© Richard HuangIn October 2021, we drove five hours from Montreal, following the beautiful Charlevoix fall-colour route to the ferry terminal at Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive. From there, we planned to cross to Île aux Coudres, about six kilometres offshore.
The car ferry was free. It ran once an hour, and the crossing took about twenty minutes.
© Richard HuangGazing at the blue tones of evening, the broad expanse of the St. Lawrence, and the rolling whitecaps, I was filled with anticipation for our time on the island…
© Richard HuangBut after checking into our hotel in the dark, my mood took a complete 180-degree turn.
© Richard HuangThere was not another guest in sight, nor any hotel staff. Only the owner, a man from Guangdong, was there to receive us. Every table and chair in the restaurant had been draped with cloth.
© Richard HuangThe bar was shuttered and locked, with no one around. Then I noticed the hotel’s name: Hotel Roche Pleureuse—the Weeping Rock Hotel. Doubts immediately crept in. Had we checked into some sort of sinister establishment? On a dark and windswept island like this, the thought alone was unnerving…
© Richard HuangOne of our travelling companions was a friend of the owner. The owner told us that he had neither a chef nor any waitstaff at present, but since we were friends, we could make ourselves at home in the kitchen.
© Richard HuangIt was my first chance to venture deep inside a hotel kitchen. I asked the owner how guests managed without a chef. They had to bring their own food or eat elsewhere, he said. Hiring people on the island was extremely difficult. According to him, once local workers had held a job for more than two months, the government would provide unemployment benefits, so quite a few would work for two months, quit, and go on assistance. Managing staff here was difficult as well. Back in China, he said, an employer could reprimand workers or use financial incentives and penalties to keep them in line. None of that worked here; employees had to be coaxed along. Just a few days earlier, the receptionist had walked out without a word, leaving him in a terrible bind.
© Richard HuangEarly the next morning, a commotion broke out in the lobby. We went downstairs to see what was happening and discovered that some guests had arrived. To our astonishment, the owner could not speak French. Gesturing back and forth got them nowhere. We did not speak French either, so in a fluster we turned to a translation app and somehow managed to get the guests settled. When we asked what he normally did, he said that whenever no staff were available, he muddled through with the app and hand gestures. It was hard even to imagine how difficult that must be.
© Richard HuangWhile we were making breakfast, a cat appeared at the door. The owner grabbed a piece of meat and hurried outside. I asked whether it was a stray or a pet. It belonged to the neighbours, he said, and they had two. Because he fed them so often, the cats arrived punctually every morning. Sometimes they had already eaten their fill at home and came only to have him give them a scratch. It was clear that the owner was a kind-hearted man.
© Richard HuangWhile he scratched the cat, I asked about his past. He had once been a physical-education teacher and was in superb shape. Later, he attended a police academy and became a public-security officer. He specialized in fingerprint examination—a rare skill at the time—and with his tireless work and impressive record of solving cases, he rose quickly through the ranks. But he grew disillusioned after repeatedly seeing cases on the verge of being solved quietly dropped because of connections higher up. He resigned, opened a factory, and made his first fortune. Two years earlier, he had immigrated as an investor so that he could accompany his child studying abroad. Little did he know that buying a business from afar, sight unseen, would leave him with such a difficult undertaking. Worse still, he took over just as the pandemic began. Tourism was devastated, and between being a stranger in an unfamiliar place, not speaking the language, not understanding the culture or customs, and being unable to find staff, he had lost money for two straight years.
© Richard HuangThe hotel he had taken over was a century-old establishment.
© Richard HuangJudging by the walls crowded with photographs of famous visitors and scenes from the past, the hotel—once run by a British family—had not only a long history but a distinguished and glorious one. A previous Chinese owner later took it over, and it gradually fell into decline. Eventually, it landed in the hands of the present owner.
© Richard HuangThe previous Chinese owner had removed all the hotel’s antique furnishings and piled them into storage, perhaps hoping to give the place a more modern look.
© Richard HuangAfter taking over, the current owner decided that the hotel’s greatest value lay in the continuity of its history. One by one, he carried the old objects out of storage and returned them to their original places. When renovating, he also used local materials whenever possible, trying to restore the hotel as closely as he could to its former appearance.
The porcelain covering this wall consists entirely of period antiques.
© Richard HuangA Chinese immigrant may inevitably have gaps in his understanding of British and American culture and history, but every object and arrangement in the hotel showed how much thought the owner had given it and how hard he had tried.
© Richard HuangVarious pieces of old farm equipment were also displayed on the lawn outside the hotel.
