About 25 kilometers off the coast of Canada, in the North Atlantic, lies a tiny bit of France. It’s a string of islands belonging to the archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, which—despite being located nearly 4,000 kilometer away from the mainland— are still under French control. These islands represent the last foothold of colonial France in the Atlantic.

The islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were first set foot on by Europeans in 1520, and they became a French colony is 1536. For the next few centuries the islands moved back and forth between the British and French as they squabbled over who should rule over which geographic portion of the foreign continent. Eventually, France gave up all of its North American colonies, which at one stage covered a major chunk of eastern North America; all except the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which are still in French hands.

The island of St. Pierre. Photo credit: Gord McKenna/Flickr