W5: France's best-kept secret in North America

welcome back as Canadians were pretty accustomed to crossing a border because most of us live within a day's Drive of it but here's something many of you may not know America isn't the only country Canada shares a border with we're driving the rocky and scrubby landscape for hours out of st. John's - Canada's most unique border town fortun Newfoundland a harbour of good fortune when the fishery was plentiful but today it's probably best known for this plain-looking building the only port of entry in North America - a territory of France Sam Pierre and Miquelon are tiny islands only 30 kilometers from the Newfoundland shore a miniscule residue of the vast French Empire which once dominated North America and the consolation prize for losing it all to the British in 1763 the ocean crossing only takes about 90 minutes which is about exactly the same amount of time as it takes to cross the English Channel to mainland France I remember the first time I came here was about 25 years ago and I was really struck by how French these islands felt so as we prepare to dock I'm wondering whether the internet and all of the interaction with the outside world today has changed the flavor of the islands well the answer at first is as thick as the fog the islands get a lot of it in the summer but it's possible to make out the tricolor flag of France flying in the only major town Sam Pierre on a clear day a small French town of 6,000 is revealed hundreds of years old a surprisingly prosperous place built on solid rock with a Catholic Church at its center the streets are European thin and quiet the buildings have no numbers because everyone knows where everyone lives like many maritime towns the color comes from the brightly painted homes and businesses [Applause] we've timed our visit to include Bastille Day that's the national holiday in France and its territories charlton all square is alive with families and kids who run free because there's so little crime in such an isolated place the dancers salute the regions of mainland France that most of Sam Pierre's ancestors immigrated from Basque Norman and Britain ich fishing towns visit the many bakeries early enough in the day for fresh and chewy baguettes for Saul and French pastries and you pay for everything in euros here not dollars fine French wine is a bargain by Canadian standards there are so many to choose from and varieties that you've never find in a North American wine store for these visiting Canadian tourists it is little France I feel it's so historic background like we don't have that in Alberta so much I mean it goes back 200 years it's already but here you're going back four or five hundred years it's it's just amazing I just loved the old artifacts and the stuff that's around you just amazing you know you could you could you could spit in hit Newfoundland yeah really and yet it's very different how big a difference does it feel to you guys it's really another country yeah you know like you're in another country the ties between Sam Pierre and mainland France celebrated on this day are deep a quick side trip reveals just how deep [Music] for the past two summers a group of archeology students from Memorial University of Newfoundland has cleared away debris to expose the walls of an ancient building of the earliest European settlers the dig is being supervised by their professor Catherine Lucia so one of the things I discovered about some here is that the people cling to where their ancestors originally came from in France Normandy the Basque area are you finding examples of artifacts from that period of settlement here so for the 350 years we have artefact that our signature from Normandy and Brittany so what kinds of artifacts are you able to look at and say this is a representative of how the work was done how the life was lived so with for example that stoneware from Normandy we can tell that they were bringing supplies with them so probably there were butter or other food supply we have also of course testimony of the use of firearms so we have gone flims for the 18th century periods and here's another influence from 18th century France the game of Patong it's kind of a cross between law and bowling and Curly two teams try to position the metal ball closest to the target in the circle it was first played in the South of France and the tournaments are very serious business in Sam pierre when it comes to business and the economy Sam Pierre has endured a lot of hard times but a few great ones the Great Depression was a surprising boom time for Sam Pierre the docks were packed with wooden crates of liquor destined for the United States which abandoned during Prohibition Canadian law forbade selling booze directly to the American so it was sold through here technically France the building housing this museum once belonged to the Bronfman family of Montreal who made their fortune using Sam Pierre as the center of a clandestine whiskey trade into the u.s. 97 year old Eugene Thao was a teenager during the bootleg boom and what do you remember about it well I remember there was lots lots of boat a lot a lot support because my live on the waterfront and my father had a store and we were leaked our liquor on the store so what I see there was how the liquor on the wharf and lots of activity activity yeah oh yeah how many stores in