Here we were at 8am down on the dockside in Tadoussac, a pretty little port and the whale watching capital of Quebec. Pulling on thermal hats and gloves, yellow waterproofs and gumboots, we were ready to board a 12-seater Zodiac inflatable heading out into the rough waters of the St Lawrence river. It is here that the St Lawrence and Saguenay rivers meet, a fast food outlet for whales because of the vast amounts of krill in these plankton-rich waters.

Tadoussac was also one of the first French settlements in North America, first fur-trading post in Canada and home to the oldest woodest church in Canada, built in 1747 under the direction of a Jesuit missionary.

As we clung for dear life to the sides of our bucking bronco, rising up and crashing down in the waves, what looked like little puffs of smoke were rising from the surface of the estuary. As we got nearer we could see they were great jets of water shooting skywards — spray from the blowholes of the whales we’d come to watch. Suddenly, finbacks and minkes appeared around us — so close that we could almost reach out and touch them. There are humpbacks and great blues here, too, as well as beluga’s which are white and look like hard boiled eggs with a mouth and two tiny little eyes.

Luckily, these gentle giants of the deep are friendly, surprisingly so since in many parts of the world they’re being hunted almost to extinction. “They know exactly where we are”, shouted our skipper above the roar of the engine, “and certainly won’t overturn us — they’ve just come to people watch”.

Quebec is Canada with a French flavour. The largest of Canada’s provinces, it’s twice the size of Texas and seven times the size of the UK. You really can have your cake (or, rather your ‘gateau’) and eat it. The cuisine is French and the plumbing American. There are croissants and crepes, quiche and cafe au lait but I did get rather a shock when I was offered “chevaline”, the waitress recommending me to “ave ze orse”

Crossing by ferry from Baie Comeau on the Rive Nord to matane on the Gaspe Peninsula, I was introduced to a local speciality “poutine”. While real men such as a group of hunters on the ferry, may not eat quiche they most certainly eat “poutine”, digging into plates piled high with greasy chips and lumps of cheese, smothered with brown gravy. Believe me, it tastes worse than it looks.

The Gaspe Peninsula is an undiscovered corner of Quebec and indeed, Canada. It lies to the east of Quebec City and juts out into the Atlantic between the lower reaches of the St Lawrence and the Baie des Chaleurs.

Shaped like the head of a giant salmon (salmon is king here), it reminded me of Cornwall only more colourful and much, much bigger — 500 kilometres long with mountains in the middle, and 1000 kilometres of coastline dotted with pretty little fishing villages. The clapboard houses come in mouth-watering colours of raspberry pink and strawberry red, lemon and banana yellow, mint and pistachio green, tangerine orange and chocolate brown, blueberry purple and vanilla white.

There are weird and wonderful names out here too — an eclectic mix of Micmac, French and British. Rimouski and Miguasha, Shigawake and Gesgapegiag, Causapscal and the Chic-Chocs mountains. Gros Morne and Grande Riviere, Bonaventure and Perce. Douglastown and Richmond, Carleton and Chandler, Newport and New Carlisle. Before Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Canada, came ashore at the tip of this peninsula in July 1534 to claim this land for King Francis 1, it belonged to the Micmac tribe, ‘The Indians of the Sea’.

Being Catholic today, each and every village has a church the size of Chartres cathedral, all with rooftops of shining silver, bright emerald or brilliant red. Some are built of stone, others of wood — one in the shape of a wigwam while another, which looked like a chapel, turned out to be a motel.

Having been eating like gannets, it was time to see the real thing. While staying in Perce at the very tip of the peninsula, we took a boat trip over to the island of Bonaventure, skirting a mammoth five million tonne chunk of sandstone with a hole in the middle, carved by wind and water over 350 million years.

Declared a conservation park in 1985, the island has the second largest colony of Northern Gannets in the world with some 60,000 nesting on the cliff tops. In fact, the ground is literally wall-to-wall gannets while the sky above is grey with them flying off to fish to feed their young.

But why do these birds get such a bad press? Famous for their voracious appetites, surprisingly many of the young die of starvation. Four per cent of those born here die here with a further 80 per cent never making it to their first birthday.

By the time the adults leave for the Gulf of Mexico around the end of September, those under three-months-old and too young to attempt the long journey, are left behind to become part of the food chain. Life at the top of a cliff is tough but what may be bad new for baby gannets is definitely good news for hungry foxes.