Forillon

Forillon covers 244 km² at the outer tip of the Gaspé peninsula, in Quebec, where the Appalachian chain ends and plunges into the Gulf of St Lawrence. It was created on 8 June 1970 and is the first national park of the Canadian network in Quebec. Its territory combines forest, shoreline, salt marshes, dunes and limestone cliffs that fall sheer to the sea, and it protects a representative sample of the Notre-Dame and Mégantic mountains terrestrial natural region, as well as elements of the Laurentian Channel and Madeleine Banks marine regions.

Its creation had a human cost that the park today acknowledges explicitly. That same year of 1970, at the request of Parks Canada, the province of Quebec expropriated the land and transferred it to the federal government. Some 225 families had to leave their properties and close to 1,200 owners lost their woodlots and varying areas of cultivated land; the Mi'gmaq lost free access to their territory. In 2011 the federal government issued a formal apology to the expropriated families, and the park runs a remembrance programme about that episode, with buildings and testimonies preserved.

The natural interest is high and very varied for a relatively small area. The cliffs support seabird colonies, and the waters off the tip of the peninsula are a good point for watching cetaceans, with humpback whales and rorquals, as well as grey and harbour seals on the coastal rocks. Inland, the boreal and mixed forest is home to black bear, moose and beaver. The Mont Saint-Alban viewpoint offers the classic panorama over the bay, and Cap Gaspé, with its lighthouse, marks the point where the continent ends.