San Pierre would have liquor in them to sell all the store inside here just sell vintage healthily Chris every store yes the only the church didn't only the church didn't sell when Prohibition ended in 1933 Sam piers biggest boom collapsed in the islands fisherman who had largely given up the sea to work in liquor took to their Dory's again which sustain the families until the cod was fished out in the late 1980s and Canada declared an enforced moratorium on the Grand Banks fishery Sam piers economy collapsed again and desperate men took desperate measures that was the story which first brought me to Sam Pierre oh so many years ago the provocative voyage has created a public stir a boundary dispute had erupted between Canada and France after seventeen Cod fisherman from San Pierre were arrested by the Canadian Coast Guard there were also four local politicians on board who wore the tricolour slash of France to get the attention of politicians in Paris who were fighting an election campaign and it worked Canada has another progress to make as a civilized country it was an unlikely diplomatic war over cod fish the French government has suddenly decided to strictly enforce an area of the ocean fishermen from both islands have always sailed in two and a half decades later I'm heading out to the once disputed territory with shield Poitier who remembers the cod war well an international tribunal settled the codfish war in canada's favour so today Sam pier fishermen can only jig for cod in a sliver of the sea 20 kilometers wide but 350 kilometers long not enough to restore an industry so this is jigging the Cod jigging the cutter so what was it like when the moratorium happens you were fishing them it must have just devastated your your business with a moratorium the family and everything he proposed you say whether what we can do now what we can look many people to change the work I was here 25 years ago and a lot of people that stamp here were mad at Canadians what's it like now oh no that's okay no that was enough time we're saying no more fish Wars no leaving home to study abroad this school system in France isn't what they'd expect it to be puts an island in peril they're gonna have to bring people from France to work here when w5 continues the French islands of Sam pierre and miquelon are usually a pretty sleepy place but not on this date for a repeat visitor like me who's wondered if the passage of a quarter century has eased the island's ties to France the World Cup soccer final is a good test an epic championship game against Croatia begun with a full-throated rendition of the French national anthem the stirring Marseillaise [Applause] the bar is packed with the next generation of SAP here many of whom spend winters in France going to school or working whatever split loyalties these young adults feel about spending their lives on these islands or leaving them this is a day for celebrating the unity of the blue white and red [Music] but it wasn't always one friends or one saint-pierre in a long-forgotten moment in history this isolated French territory 30 kilometers from Newfoundland suffered divided loyalties which believe it or not made it the target of an invasion during World War two a quick history lesson to set the scene when Hitler's army occupied parts of France in 1940 a new cooperating French government was installed called the Vichy regime the Vichy rulers also controlled overseas French territories like Sam Pierre and Miquelon so Canada the US and Britain became concerned that Sam Pierre could soon be used by the German Navy as a Nazi controlled seaport on the doorstep of North America there was also a powerful radio transmitter on Sam pierre capable of relaying the position of the Canadian and British ships that were resupplying the effort to defend Britain a critical lifeline Eugene Thao was a young Mariner working with the Allies then and he had no doubt Germany was eyeing Sam Pierre know what sites a time yeah there was a German submarine we'd all just we know that we we had we had Astoria but after the war he was waiting to be top we do that boat but you had the call from noticed or another somewhere indebted so he left there so there were Germans off of Sam Pierre oh yes so they were active in here because of us deerwhat that night when they detected that survived Canada's wartime leadership grew alarmed and hatched a plan to capture and secure the Sam Pierre transmitter to keep it out of Nazi hands but when General Charles de Gaulle who in exile had control of some of France's Navy heard about the Canadian plan he ordered a loyal french admiral who had fled the Vichy regime to Halifax to invade Sam Pierre before the Canadians did military historian Terry Riordan the French Navy is moving towards San Pierre metal how big is it take us through it one submarine and three claw vets and they they they sail toward Sam Pierre 1 John Dom is guarding the the key at San Pierre it's Christmas Eve it's a cold very cold he runs out of coal for his fire so he goes into town to get some more coal when he's there he said it's selling me going back there's obviously nothing going on I'm going home to bed meanwhile back at the key these ships come in five hundred sailors come off off the ships go into town they arrest the born a that's the governor the governor and so then they take over the town I called it the 30 