Port Menier, Quebec

Canada's Anticosti Island sits in the gulf of St Lawrence and is part of the province of Quebec. Nearly the entire coastline of the island is a UNESCO world heritage site. I always thought it was off-limits to tourism and was uninhabited so I was a little surprised when I saw that there was a post office there that now uses this postmark. 

The fishing village of Port Menier is home to a little more than 200 people and it is the only real population center on the island. In the past the island was privately owned and exploited for it's resources. The government of Quebec purchased the island in 1974 with the intention of maintaining the island as a nature reserve. It is a popular destination for hunting and fishing and outdoor tourism.

In the center of the postmark is the Vauréal Waterfall in Anticosti National Park. The stamp from 2023 shows a northern bottlenose whale. Although they do live in the northern Atlantic and have been know to frequent the waters off the coast of Canada, they are not usually seen in the gulf of St Lawrence.