version of the legend, which is also narrated by the local people of Percé town, is that they see the rock in the shape of a "phantom" during storms and hence call it "Le Génie de l'Isle Percée". This, however, could be interpreted to mean that the vapoury clouds that engulf the "vast flocks of water fowl" could give such an impression when viewed from a distance.
Geography
Percé Rock is part of the range of cliffs, bays and hills on the southwest side of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence
The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a gulf that fringes the shores of the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, plus the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, possessions of France, in ...
, which are formed of reddish-gold limestone
Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...
and shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...
. It is linked to mainland (at Rue du Mont Joli) by a sandbar at low tide. The Bay of Perce is situated between this rock and the High Head. There is a reef to the southwest of Percé Rock, about away from the shore. The town of Percé is located on the shores of the bay. Its main industry is fishing. Percé reef is about from the centre of the town where small vessels can be moored. Midway across the rock is a shoal that stretches over a length of .
The rock formation has about 150 fossil species. In Bonaventure Island where the park is situated, conglomerates from the Carboniferous period of more than 310 million years are recorded.
Next to the rock is Bonaventure Island, and together they form Parc national de l'Île-Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé (Bonaventure Island and Percé Rock National Park), founded in 1985, which covers an area of about . The tip of the Gaspé Peninsula has five geological formations, and Percé Rock is the only one located within the park. The park extends over a stretch of the coastline, and exhibits a wide variety of flora and fauna. It is a migratory bird sanctuary for the northern gannet, and has over 110,000 nesting birds, the second largest in the world. (The Municipal website of Percé mentions that the population of northern gannets is 121,000, which exceeds the figures mentioned for the archipelago of St Kilda in Scotland.)[ Other birds found on the island include puffins, razorbills, black guillemot and kittiwakes, as well as over 200 other species.] From May to December, some species of blue whale
The blue whale (''Balaenoptera musculus'') is a marine mammal and a baleen whale. Reaching a maximum confirmed length of and weighing up to , it is the largest animal known ever to have existed. The blue whale's long and slender body can ...
, humpback whale
The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the monotypic taxon, only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh u ...
, minke whale
The minke whale (), or lesser rorqual, is a species complex of baleen whale. The two species of minke whale are the common (or northern) minke whale and the Antarctic (or southern) minke whale. The minke whale was first described by the Danish na ...
or fin whale can be seen along the coast near Percé, Bonaventure Island and Forillon National Park.[
At low tide, the rock is approachable on foot.] The rock and the bird colony in Bonaventure Island is about a 75-minute trip from Percé by boat. Visits to the rock are restricted to the period from May 28 to October 12.[ During such visits, park guides provide information on beach creatures, the geology of Percé Rock, also called the "cathedral of limestone that rose from the ]Equator
The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...
", and the fossils found there.[ The rock mass is a monolith estimated at 5 million tonnes.][ It has been inferred that at the current erosion rate (about 300 tonnes of mass per year lost to the action of water and wind), it will disappear in about 16,000 years.][ In view of its tendency to collapse, it is dangerous to venture close to the rock on foot during low tide.][ The top of the rock is not accessible because of its height. Snowy gannets, silvery gulls, black cormorants and other species of birds perch there.]
An interpretation centre in Percé, housed in Le Chafaud, an elegant restored building, has a thematic exhibition titled "Un rocher, une île, un parc national", meaning "one rock, one island, one national park", which recounts the bird life, marine life, geology, history and ecosystem of the park and the rock.
Description
Percé Rock is a massive siliceous limestone
Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...
stack
Stack may refer to:
Places
* Stack Island, an island game reserve in Bass Strait, south-eastern Australia, in Tasmania’s Hunter Island Group
* Blue Stack Mountains, in Co. Donegal, Ireland
People
* Stack (surname) (including a list of people ...
formation, with sandstone
Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
and siltstone veins, with steep rock faces on all sides. It is long, wide, and high at its highest point. It is described as a narrow bluff emerging out of the sea, "resembling a beached supertanker from some angles". For four hours at a time during low tide, the water recedes from a wide spit that allows the rock itself to be visited.
