MADELEINE ISLANDS | The Îles-de-la-Madeleine are so popular these days that more people are moving there than residents are leaving. They come from Montreal, France, and even Tunisia: a feat for this isolated and aging archipelago.
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“Welcome to Paradise”. It was with these words that Iheb Chaabane was greeted by his new boss last October when he stepped off the plane, after an endless saga of flight delays and cancellations.
In the small village where he lived in Tunisia with his wife and two children, everyone knows each other… a bit like on the islands.
“Sometimes, I have the feeling of being in Canada and Tunisia at the same time”, is astonished Mr. Chaabane.
Receiving immigrants is rather new for the 13,000 inhabitants of the Magdalen Islands. And it is now a priority.
For more than 30 years, the population of the archipelago has continued to decrease.
Then from 2016-2017, the maritime community began to reverse its net migration.
In 2020-2021, it even reached a peak, with 203 new residents more than the number of outward moves.
Perception to change
It must be said that the beauty of the islands has its effect. Every summer, people go there on vacation and don’t want to leave. The phenomenon is all the more present since the pandemic, which has made telework possible.
But there is above all an attraction strategy led by the municipality and the MRC.
“It is one, great seduction […] It’s a perception that we want to change: the islands are not just a summer destination,” explains Alexandre Bessette, territorial marketing advisor.
To achieve this, his team relies on human contact: promoting the island lifestyle to attract people, then welcoming and accompanying them for months, in addition to organizing social activities.
Boat or plane only
When Romain Watelet proposed to Lolita Alborghetti to leave France to settle in Canada, she replied: “Okay, but only if it’s in a big city.”
They now live on an archipelago accessible only by boat or plane. Their house is on the island of Grande Entrée, the furthest away. From Cap-aux-Meules, the journey by car is 45 minutes, with long stretches on strips of sand where wind turbines are enthroned.
When they arrived last August, getting toothpaste was a challenge. But six months later, the combined charms of nature, a warm welcome and job opportunities have worked. “To date, it’s really great. We have no regrets.”
Alexandre Bessette knows that life on the islands is not for everyone. Some end up leaving.
But he doesn’t need to “twist his arms” to recruit Neo-Madelinots: some 150 potential candidates contact his team each year.
A reverse trend
MIGRATION BALANCE OF THE ISLANDS
2014-2015: -134
2015-2016: -9
2016-2017: 42
2017-2018: 94
2018-2019: 120
2019-2020: 164
2020-2021: 203
2021-2022: 166
*Source: Statistical Institute of Quebec
In the midst of a “demographic hurricane”
It’s not just hurricanes like Dorian and Fiona that threaten the Magdalen Islands. There is also the “demographic hurricane” of aging which makes the archipelago a “laboratory” for the rest of the province.
“We live on the islands what Quebec will live in ten years,” said Léonard Aucoin, a Madelinot ex-manager of the health sector now retired.
Using public data, he carried out an in-depth study of Magdalen demographics in order to cross-reference it with various issues such as tourism, housing and the economy.
“It’s extraordinary, what has happened in the last few years.” But make no mistake: the average age in the Îles-de-la-Madeleine maritime community is 50, while the Quebec average is 43.
Both socially and in terms of climate change, the islands are a formidable observatory and laboratory for the entire province.
What awaits us is nothing less than a “demographic hurricane,” says Mr. Aucoin, using economist Pierre Fortin’s expression.
Missions abroad
Annually, there are more deaths than births in the archipelago.
To maintain the population at around 13,000 inhabitants, 150 people must therefore come to settle on the islands for every 50 people who leave, he illustrates.
“The only solution is migration, with all the challenges that entails,” concludes Mr. Aucoin.
It should therefore come as no surprise if the great seduction of the islands extends to foreign countries. A francization program is even being developed at the Cégep de la Gaspésie islands campus.
When The newspaper questioned him, Alexandre Bessette had just returned from a stay in Morocco.
Accompanied by the director of a CPE, he received nearly 400 CVs from experienced educators and went through more than 80 interviews.
In the end, five of them will be selected.
“If we could, we would bring a lot more,” admits Mr. Bessette.
But the municipality prefers to start gradually, in particular because of the lack of housing.
