Bonaventure Island

Bonaventure Island (officially in French: île Bonaventure [il bɔnavɑ̃tyʁ]) is a Canadian island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence located 3.5 km (2.2 mi) off the southern coast of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, 5 km (3.1 mi) southeast of the village of Percé.

The Province of Quebec acquired ownership of the entire island by act of expropriation in 1971, evicting the whole population.

The surrealist writer André Breton declared that, while working on his novel Arcane 17, as he stayed in Percé (1944), he would never tire watching the birds of the Island.

[2] The island never ceased attracting painters and writers: the American painter Frederick James (d. 1905), Franco-Germans Claire et Yvan Goll (1946)—by the sixties several artists would spend the summer on the island, and would stay over the summer with the inhabitants—descendants of Irish and Norman settlers—the best known of whom was the naturalist William Du Val.

Among these inspired visitors: painter Jacques Hurtubise[3] and Kittie Bruneau,[4] the sculptor Morton Rosengarten, the poet Michaël La Chance.