History
Percé Rock's huge limestone formation is geologically dated to the Devonian period of more than 400 million years ago (375 million years is also mentioned). However, Percé Rock is only a small component of the large areas of Devonian rocks that occupy the interior that were first mapped in 1844 by Sir William Edmond Logan, known as the father of Canadian geology. Fossils in such rocks show a variety of animal and plant communities from both terrestrial and marine habitats from the Devonian period. The Percé Rock contains 150 species of different fossils such as brachiopod
Brachiopods (), phylum (biology), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear e ...
, trilobite
Trilobites (; meaning "three-lobed entities") are extinction, extinct marine arthropods that form the class (biology), class Trilobita. One of the earliest groups of arthropods to appear in the fossil record, trilobites were among the most succ ...
s, dalmanites, coral
Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...
s and marine worms from the Devonian
The Devonian ( ) is a period (geology), geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era during the Phanerozoic eon (geology), eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian per ...
period.[
Originally, the Percé Rock was inferred as connected to the main land. When ]Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier (; 31 December 14911 September 1557) was a French maritime explorer from Brittany. Jacques Cartier was the first Europeans, European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, wh ...
, the first colonist, arrived here in 1534, he reported three arches in the massive rock formation. In time, two of the arches disappeared, with the last one collapsing on June 17, 1845, leaving a separated pillar.[ When it was seen in 1603 by the French geographer and founder of ]Quebec City
Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...
, Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain (; 13 August 1574#Fichier]For a detailed analysis of his baptismal record, see #Ritch, RitchThe baptism act does not contain information about the age of Samuel, neither his birth date nor his place of birth. – 25 December ...
, it had only one arch. However, in 1760, a picture of Percé Rock drawn by an English officer, Captain Hervey Smyth, showed two arches, one of which collapsed in June 1845.[ Percé rock's two large holes were cut through by the sea waves. One of the holes seen now is an arch described as "gothic arch of rock", which is about high. A small boat can pass through the arch during high tide. Of the two arches, the outer arch, which collapsed with great force in 1845, remains in the form of an "obelisk".] In early 1900s, enchanted by the beauty of the Percé Rock, travellers started visiting the area of Gaspe, Percé and Bonaventure Island.
In popular culture
Percé Rock is a major tourist attraction in Quebec, with picturesque views of the rock from both Percé and nearby Bonaventure Island.[
French surrealist poet ]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'') ...
(1896–1966) visited Gaspé in October 1944 and recorded his impressions of the visit in ''Arcanum 17'', "a hymn of hope, renewal, and resurrection". The name of the poem stands for the 17th tarot
Tarot (, first known as ''trionfi (cards), trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a set of playing cards used in tarot games and in fortune-telling or divination. From at least the mid-15th century, the tarot was used to play t ...
card in the Major Arcana, called the Star, which symbolizes a woman pouring lunar forces into a mundane world and represents negative connotations of loss or abandonment of hope or bright prospects. During the visit, Breton was attracted to the Percé Rock and drew inspiration from it. In contrast to his unhappy personal life in war-torn Europe, the Rock provided him with the inspiration and reminder that "nature renews herself and that death is only transitory." He called Percé Rock a "razor blade rising out of the water, an image very imperious and commanding, a marvelous iceberg of moon stone ... to a distracted observer though to a common man it is just but a resting place of birds".
See also
* Durdle Door
*Roche Percee
Roche Percee (2021 Canadian census, 2021 population: ) is a village in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan within the RM of Coalfields No. 4 and Division No. 1, Saskatchewan, Census Division No. 1. The vi ...
References
External links
Percé Rock
a
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perce Rock
Gaspé Peninsula
Coastal islands of Quebec
Natural arches
Stacks of Canada
Landforms of Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine
Tourist attractions in Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine
Rock formations of Canada