Anticosti Ecomuseum and the Menier Chocolate Heritage

The Port-Menier ecomuseum complements your discovery of Anticosti National Park by offering an in-depth exploration of this island's singular history—a place that for several decades belonged to a single private owner: French chocolatier Henri Menier, whose legacy remains ever-present in the island's place names and collective memory, from the village of Port-Menier itself to the remnants of his ambitious development projects. Under Menier's stewardship and that of his successors, the island became a timber exploitation domain and an internationally renowned private hunting territory, shaping an ecosystem now dominated by an exceptionally dense population of white-tailed deer introduced during that era. Beyond this unique industrial and seigneurial history, the ecomuseum also showcases the remarkable paleontological richness of the Anticosti subsoil, whose sedimentary layers contain fossils dating back hundreds of millions of years—evidence of a time when the island lay submerged beneath a tropical sea teeming with marine organisms long since extinct. This dual heritage and scientific purpose makes the ecomuseum an essential complement to your national park visit, allowing you to place in their proper historical and geological context the spectacular landscapes—cliffs, canyons, and caves—that await you on the trail.