A RADICAL CHANGE OF LIFE
She found her horizon
“I really looked like a crazy person,” Janeth Lopez laughs about the moment she filled her car to bursting point to leave Montreal on January 1, 2021.
After seeing a video from the Évasion channel, this 29-year-old community worker decided to settle in the islands when she had never been there before. “A big intuition,” she sums up.
It must be said that by dint of spending eight hours a day in front of her computer due to the Covid, she was in the throes of a loss of motivation.
Today, she has a view of the sea from the living room in the house she rents 10 months a year.
“I think in Montreal, I felt imprisoned […] I need to see the horizon. It unravels your mind.”
For the love of hockey
“It was a childhood dream to come and live in Canada. Since I was very young, I have heard about Quebec hockey players, ”reveals Romain Watelet, 27 years old.
He hadn’t yet finished his education studies when he received a message in his university’s email inbox in Reims, France.
After attending a webinar, he learned in the spring of 2022 that the Grosse-Île elementary school wanted to hire him.
The decision and paperwork surrounding visas and immigration must have been done at lightning speed. They arrived last August. “A gamble,” says his wife, Lolita Alborghetti, 25.
She found the “dream job” in human resources on the islands that she could not find in France.
As for Mr. Watelet, he found a position as a goalie on one of the islands’ hockey teams, in addition to teaching kindergarten for 4 and 5 year olds.
A “mobile granny”
When Chantal Banville stored all her furniture in Rimouski in 2021, she thought her move to the islands would only be temporary.
The plan was to come and take care of Gustave and Pauline, her 3-year-old and 1.5-year-old grandchildren who don’t have a place in daycare. “In the end, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else […] I feel at home here,” says the 65-year-old retired secretary.
His daughter, Marie-Philippe Beaulieu, 30, has lived there for five years with her husband, an oceanographer from Madelinot.
Ms. Banville has also served or offered respite to other mothers since she arrived. With the aging population, she even sees a formula to develop. “Having mobile grannies all over the islands would not be worse for helping parents.”
Learn French on the islands
Angela Lopez, 37, thought she was just passing through Quebec for her studies…until she fell in love with a native Madelinot. Ulysse Hubert, 44, left the islands at the age of 11. For years, the idea of returning there had been floating around in his head.
“The opportunity presented itself on a silver platter” when a position became available at the rehabilitation center, says this speech therapist who arrived in January 2021.
Rather than going to join Mrs. Lopez for a stay in Colombia, it was she who came to join him on the islands. “A leap into the void”, admits the one who manages better and better to make herself understood thanks to the francization courses given at the campus of the islands of the Cégep de la Gaspésie.
Tranquility, nature, the fact of not having to triple lock its doors: life on the islands is what it is looking for.
She begins to build her own social circle. The most difficult, in fact, is to manage the “maze” of immigration procedures, she concludes.
From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic
Iheb Chaabane had never heard of the islands before interviewing as a mechanic for Honda dealership LeDé Sports.
It was while doing research that the 36-year-old man discovered all the good that was said about it: the calm, the tight-knit community and the presence of the sea, which would have something to remind him of his Tunisian village near Gabes, on the Mediterranean.
He arrived in the islands last October with his wife, Mariem Ayadi, 30, and their two children, Bissane and Mohammed Rissane, aged 3 and almost 2.
The couple, who hope to give them a better future in Canada, received the Journal representative with coffee and maple leaf cookies.
Ms. Ayadi is a daycare educator. She may be able to contribute to reducing the shortage… if she manages to find a place for her own children.
Victim of his own success
“Sometimes my clients ask me when I’m leaving, they’re worried. I tell them: for the moment, we have no intention of leaving. We are fine,” reassures Camille Mathieu, 24, from Repentigny.
She agreed to follow her husband who was offered a permanent job in mining engineering.
They arrived two months ago, in January, and his phone is already ringing.
This animal health technician took additional training in grooming to fill in the gaps in her schedule as a technician.
And now she’s doing animal grooming almost full time. “I feel like I’m the only one on the islands,” says the one who already has around thirty customers waiting for the month of April.
“It’s a beautiful problem,” she said with a smile.