Photo: Marc Loiselle

The Gaspésie is a peninsula, roughly elliptical in shape, projecting 260 kilometers into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, at the south-east extremity of Québec. It is positioned between 64° 22 and 67° 42 west longitude, and 47° 49 and 49° 15 north latitude.

Its physical appearance is tremendously varied. Along the estuary, from Sainte-Flavie to Cap-Gaspé, the coast traces a large curve. The second part (from Mont Saint-Pierre), the tip of the Gaspesian plateau, falls abruptly into the sea. Perpendicular to the mountainous foldings, the gulf coast is very irregular.

In National Forillon Park we can see the sedimentary layers that were tipped over by the tectonic forces. This deformation is also visible at Percé where the limestone was lifted vertically, Percé Rock is an example. At the southern part of the peninsula, a narrow coastal plain made of red sandstone winds along the Chaleur Bay. At a distance from the coast, is a succession of erosion-rounded mountains.

Photo: Sébastien Cloutier

The rocks that make up the Gaspésie are Precambrian, the Earth's oldest. The same rocks also make up the Canadian Shield from the Canadian Prairies to Labrador. During the whole of the Cambrian period (600 million years ago), the Gaspé Peninsula was part of a vast glaciated trench, the Appalachian geosyncline. During the Ordovician period (500 million years ago), the future Gaspésie was being formed by the accumulation of sediments at the bottom of the sea trench.

The Earth's crust at the bottom of this basin underwent a series of uprisings and subsidences and, towards the end of the period, a series of intense foldings lifted up the region to form a range of very high mountains. These produced the rocks that form a large part of the peninsula's north coast. This vast mountain-creating (tectonic), also known as the "St. Lawrence Fault", produced one anticline (in the shape of a n) in the north part of the Gaspésie and another further south, in an area west of present day New Brunswick. Between these two ridges a smaller glaciated valley remained - the geosyncline of Gaspé (in the shape of a u).For tens of millions of years, during the Silurian and a good part of the Devonian (400 million years ago), the new peaks supplied erosion fragments that gradually filled the basin. Towards the end of the inferior Devonian period (395 million years ago), the basin rose.

Photo: Jean-Pierre Huard

During the middle Devonian (375 million years ago), the Acadian orogenesis fractured the Gaspé geosyncline and lifted it up. That is the way the second part of the Gaspésie was born, situated as it is now between the mountains to the north and the Chaleur Bay.

With the help of volcanic activity, this orogenesis lifted up the central massif (the Chic-Chocs) further and its sediments trapped the remains and traces of various marine life (corals, brachiopods, worms, trilobites and fish).

By the Carboniferous period (345 million years ago), the Gaspésie had completely emerged. At the end of the Permian (230 million years ago), new orogenic thrusts lifted up a continuous range of mountains along the eastern flank of today's United States: the great Appalachian Chain.


Photo: Jean-Pierre Huard

During the Quaternary (last million years ago), our planet experienced four major periods of glaciation. The last one, which began 70,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years ago, left clear marks of its passing. In its movements, the glaciers brought with them everything that covers the bed-rock. They planed down the landscape and gouged out huge valleys. The glaciers melted and all that water transported, sorted and collected vast amounts of debris. River and ocean water settled in the valleys, and has been remodeling the landscape ever since.

Did you find the indian face on this photo ? Near Pointe-Saint-Pierre, a rock resembling the profile of an Indian tells this legend: "White men came from Europe on a great ship, kidnapped a young Indian girl, and took her back to their country far away. Ever since, her lover tirelessly awaits the return of his beloved, with his back to the sea and sorrow in his eyes, his gaze fixed on the cliffs."