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There's a peace to the place
Hidden behind the seafront in Dieppe stands a little square called Place du Petit Enfer. Aside from the cries of battling gulls and the occasional gunning of a motorcycle beyond the tall brick houses, it's a tranquil spot. A copper beech offers the grass a little shade. No hint here of anything hellish.
Names in Dieppe are often misleading. There's no beer to be bought on Rue de la Brasserie, a narrow road leading down to the sea. That girl carrying her morning baguette along the Rue du Petit Enfer is heading for a neighbouring square, the Place du Moulin à Vent. One of its narrow, four-storey homes has blood-coloured geraniums in 22 window boxes. There's no trace of a windmill.
To wander past the dozens of pleasure boats in Dieppe's sheltered harbour, or to stroll past the thriving shops on the traffic-free Rue de la Barre, is to know provincial France at its most relaxed. Haddock, skate, dogfish and mackerel glisten in the fishmongers' stalls in the market. It's hard to believe this placid town of 35,000 was once among the main ports of France.
The only unusual feature of Rue de la Barre is the number of real-estate agents. A ferry plies the English Channel - La Manche, that is - between Dieppe and the Sussex port of Newhaven, and the price of property in northern France makes second homes here a bargain for the British. No doubt they're the favoured clientele of a hairdressing salon called La Tête en l'Hair.
Just west of the shopping district, a stone château stands on an abrupt hill. It was a fortress for centuries. Now, if you climb the dozens of steps that connect the château with a garden near the sea, you'll find the building serves as an art museum. The Impressionists, who loved the changing light of coastal France, are well represented.
The museum also houses a surprising collection of ivories. French patrons often commissioned miniature scenes in ivory, when it was available. One reason the Château-Musée contains so many ivories is that Dieppe's sailors were famous travellers, hauling back exotic goods from as far away as Africa.
In the main square, an impressively hatted statue of a naval officer overlooks banks and insurance agencies, a Turkish kebab shop named Le Bosphore, and a cinema showing such un-French movies as Die Hard 4 and Shrek le Troisième. Like so many other French sailors, Lt.-Gen. Abraham Duquesne was born in Dieppe.
Duquesne earned his glory fighting the Spanish and Dutch in the Mediterranean. But many other Dieppois looked west instead of south. Their preferred destination was New France.
Pierre Chauvin de la Pierre, one of Champlain's key lieutenants, hailed from Dieppe. So did the three Augustinian nuns who founded the Hôtel Dieu Hospital in Quebec City in 1639. And so did Jean Vauquelin, the commander of the French fleet in the St. Lawrence in 1759.
The garden below the stone towers and turrets of the Château-Musée commemorates the relationship of Canada to this unassuming city. That relationship began almost 500 years ago, when a Dieppe-based sailor named Thomas Aubert explored the coast of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and took seven Mi'kmaq hostages back to France. Aubert is largely forgotten now, but he preceded Jacques Cartier by a generation.
Yet the main reason Dieppe is so unexpectedly moving to a Canadian - the reason why coming here seems less like a tourist visit than a pilgrimage - is that nearly two years before D-Day, an abortive attempt to penetrate Nazi-occupied France ended with the death here of more than 1,400 Allied soldiers, most of them Canadians.
The Canadian and British troops who landed on this stony beach, 65 years ago tomorrow, never had a chance. Enemy guns were aimed at them from inside the town and from the pale cliffs above. Operation Jubilee, to use the raid's code name, proved a catastrophe.
Two years later, Canadian soldiers appeared. In September 1944 they peacefully liberated the town as the German garrison retreated.
Today in the seafront garden, a pair of large Maple Leaf flags in red-and-white impatiens flourish below a high stone wall. Discreet monuments celebrate the arrival of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1946 and, in the same year, the founding of a New Brunswick city named Dieppe. Hundreds of Allied soldiers are buried a few kilometres inland, at the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery in Hautot-sur-Mer.
But you don't have to leave the town to find evidence of the raid. Along the stony beach, where French children now fly kites in the sun, are monuments commemorating the fallen men - scarcely more than boys, really - of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, the Essex Scottish Regiment and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry.
Then there's the Église Saint-Rémy, a 16th-century building whose architecture shows proof of both Gothic and Renaissance styles. Closed to visitors most of the year, the church opens on certain afternoons in the tourist season.
Because of the graceless postwar buildings that line the beachfront, Saint-Rémy's tower is hard to see from the shoreline. But it must have been a useful landmark to the soldiers who battled up through the gunfire on that terrible morning. The wide-mouthed gargoyles that peer down from the roof would have watched two men collapse in a little street that now bears the name Rue du 19 Août 1942. It might also be called Rue du Grand Enfer.
A stone marks the fatal spot behind the church. Today it's visible from a newsagent's, a tobacconist's, a specialty grocery store and a sidewalk café - whose informal freedoms offer, I guess, a pretty good illustration of what those doomed youths were fighting for. After I read the stark inscription, my cheeks were moist:
ICI
LE 19 AOUT 1942
SONT TOMBÉS
DEUX SOLDATS CANADIENS
Dieppe is located less than 200 kilometres northwest of Paris. Although it may boast the closest salt-water beach to the capital, there is no direct train service. Trains run to Dieppe every couple of hours from nearby Rouen (which is linked to Paris by a high-speed rail line).
