After 3rd major storm in 5 years, Magdalen Islanders say they're on 'front line' of climate change

Isabelle Cormier spent the days after post-tropical storm Fiona picking through what could be salvaged of her family's 40-year-old cottage.

Among the soggy treasures strewn on the ground: a troll doll, so old its hair was gone, a large cooking pot, and a single oar — a fitting souvenir for a family that loves boating.

The cottage, hand-built by the family using driftwood, collapsed like a house of cards during the storm. 

All that remains is the roof, a window covered in children's stickers and a limp electric wire, waving in the wind.

"A good friend of mine called me early in the morning, Saturday morning, and said 'I'm so sorry,'" said Cormier.

But she had known the day was coming when the building would collapse. It was long protected by a sand dune so high that people inside the could only see the water from the top floor. 

Over the last three years, storms — including 2019's Dorian — winnowed that sand dune down to nothing. By the time Fiona hit, the cottage was fully exposed to the elements.

"My grieving, I did it when Dorian hit. I knew that was going to be it," she said. "It's emotional now … because it's a place for us, for our family, and it's got a great deal of soul."

Fiona is the third major storm to hit the Magdalen Islands in five years, according to Serge Bourgeois, the director of urban planning for the municipality, which has a population of about 12,000. (Another 465 people live in Grosse Îsle, a mostly English-speaking island which is a separate municipality.) 

Quebec's Transport Ministry is still doing repairs after Hurricane Dorian, Bourgeois said.

Storms are speeding up erosion but even without major weather events, research from the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) shows that the Magdalen Islands are losing land mass faster than they did before.

One study shows that between 1963 and 2008, the islands' shorelines eroded an average of 24 centimetres per year. More recent UQAR studies have found that loss has nearly doubled since 2005, to 46 centimetres — or nearly half a metre — per year. 

The sand and dunes, described by Cormier as the islands' "flesh and blood," are vanishing at an alarming rate, she said. 

"Us islanders are on the front line of the climate change," said Cormier. "The real impact, the real grieving, it's the erosion."