What does it mean to be French? Being owned by France is a good start.
WANTED: OWNER
In the North Atlantic, just 20 kilometers (15 miles) south of Newfoundland—but 3,800 kilometers west of mainland France—are the Islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The inhabitants are French citizens and vote in French elections, French is the official language, the currency is the euro, the educational system is French (as in European French), and even TV transmission uses French standards. These two rocky, windswept islands are the only remaining part of France’s once-vast colonial empire, which once encompassed much of eastern Canada.
Dominion of the islands passed several times between the British and the French, until after the Napoleonic Wars, when a distracted Britain looked away as France established permanent possession. By that point, it was mainly about the bragging rights. With their cold, wet climate and infertile land, the islands were not considered prime real estate.
WANTED: EXECUTIONER
Saint-Pierre is home to one of the strangest and saddest stories in Canadian maritime history. In 1888, a fisherman, Joseph Néel was convicted of killing a Mr. Coupard and sentenced to death by guillotine. However, no guillotine existed on St. Pierre, and one had to be shipped from Martinique. After it arrived, more problems came up: it wouldn’t work without repair, and no one was willing to be Néel’s executioner. Finally, a recent emigrant to the island was coerced into doing the deed. Néel’s execution was the only time the guillotine was used in North America. (In 2000, the incident was made into a film, The Widow of Saint-Pierre (La veuve de Saint-Pierre), which won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival.)
Since little grows there, the inhabitants of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon have always been fishermen. However, with the collapse of fishing stocks on the Grand Banks and widespread unemployment, the economy has been on the decline for some years. Many young people leave the islands for better prospects elsewhere.
When Canada switched to the metric system in 1970 a group of angry Parliament members opened an illegal gas station selling gas by the gallon.