Recollection: Little Stamps and a dream of St Pierre et Miquelon

When I was 6 years old my mother and I sailed to Istanbul, Turkey to take care of my grandmother (my father’s mother) and to bring her back to Paris. It was very hard to travel so soon after World War II and we had to wait for a long time to get passage on a ship. It took about 10 days from Marseille to Istanbul, with a few days’ stop in Athens, Greece. On the map below you can trace the trip from Marseille (south of France) to Istanbul, Turkey (southeast of Bulgaria.)

Click on picture to enlarge it.

We stayed in Turkey about 5 months and came back on another ship with GrandMama. I loved the ship and enjoyed the trip very much; that is where my love of traveling started. I’ll talk about this trip in another post.


When we came back to Paris I asked my parents when we could travel abroad again and was disappointed when they told me that we would not. To console me my mother gave me a stamp collecting album and several stamps from various countries.


This way, she told me that a stamp collection together with my postcards collections would let me “travel” to foreign countries from Paris. I had stamps from Egypt, Spain, Canada, the USA and many other places. I decided then that I would visit all these countries when I grew up and learn as much as I could about each one. I was very inquisitive and wanted to know everything about the subjects l cared for. Several readers of my posts said that I would make a good tour guide. That could be because, after all these years, I still want to know and learn and have not lost the “what, where and why?” from childhood.


Some of the stamps were very pretty, some interesting but I had four little stamps, of the same scene, in different colors that intrigued me the most. They were from the French islands of St Pierre et Miquelon. I found these islands on the map. They seem so far away but I dreamed that, someday, I would go there.


Over time I did travel to many countries but never forgot St Pierre et Miquelon. This group of small islands is located about 16 miles from the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. They are part of the French Overseas Territorial Collectivity. They are the only remnant of the large French colonial empire which included Louisiana (when Louisiana was 1/3 of the USA) and parts of Canada.


French fishermen have lived on this island since the mid 17th century. Cod was so plentiful that many fishermen would sail from Brittany and Normandy in France for the fishing season near these islands. Many stayed permanently.

Cod fishermen, 1921

Britain and France fought over these islands repeatedly but with the Treaty of Paris of 1814 the two main islands of St Pierre et Miquelon plus several little islands surrounding them have been French.

A passport is needed to enter these islands and the Euro is the local currency. You can ask anyone in the US where is there sovereign French territory in North America and likely no one will be able to answer. During Prohibition the American rum-runners used St Pierre and Miquelon to warehouse Canadian whiskey which brought some extra revenue to the islands.

Rum-runner boat, 1920s

Finally in August 2008 my husband Jim and I went to St Pierre et Miquelon. It had been a very long wait and a long journey since I was 6 years old and my dreams of childhood, but I always thought that, somehow, I would make it there.

(RF means République Française - French Republic.)

I was never afraid and dared to have big dreams. I was convinced that if I really wished to travel somewhere – I would – that the opportunity would arise. I never doubted. I am not rich, but I traveled to 44 countries so far and I am not finished yet… In a future post, I’ll tell you more about our trip but if you are curious about St Pierre et Miquelon, click here.

“The things which the child loves
remain in the domain of the heart until old age.“

-Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese-American Poet, 1883-1931)

Painting by Daniel Garber (1880-1958)