It's the most fascinating experience in the world, Franks, to see what another people, another culture, did with EXACTLY the same building blocks/ingredients as your own ancestors.
We share a great deal in common, most of which is obvious - but there are deeper, cultural traits as well. A very strong sense of identity, a deep love and affection for home, and a feeling of belonging more to the old world than the new.
The people there are amazing. They always look at least a decade younger than people of the same age in Newfoundland. They have above-ground tombs in their cemeteries, etc. They consider Quebecois to be hicks, and not the other way around.
Their culture has almost NO North American traits. They still have three-hour lunch breaks. Booze and cigarettes are still cheaper than a pack of gum.
And they're also very welcoming, which is to be commended. In that video, she briefly mentions the Exodus. Many were killed, and many hundreds died, in their forced expulsion to St-Pierre from colonial Newfoundland (The Exodus is also the source of many of Newfoundland's French place names, such as Isle-aux-Morts, Baie-de-Mortier, Baie D'Espoir etc.).
It's just the coolest place. And the bakeries... OMG, delicious... and the drinking age is, I believe, 14.
You just have to go.
It's another world. It's like a time capsule of 19th Century France (St-Pierre) and Acadia (Miquelon).
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