Percé Rock

Seen from the shore at Percé, the rock looks less like a piece of geology than a vessel: a long, sheer-sided slab of limestone lying in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with its bow to the sea, often compared to a ship under sail. It is about 433 metres long, 90 metres wide and 88 metres high at its tallest point, and at its seaward end the waves have bored straight through it, leaving an arch roughly 15 metres high. Samuel de Champlain gave it the name Percé, "pierced", in the early 1600s, and the name has stuck to the rock, the bay and the village that grew up facing it.

The rock is a record of change measured in centuries rather than millennia. When Jacques Cartier sailed past in 1534 he described three arches; later drawings show two, and the outer one fell with a crash on 17 June 1845, leaving the free-standing pillar that still guards the eastern tip. The stone itself is Devonian limestone laid down some 400 million years ago, and around 150 fossil species have been identified in it, from trilobites and brachiopods to corals. Erosion is still at work, and estimates put the loss at roughly 300 tonnes a year, which is why nobody climbs it and why walkers who cross the sand bar at low tide are warned to keep clear of its foot.

The rock and neighbouring Bonaventure Island together form a Quebec national park created in 1985, and the colours change with the light: reddish-gold cliffs, grey-green water, and on the island a white mass of northern gannets, one of the largest colonies of the species anywhere, with puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes among many other birds. Whales are seen off this coast from spring to late autumn. The surrealist poet André Breton, who came here in 1944, called the rock a razor blade rising from the water, and it runs through his book Arcanum 17 as an image of renewal.

Getting there

The rock stands just off the village of Percé at the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula; at low tide a sand bar links it to the mainland for a few hours. The nearest airport is Michel-Pouliot Gaspé Airport (YGP), about 35 km away. Boats from Percé circle the rock on the way to Bonaventure Island.