A few days in the Magdalen Islands last week. It’s good to be on the fringes of the sad ambient orbit, from time to time, to change the place of evil.
Two years of war in Ukraine. Israel and Palestine. Trump, Putin. The death of Alexeï Navalny was a real blow to me. A rise of fascism almost everywhere. These last few months have made us realize that it is not always the good guys or goodness who win. People are fragile and on edge. With the result that we get pissed off over everything and nothing. In the background, a horizon of ugliness and paranoid sensitivities. Hurry up spring, we say to ourselves. Quickly we can open the windows.
I went to the Islands for public meetings, and to see this magnificent piece of country that floats on the water. The good thing about winter there is that there are no tourists. From 13,000 permanent residents, it comes close to 80,000 during the “beautiful season”.
Among other things, I met a guy there, Gilbert Richard, who since the 1er January decided to only eat what is local. The “local” fashion, so dear to our values during the pandemic, has faded a little since then (Le Panier bleu has just been disconnected, among other things). Gilbert only eats food 100% from his territory. Meat, milk, fruit, vegetables, seafood must come from the same postal code. It also means zero flours, sugars and anything that does not “grow” in the Islands. He will make a documentary about it.
Medical follow-up every three months, fishing, hunting, gathering, difficulties and reflections on this modern impossibility of being entirely supported by the territory that we have chosen to inhabit and occupy. We are far from the dietary models that have nourished us for millennia. He hopes to last a full year.
A test halfway between an extreme sports performance and a spiritual quest, because he must think about this thing that we no longer do: taking the time to cook. Four weeks after he started – in February, that is – he had lost 30 pounds and I’ve never seen a guy eat that much fat. And be aware that nourishment is not only linked to pleasure. We had somewhat forgotten it in the obsession with immediate gratification that we impose on ourselves to succeed in life.
He prepared for a year by growing a vegetable garden, picking wild blueberries and cranberries, raising his pigs and an ox, and gathering here and there what the Gulf could give him: lobsters, crabs, sea ducks, molluscs, sea lions (seals)… Tofu and lentils do not grow on the Islands.
The beauty of his approach is that it recalls the enormous ravine that has opened up between oneself and the idea that we have had of ourselves for several decades in terms of food. Literally as well as figuratively.
One morning, on the ice floe (almost non-existent, but that’s another subject), we went seal hunting (it’s part of the menu). With a hakapik. Warning to the faint of heart: don’t Google the word, you’ve been warned. This practice is now validated and regulated by the federal government, which issues subsistence hunting permits. This is how people have survived for centuries.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Seal hunting takes place on the ice floes in the Magdalen Islands.
I will not advocate seal hunting here, there are far too many for the ecosystem (because they are protected by the militancy of feelings), but we must know how to respect the customs and survival practices of the territories and others. On the government site which regulates the issuance of permits, it is said that hakapik blows must shatter both hemispheres to comply with “humane” killing standards. By the way, poultry, pigs and cattle are also slaughtered in this way, stunned before bleeding.
Faced with the news of current times, between the guardians of the world and the self-proclaimed saviors who impose their truths of false benevolence, there is this strange stupidity which inhabits the offended and which we seem to have forgotten; that of a human project that still works (thanks to the economy!), between ugliness and beauty.
We can kill Navalny and escape, it’s terrible. But there is also, here and there, a little light and people to rely on to move forward. Although too often lately I feel like a sea wolf getting whacked on the head with the hakapik of our nature. On a melting ice floe. Maybe we’re a little stupid, deep down.
It’s been two weeks that I’ve been sleeping with the windows open to provoke spring to finally show its face and leave the sugars. Looks like it’s working. Much needed.
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