I became a beachcomber by the sea when I moved to the Magdalen Islands (Iles de la Madeleine). My family came from the islands and although I unwillingly follow my military dad around the world for the first eighteen years of my life, I returned to the tranquility of the beach as soon as I could.

With more than three hundred kilometers of beach land surrounding the islands, becoming a beachcomber becomes one of the more enjoyable aspects of living on the islands.

There are many reasons to become a beachcomber when you live so close to such a wonderful phenomena as an open beach. Because it is a dynamic environment, the beach changes it characteristics after every storm and often almost on a daily bases.  Treasures come in all shapes and sizes and many are tossed up on the rolling sands by the open sea. A beachcomber, searching for an elusive sea shell can just as quickly find a bottle with a message, a whale bone or a special piece of driftwood to take home. They can even find a shipwreck that has been settled for centuries under a sand hill only to be uncovered by the relentless winds or be thrown up out of the sea on to the beach.

For almost five hundred years, ships have been sailing the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Many of them came from Europe, at first the fishermen and then came the explorers.  The tall ships arrived with the first of the immigrants during the 16th and 17th centuries and then the steamships came during the 19th and 20th centuries to supply those newly arrivals. Because of the island strategic location, in the center of the shipping lanes, many were lost to the shoals and ended up on the beaches. We didn’t have many people living on the islands in the early years, so often the wreck would become sanded over before anyone discovered the ship.

Even if it is not a shipwreck that attracts a beachcomber to the soft sands, there are thousands of other treasures just waiting to be picked up. On the islands, shells of all types, most commonly, moonshells, lipids, sand dollars, sea urchins, whelk, starfish, lobster, scallop, mussel, clam, quahog and scallop shells. Infrequently, shells from animals that inhabit the waters far south of southern Canada land up on our shores because the warm channels from the south come through the Cabot Strait and straight to the islands.

Of course, the different number of treasures is unimaginable that can be found on the beaches of the Magdalen Islands.  The beaches are unusually pristine during the vacation months because of the sheer number of visitors out looking for that unusual treasure to take home with them. Often visitors will ask where and on which beach are they most likely to find a certain shell, sand color or other valuable artifact. The truth is…, everywhere after a storm and before other beachcombers arrive to the beach.