Names in Dieppe are often misleading. There's no beer to be bought on Rue de la Brasserie, a narrow road leading down to the sea. That girl carrying her morning baguette along the Rue du Petit Enfer is heading for a neighbouring square, the Place du Moulin à Vent. One of its narrow, four-storey homes has blood-coloured geraniums in 22 window boxes. There's no trace of a windmill.
To wander past the dozens of pleasure boats in Dieppe's sheltered harbour, or to stroll past the thriving shops on the traffic-free Rue de la Barre, is to know provincial France at its most relaxed. Haddock, skate, dogfish and mackerel glisten in the fishmongers' stalls in the market. It's hard to believe this placid town of 35,000 was once among the main ports of France.
The only unusual feature of Rue de la Barre is the number of real-estate agents. A ferry plies the English Channel - La Manche, that is - between Dieppe and the Sussex port of Newhaven, and the price of property in northern France makes second homes here a bargain for the British. No doubt they're the favoured clientele of a hairdressing salon called La Tête en l'Hair.
Just west of the shopping district, a stone château stands on an abrupt hill. It was a fortress for centuries. Now, if you climb the dozens of steps that connect the château with a garden near the sea, you'll find the building serves as an art museum. The Impressionists, who loved the changing light of coastal France, are well represented.
The museum also houses a surprising collection of ivories. French patrons often commissioned miniature scenes in ivory, when it was available. One reason the Château-Musée contains so many ivories is that Dieppe's sailors were famous travellers, hauling back exotic goods from as far away as Africa.
In the main square, an impressively hatted statue of a naval officer overlooks banks and insurance agencies, a Turkish kebab shop named Le Bosphore, and a cinema showing such un-French movies as Die Hard 4 and Shrek le Troisième. Like so many other French sailors, Lt.-Gen. Abraham Duquesne was born in Dieppe.
Duquesne earned his glory fighting the Spanish and Dutch in the Mediterranean. But many other Dieppois looked west instead of south. Their preferred destination was New France.
Pierre Chauvin de la Pierre, one of Champlain's key lieutenants, hailed from Dieppe. So did the three Augustinian nuns who founded the Hôtel Dieu Hospital in Quebec City in 1639. And so did Jean Vauquelin, the commander of the French fleet in the St. Lawrence in 1759.
The garden below the stone towers and turrets of the Château-Musée commemorates the relationship of Canada to this unassuming city. That relationship began almost 500 years ago, when a Dieppe-based sailor named Thomas Aubert explored the coast of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and took seven Mi'kmaq hostages back to France. Aubert is largely forgotten now, but he preceded Jacques Cartier by a generation.
Yet the main reason Dieppe is so unexpectedly moving to a Canadian - the reason why coming here seems less like a tourist visit than a pilgrimage - is that nearly two years before D-Day, an abortive attempt to penetrate Nazi-occupied France ended with the death here of more than 1,400 Allied soldiers, most of them Canadians.
The Canadian and British troops who landed on this stony beach, 65 years ago tomorrow, never had a chance. Enemy guns were aimed at them from inside the town and from the pale cliffs above. Operation Jubilee, to use the raid's code name, proved a catastrophe.
Two years later, Canadian soldiers appeared. In September 1944 they peacefully liberated the town as the German garrison retreated.
Today in the seafront garden, a pair of large Maple Leaf flags in red-and-white impatiens flourish below a high stone wall. Discreet monuments celebrate the arrival of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1946 and, in the same year, the founding of a New Brunswick city named Dieppe. Hundreds of Allied soldiers are buried a few kilometres inland, at the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery in Hautot-sur-Mer.
But you don't have to leave the town to find evidence of the raid. Along the stony beach, where French children now fly kites in the sun, are monuments commemorating the fallen men - scarcely more than boys, really - of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, the Essex Scottish Regiment and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry.
Then there's the Église Saint-Rémy, a 16th-century building whose architecture shows proof of both Gothic and Renaissance styles. Closed to visitors most of the year, the church opens on certain afternoons in the tourist season.
Because of the graceless postwar buildings that line the beachfront, Saint-Rémy's tower is hard to see from the shoreline. But it must have been a useful landmark to the soldiers who battled up through the gunfire on that terrible morning. The wide-mouthed gargoyles that peer down from the roof would have watched two men collapse in a little street that now bears the name Rue du 19 Août 1942. It might also be called Rue du Grand Enfer.
A stone marks the fatal spot behind the church. Today it's visible from a newsagent's, a tobacconist's, a specialty grocery store and a sidewalk café - whose informal freedoms offer, I guess, a pretty good illustration of what those doomed youths were fighting for. After I read the stark inscription, my cheeks were moist:
ICI
LE 19 AOUT 1942
SONT TOMBÉS
DEUX SOLDATS CANADIENS
Dieppe is located less than 200 kilometres northwest of Paris. Although it may boast the closest salt-water beach to the capital, there is no direct train service. Trains run to Dieppe every couple of hours from nearby Rouen (which is linked to Paris by a high-speed rail line).
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