© Richard HuangSeen from outside, the hotel occupied an enormous property, with numerous buildings on the hillside and nearly ninety guest rooms in all. It was said to be the largest hotel on the island.
© Richard HuangBesides the buildings on the hill, the hotel had its own private boardwalk leading down to the riverside buildings below.
© Richard HuangNever one to sit idle, the owner had added a swimming pool to the lower grounds. The setting was beautiful in summer, and a film company had even expressed interest in renting the pool for a shoot. It was his way of bringing new life to the old hotel.
© Richard HuangHe had also installed facilities for water activities on the pond below the hill.
© Richard HuangUnable to hire anyone, the owner had to do the work of five or six people by himself—reception, cleaning, repairs, and everything in between. The hotel was already dilapidated when he took over, its carpets old and mouldy. He first taught himself how to lay flooring, then showed the hotel’s sole employee. Together, the two of them went from room to room, replacing the carpets with wood floors. The owner neither smoked nor drank—not even tea. From dawn until late at night, he devoted himself entirely to his work. He stayed alone on the island with no one to talk to, so when a few fellow Chinese finally appeared, he kept us chatting with him all day…
© Richard HuangThis was the hotel’s only employee: a dishevelled young white man with a vacant look and alcohol heavy on his breath. Judging by his condition, I doubted he could easily find work elsewhere. The owner said the young man had been with him from the very beginning, and the two had relied on each other ever since. Once, after we made lunch, we invited the owner to join us. He served himself a small plate, then filled a much larger one and carried it outside. It was for the young man, he explained. Whenever there was something good to eat, he never left him out; he treated him like a brother. The young man understood this too, and so he never fussed over anything. Meaning well, the owner’s friend spoke to him about being drunk all day and how it affected the guests. Blunt and guileless, the young man took offence and threatened to call 911. The owner hurried over, held him back, patted him soothingly on the back, then shook his head, waved his hands, and rested them against his cheek in a sleeping gesture—telling him to calm down and go back to his room for a nap. Only then did I realize that the owner and the young man did not share a language at all. They had made it this far through gestures, glances, and an understanding of the heart.
© Richard HuangIt had not been easy to come this far, so we set out by car to take a look around the island.
The island was not large; the road circling it was only a little over twenty kilometres long.
© Richard HuangWe saw many stretches of shoreline along the way, but most were marked with Private Property signs warning passers-by to keep out. Only a handful of public beaches were open for use.
© Richard HuangThere were also a few scattered businesses along the road—craft shops, farm stands, and the like—where visitors could stop and browse.
© Richard HuangQuite a few people lived on the island. There were many holiday homes facing the broad river, idyllic retreats surrounded by spring blossoms. Judging by the sculptures and decorations in their gardens, many appeared to belong to artists and wealthy residents. The local islanders, meanwhile, seemed unpretentious and lived simply.
© Richard Huang
© Richard HuangThere certainly was no shortage of people coming to the island for rest and recreation.
© Richard HuangOn our way back to the hotel, we unexpectedly discovered the origin of the “Weeping Rock” name. Beside the rock stood a large sign recounting its legend.
“In the summer of 1805, Charles Desgagnés and his sailors put to sea earlier than usual. He hoped to return during the last warm days of September toÎle aux Coudresfor his wedding. In late May, his three-masted ship set sail with a full cargo of logs.
All summer, Charles’s fiancée, Louise, prepared their new home and her trousseau for the wedding. By the end of September, she had grown restless. Every afternoon she sat on a rock by the shore, returning to her father only after nightfall. He reassured her that sailing took longer when there was no wind. Once the chill of autumn arrived and geese no longer flew overhead, Louise could do nothing but watch the sea through her window.
It was a long winter, entirely without joy. When the drifting ice finally disappeared, she returned to the rock by the shore, weeping and silently reliving her grief. One evening in May, Louise did not come home. For days, all the islanders searched for her. One morning, amid the tall seagrass, her father stopped to examine a great rock surrounded by wildflowers. A stream of water flowed from within it. He laid his head against the boulder and told the others to go home; there was no need to search any longer. Ever since, the islanders have said that Louise became the rock, weeping for her fiancé, who had vanished at sea. The rock does in fact have a small opening from which water emerges and runs down one side like tears along a cheek. The story became forever one ofÎle aux Coudres’s legends.”
© Richard HuangWhen we left, the island’s scenery had not offered me many surprises. Yet the story of the Weeping Rock Hotel stayed with me. For the sake of his child’s future, its Chinese owner had put down roots alone on this remote and unfamiliar island, quietly holding on—like a modern incarnation of the Weeping Rock legend.