minute invasion blinkin it's over but Eugene Te'o who was in Sam Pierre that Christmas Eve remembers the resentment of the invasion lasting much longer than that so what was the mood like as you saw the French free army approaching the shores of st. Pierre everybody was are happy and to see that but dentists of other people were not so good enough so there was a bit of division they said oh yes how long did it take for things to calm down maybe yes maybe yes maybe 10 10 years after they were still nasty less suffering there was still animosity about that day about what had happened yeah people didn't like the fact that they've been in Velen oh no even though it was the Free French I flinch you know I didn't like hmm how do you remember feeling mm-hmm how did you love it happy yes giggles invasion of Sam Pierre was front page news that week in the war a New York Times reporter had jumped aboard in Halifax and he wrote the bloodless investiture of these surprised islands by four little warships was accomplished with a display of style and manners the invasion of sam pierre is barely an asterisk in the history books but it prevented this highly strategic port and radio tower from falling into Nazi hands and maybe even prevented world war ii from reaching the shores of North America that wartime invasion is pretty much ancient history to today's young people in Sam here but it's their generation who may pose the next threat to the future of the islands graduating students like Chloe Beaufort we who must pursue their future away she's working at a bed-and-breakfast to save money for University in Montreal where she'll be studying engineering it won't be her first time in Canada her mother has roots there her best friend is a lifeguard at the only beach near town Nariko me a is heading to Rimouski to study marine biology a lot of the students are finding that this school system in France isn't what they'd expect it to be so will Canada do you think feel more like home than France might have well for me will be because I spent a lot of time in Canada and I've always considered at home why do you think more young people are choosing to go to university in Canada some people just think they're more Canada and Canada in in French but the Canada we go a lot to Canada so they know where they will be good in Canada so if more and more young people because of the economy and because of the opportunity don't return to San Pierre make it long what does that mean for the future of the islands there's always gonna be people that are coming back here that's for sure there's just people that are specializing in these careers that have no future here that are not coming back the leadership of the islands is keenly aware it is facing a demographic crisis as fewer young people can see a future here the islands don't even have high-speed cell service and coverage is limited Stephan Leno mall is the territorial president of San Pierre Mikhailov a place where more than half of the people's salaries are subsidized government jobs paid for by French and European taxpayers how does Sam here McCallum reinvent itself local sweated a lot so we hope to develop the tourism industry but also the digital therefore the first thing we did was build two ferries and a few days ago we completed an underwater cable link which will spear our economic development accompanied two brand-new big ferries crossed a fortune Newfoundland several times a day and for the first time will allow cars and trucks to make the crossing that's potentially a huge boost to Sam Pierre's economy but there's a problem because the Canadian side of the wharf has no facility to get those vehicles on or off which means that for now anyway these new ferries are crossing without any vehicles at all how frustrated are you that this hasn't happened yet on the Canadian side I'm not sure of course I'm frustrated it's clear but it's a long-term project I think that in the past two years we have diversified and improved our tourism promotion solution touristic when does it need to be finished a fook if I must find a solution by the end of 2018 so once again Sam Pierre's future seems more in Canada's hands than Francis as it's been for most of the past century [Music] [Applause] but on this day with Frances World Cup game coming down to its final seconds the people of Sam pierre and miquelon are wearing their heritage with pride an ocean apart from Paris where the shawls alizée is filling with revelers this tiny glass outpost of France in North America is also juggling a tough people who have endured hardship and isolation for generations now celebrating not only a World Cup win but they're unique and centuries-long linked to the proud heart of France and there is one other way the Sam PR Miquelon are preserving their historic link to France this summer for the first time there were direct flights from Paris to San Pierre every week we'll be right back [Music]

Channel: Official W5

Views: 468,717

Rating: 4.8039131 out of 5

Keywords: W5, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, France, Newfoundland, travel, border, World War II, Second World War, east coast, Canada

Id: p2gMCuYY4rk

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Bananannanana]

Très émouvant. Merci !

[u/Kerankou]

Sympa comme documentaire. Marrant comme le seul qui ne parle pas anglais c'est le politicien.