Absolving surfing sins in the Magdalen Islands
Self proclaimed surfing fetus attempts to amend the world’s most pathetic surfing resumé.

If you were to glance at my surfing resumé you’d notice that I began my introduction to surfing at the unripe young age of 13 in Laguna Beach , California . The year was 1977. Now fast forward to 2006 when I was having a blast surfing on Maui , Hawaii . At this point you’re probably thinking that I’m some kind of a hotshot surfer. Well, here’s the dirty truth:

I never surfed once during the intervening 29 years.

I hope that confession will help to absolve me of my sins. Yes, I love surfing. No, I was not in a coma, hiding with Elvis or incarcerated during my 29 year hiatus. I had the coastal mentality with the urban reality. I was a lowly inlander with no easy access to surfable waves.

My California surfing experience of 1977 was bittersweet. I was a pudgy kid with terrible balance and a fear of sea creatures. The movie Jaws had come out two years prior and I was just recently reacquainting myself with the bath tub. Now I found myself immersed in the cool, dark winter surf of Laguna Beach . I was handed a shortboard and an ill-fitting wetsuit. My shaggy blond instructor, a friend of a friend, was doubtlessly thinking that I would have made an excellent anchor. He was right. In the gentlest of terms I was utterly hopeless. I couldn’t stand up. Surfing was impossible or so it seemed. That session haunted me for almost three decades but not in a bad way…a fire was kindled in a young boy’s mind.

My next attempt at surfing came during a winter vacation on Maui in 2006. California may well have been where surfing spent its adolescence but Hawaii was its unchallenged birthplace and I was in the delivery room, ready to deliver myself to the waves for a long overdue date. Sure I was a tad rusty from my last surf but I was eager. The swell was towering at close to four metres on the north shore so I did what any sensible newbie would do, I signed up for a lesson in LaHaina on the south shore.

Chicken shit or smart? Both!

I dragged my 13 year old son with me in hopes that I could pass the torch on to him. We were given monstrously big beginner’s boards. I half expected them to beep when put in reverse, they were that big. The surf at LaHaina was small but rideable. With a reassuring push from the understandably bored board instructor, we managed to get ourselves vertical wave after wave. It was as though I hadn’t forgotten a thing from my days (err, make that day) as a California surfer. The stoke was back in full force, finally I was a true surfer. Okay, I was a surfing fetus but I was ready to cut the umbilical cord and strap on the leash when next given the opportunity.

I returned to Canada and was slapped in the face by the cold reality of living inland. It was snowing too. Little did I know that there was a thriving, year round surf culture in nearby Nova Scotia that shivered, then laughed at winter’s feeble grasp.

During the summer of 2006 I was fortunate enough to be enjoying a windsurfing vacation on Les Iles de la Madeleine (known to the English as the Magdalen Islands or more fondly the Mags or the Maggies). This sandy, Quebecois island archipelago sits in splendid isolation in the middle of the Gulf of St.Lawrence . Windsurfing is what you do when it’s too windy to surf. As luck would have it my last day in the Mags was plagued by a catastrophic lack of wind. I rounded up my friend Chris, packed up my camera and went looking for inspiration and adventure. I found both.

We drove past an attractive kiteboarding/kayaking store called Aerosport. There were surfboards leaning against the brightly painted exterior of the shop. Surfboards? Here?? I had never seen anyone surf in the Mags before. It was well known as a kiteboarding and windsurfing mecca. I drove on and pondered surfing as a possibility.

Eventually we came to a barricaded dead end where the hungry ocean took a bite out of the road, making it impassible for cars. Chris and I took a hike to the top of an adjacent 300 foot hill aptly named butte ronde (round mound). We saw a radiant, windless ocean below with waves breaking over a submerged sandbar. The lightbulbs came on. Chris and I looked at each other and agreed that those were surfable waves. Chris was a ‘veteran’ surfer with at least ten surfing outings under his neoprene belt. Sure, veteran surfer was a bit generous but his surfing resumé was five times the size of mine. We raced back to Aerosport to rent a board.

A young, cute French girl set us up with a beginner board and sent us to our fate with a bon voyage smile. As we approached the beach I was experiencing that deliciously nervous feeling you get when you’re truly alive. I won’t lie and say that it was an epic session as this clearly wasn’t Mavericks but it was epic in its own small way. Epic is a relative term and should be measured not by wave height but smiles generated. The smiles rolled in like waves, one after another in an endless procession. The waves themselves were only two to three feet in height and you couldn’t ride them for any significant distance. There were no bottom turns or cutbacks with slashing curtains of spray. There were no slides or backside airs but, and this is the important part, you could stand up and surf. We were grinning from ear to ear.

Our windsurfing buddies showed up with another rental board and we spent the better part of a lazy, windless day playing with Neptune . Most of the windsurfers had never tried surfing before. Needless to say they now have a great deal of reverence for surfers, especially those who can stand up.

So what’s the moral to this story if it isn’t already obvious? First of all, don’t wait for Maui or Hawaii to come your way. I wasted a lot of good time, 29 years to be exact. Secondly, the surfing stoke lives in funny places like Montreal , the Great Lakes and even Alberta . It also lives in the minds of inlanders everywhere. Oh yes, it also lives in the Magdalen Islands . Eric Marchand of Aeropsort says they started renting surfboards two years ago and there are a number of good locations throughout the islands. Although the Magdalen Islands have no history of surfing, there are a bunch of kids that are getting into it. And isn’t this where it all begins?