For a while now, Mireille Gagné has wanted to write a novel set on Grosse Île. A fascinating place if ever there was one, this island, which is part of the L’Isle-aux-Grues archipelago, notably served as a quarantine station for immigrants, mainly Irish, who reached Canada between 1832 and 1937.
However, it is a much less known portion of history that interested the writer resident of Quebec: the importance of this place in war efforts and scientific research. From 1940 to 1956, the Canadian government, in collaboration with the British and Americans, held extremely dangerous anthrax and rinderpest experiments there, making Canada the first mass producer of anthrax for military purposes. .
“There really is a mystery surrounding the experiments that were carried out on Grosse Île,” says the author, joined by THE Duty. So I found it interesting to carry out an investigation on the subject. I interviewed a lot of people whose parents had worked at the facilities. I was able to learn more about how laboratories work and the divides between residents and researchers. All these secrets and rumors seemed very romantic to me. »
And the insects?
Strike, the author’s second novel, notably features the voice of Thomas, an entomologist recruited by the army to carry out experiments on the island on insects likely to become biological weapons. Although this type of experimentation was rather carried out by the American army at Fort Detrick, in the United States, Mireille Gagné had the idea of introducing these into her story during a camping trip on the Big Island.
“I was sitting in a teepee and sorting out the questions I wanted to ask the guides and locals I would meet the next day on my computer. But there were so many hits that I had trouble concentrating. I’ve been stung at least ten times. I wondered what they wanted from me, what attracted them so much to me. My research turned to these deer flies, and that’s how the first chapter of the novel was born. »
The story – polyphonic – therefore opens with the testimony of a striker who sets his eyes on his prey for the first time. “I first spot you from afar, attracted by your movements, even slight ones, and especially by the heat and the carbon dioxide that you give off. I step forward cautiously and inhale your scent. You all have different scents. I admit I prefer the male one, a little more tangy and spicy, earthy sometimes, but always intoxicating. »
The fly appears here as a predator, but it also represents the living being fed up with humanity and its setbacks. “I had wanted to write from the voice of nature for a long time,” says the novelist, whose previous books already mentioned women sharing the characteristics of trees (Ironwood) or animals (The snowshoe hare).
“I wanted to talk about the anger that nature must feel seeing us destroy our habitat ourselves, by being the source of our problems ourselves. I also wanted to place humans back in the food chain, to remind them that they are only a link in a balance that would also exist without them. This is a warning to myself and others to be more careful of the elements around us. »
Anger Vectors
Mireille Gagné chose to make her strikes a vector for transmitting this rage, the extent and dangerousness of which we grasp as the third voice of the novel, that of Théodore, progresses. This young man sees his mechanical existence devoid of humanity turned upside down when anger begins to spread like an epidemic in Montmagny and he learns of his grandfather’s role in this catastrophe, created in ignorance decades earlier. .
“I’ve been wondering for a while what’s causing us to be so angry, collectively. The novel was written before the conflicts in Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas, but I feel like this epidemic of rage reflects what is happening now. It seems to me that this anger is a deep and cryptic thread of our society. I wanted to start thinking about what we transmit, without knowing it, genetically. Do we repeat self-destructive behaviors because we have lost the memory of our ancestors? Why are we perpetuating war when we know its aims? It seems we are unable to see the big picture. The natural disasters and conflicts that follow one another in all their horror force us to introspect. »
Faced with the state of the world, it is easy to become discouraged. Increasingly, human beings seem disconnected from their environment and communities. Is it still possible to change course? “It’s a huge project. The first step is to talk about it. It’s crazy because, in my previous book, Ironwood, I wrote that if a tree misses the signal of the change of season, it can be dangerous for it. We saw it this year. Winter arrived overnight. Several trees still had their leaves, which makes them more prone to losing their branches if there is ice, for example. Right now, even nature is having difficulty perceiving the signals. We are experiencing an incredible gap. For my part, the way to resist lies in speaking and writing, because the more people are aware, the more governments will feel the pressure to act. »