BLIGHTED BY REPEAL

Evening Star, Issue 21904, 15 December 1934, Page 13

BLIGHTED BY REPEAL

TWO FRENCH AMERICAN ISLANDS [Lewis B. Skdking, Jun., in the ‘ Literary Digest.’] Set in a protecting curve of the rugged southern coast of Newfoundland are two tiny islands, barren and rocky, which, in tlic past decade, have received far more notoriety than their total area of ninety-three square miles would seem to deserve. They are St. Pierre and Miquelon, tho last remnants of the once great j French colonial empire in North America, for three centuries the North Atlantic base for the iisherfolk of Continental France, and, in recent years, the reputed source of much of the liquor smuggled into tho United States during prohibition. Repeal came, and the islands seemed destined for a return to the oblivion of a mere cod-fishing existence from which they suddenly rose in 1920, but, now, the United States Government hints unofficially that they again have become the base for a new rum-row which is springing Tip off the Atlantic Coast. ■/ It may be true, but a visit to St. Pierre tends to disprove the allegation. The liquor is there, no doubt of that, in tremendous quantities, and for sale at unbelievably low prices, but, instead of regarding it as the source of another golden harvest, the people have come to look upon the immense stocks as a whito elephant. America, it seems, never again is likely to bo as good to St. Pierre as it was in tho halcyon years from 1920 to 1930. Instead, St. Pierre and Miquelon, shaped geographically like a question mark, have become tho symbols of a great question in the minds of the quiet, kindly folk who inhabit the land: “ What of the future?” Times have changed, and the people have changed since the happy days before the World War when fishing oli tho Grand Banks was the sole occupation of the Perrais. Visits from their Continental kin have become less and less frequent, as great steam trawlers from Franco come to the Banks without stopping at St. Pierre, and return in the same way. Modern fishing methods have supplanted the ones to Tvhich the Perrais are accustomed, and they are the losers, though they still have their old boats and equipment. More serious than that is the change in the people. Prohibition utterly spoiled them, with its easy money and thrilling adventures. Thousand-dollar bills flowed into their homespun ' pockets like water! and flowed out again as easily. How could anyone resist the temptation of making as much in a week of rum-running as he previously had made in a year of codfishing? Then repeal. The easy money was gone; enormous stocks of liquor from all over the world were left in warehouses, most of the latter hearing the dates 1928 and 1929; Canada and Newfoundland tightened restrictions against liquor importation; Americans bade a hasty farewell to the bleak islands; and, worst of all, the people hated to return to the life which they had known for centuries. As one of them summed it up: “ It was a case of easy come, easy go. We were happy before. Then everything seemed so. much better during vour Prohibition. Now my people won’ fc return to fishing, and there is no work. We don’t like to think ■of what is ahead.” , . Barring a return of the daring rumrunning syndicates, the only hope for income for the islanders seems to he tourists, and that is a bet which may not be overlooked by the Perrais. In it they have a stock in trade which may not prove to be ap lucrative as t rum-running, but it will be much more certain. Visitors will be more pleased than, with a Journey to other parts of North America. St. Pierre is truly French in appearance, as far as that is possible with the weather-bhaten little houses set among the rocky headlands, as well as in loyalty to the homeland. The tricolour of France waves proudly from the . waterfront buildings. The gendatniGs who moot the ship remind on© of Boulogne, Cherbourg, or Brest. The French of France is spoken exclusively among the people, but, as a bequest of their ten years, of contact with Americans, and through necessary association with the people of Newfoundland fifteen miles away, those who are in business have a working knowledge of the English language. All tho contacts of the country are To Franco the people go for infrequent pilgrimages, while, from France, they receive their newspapers and most articles of commerce. Thev feel that the French do not reciprocate properly, a belief which adds no little to the present state of on- . certainty in which the colony finds it- | self. In August of 1933 two French j war vessels, the light cruisers d’Fntrecasteaux and Vine d’Ys, appeared in tho harbour of St, Pierre, but they were not altogether welcome, for they had been sent by the homo Government to quell riots over what the people felt was unnecessary taxation. There was great rejoicing this year when it become knowiii however, that a French ship was due on a peaceful mission—the Champlain, carrying governmental officials to the Jacques Cartier 400th anniversary observance in Canada. To-day the village is ninch like it was just after the World War—the glaring white Government buildings set in a three-sided .square before flower-filled Le Place Marechal Foch, the quaint little Roman Catholic . cathedral in a square behind them, I the row on row of nnpainted,. yet im- j pressive stores and houses on tho hill\ side streets. Over all there is a neatness recalling the villages of the Breton and Basque provinces from which most of the ancestors of the 4,000 islanders came. So St. Pierre and Miquelon, the barren, picturesque, unfortunate French colony of the North Atlantic, faces the future, with warehouses filled with an unsalable product, kept out of Canada even by air-plane patrols of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, with brandy selling at such prices as l.SOdol. a quart in any store, and there arc many, and American cigarettes at less than half price, with French, American, Canadian, Newfoundland, English, and even Spanish money passing interchangeably at par, and with the hopes, pinned by the still cheerful people on the appreciation by tourists of rockbound coastal" scenery unequalled in much of North America for impressiveness.