Last week, I spent a few days on Isle Verte. I had already been to the Rivière du Loup and Rimouski regions a few times but had never visited this charming little island. Every time I think of my childhood, I think of Magog, where I moved with my family at the age of nine. I think of Lake Memphremagog on whose shores I grew up. And it dawned on me that I have very few recollections of my early childhood, of the days spent in Hauterive, on the Côte-Nord. But my stay at Isle Verte brought back all sorts of memories previously tucked away. Isle Verte’s landscape strongly resembles the one that nurtured my childhood. I remembered the hours spent by the great St. Lawrence River as a child. Its shoreline strewn with huge rocks where you could walk for miles. Deserted stretches of golden sandy beaches nestled between two rocky headlands. The cold water, even in July. The ever-cool wind nipping at the skin of my face and colouring my boyish cheeks. The seaway stretching in front of me towards another shore, another planet in my young mind. The whales, the seals, the gulls, the geese.  This is what Isle Verte offered me as a gift: an open window on the smells of my childhood embroidered with vast expanse, slowness, nature, boredom, wonder. Memories I will put down on canvas. Definitely.