New national park | An anthropologist on mission in Charlevoix

This is a first in Quebec: the government has commissioned an ethnographic study for its Côte-de-Charlevoix national park project. What does it eat in winter, an “ethnographic study”? The Press asked the anthropologist who is preparing to spend a month in Charlevoix to discuss the park project with citizens “around a coffee, a campfire or on a skidoo.”

(Quebec) Anthropologist Méralie Murray-Hall will have a busy winter. She is preparing to spend several weeks in two villages, Saint-Siméon and Baie-Sainte-Catherine, in this place where Charlevoix becomes the Côte-Nord.

“I’m going to sleep there. Ideally with local people. Friends of friends of friends are the best informants! If there are evenings around a campfire, I try to get invited,” explains M on the line.^me Murray-Hall.

This anthropologist-ethnographer and consultant for the firm Humain Humain has just been entrusted by Quebec with carrying out a “specialized study in ethnography” as part of the project to create the Côte-de-Charlevoix national park.

This is the first time that the Ministry of the Environment has commissioned such a study for the creation of a park. But the idea didn’t come out of nowhere.

In another national park project, that of Dunes-de-Tadoussac, the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE) regretted that the Ministry ignored a “social or ethnographic” study.

“This would allow the Ministry to demonstrate to the host community that it really counts in the definition of the project,” wrote the BAPE in its August 2024 report.

Citizens were concerned that this park located a few kilometers from Tadoussac limits several traditional practices such as harvesting mussels, picking mushrooms and even trapping hares.

The Ministry of the Environment took note of the report. It has just awarded a contract worth just over $100,000 to carry out an ethnographic study in Charlevoix “in order to better understand local dynamics with regard to the project and promote social support,” writes the Ministry in an email.

Worried Charlevoisians

The arrival of the future Côte-de-Charlevoix park is not only making people happy, particularly in the isolated sector of Baie-des-Rochers. The place is surrounded by forests. Residents fear losing the right to travel there, or even to use the quay, one of the rare public accesses to the river in a region where wealthy buyers have got their hands on several coastal plots of land.¹.

“All this for tourism without thinking about the people who live here,” a citizen recently complained on the Facebook page of the mayor of the municipality, who supports the project. “Fishing, hunting, these are sports widely practiced in these mountains […]. Generations of driving an hour in the evening and morning to go to work to keep us close to our passions, but that has no importance for Saint-Siméon…”

The fear of losing the right to travel on four-wheelers in the mountains, of no longer having access to the public dock, these are the kinds of nuances that can escape the traditional environmental impact study process. This is where ethnographic study comes into play.

“There are people who will not necessarily show up at consultation evenings, for many reasons,” explains Méralie Murray-Hall. Sometimes they are resistant, don’t know the codes or are intimidated. »

With his team, the anthropologist is preparing to spend several weeks in the field, “building relationships, collecting speeches, testimonies that are difficult to access” and “discussing around coffee, a fire camp or on a skidoo.

“We will see them in their living environment, with their codes. It is really the anthropologist who inserts himself into the environments by learning the languages, the codes, the know-how… We create a bond of trust, a “safespace” where people can, confidentially and anonymously, ‘express. »

The anthropologist will look in the field for the “keystones”, the details which can make the population change their opinion on a project. She will make several reports to the Ministry, until a final report is drafted.

The Côte-de-Charlevoix national park could see the light of day in 2028, after BAPE hearings planned for 2026-2027. Méralie Murray-Hall’s work must be used to supply Quebec before the BAPE hearings.

“There are going to be questions. It’s important that the clients we work with realize this, she says. We cannot enter into a project set in stone. »

The anthropologist hopes that this pilot project will be “reproducible” and can be used again in other large-scale projects in Quebec. “It’s a pilot project with very deep reflection on dialogue. »

^⁠1. Read “Creation of a national park in Saint-Siméon: A “lifeline” for the village”