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Born in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts in 1916, Jean-Jacques Bertrand attended the Séminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe and later, the Université de Montréal where he studied law. His political career began in 1948 when, under the banner of Maurice Duplessis' reigning Union Nationale, he was elected to the National Assembly.

To date the only Premier of Quebec native to the Eastern Townships is Daniel Johnson Sr., who was born in Sainte-Anne-de-Danville in 1915. The son of an Irish Catholic father and a French Canadian mother, Johnson first entered provincial politics in 1946 in the by-elections held that year.

Although not an Eastern Townshipper by birth, Joseph-Adélard Godbout adopted the Townships in midlife, buying in 1930 a century-old farmhouse near Frelighsburg, where he was later buried, and where his family still resides.

To date, Louis S. St-Laurent is the only Canadian Prime Minister born in the Eastern Townships. His life began in Compton in 1882. St-Laurent's parents, a French Canadian father and an Irish mother, ran a general store and were of modest means.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of Canada's most illustrious Prime Ministers, spent much of his adult life in the Eastern Townships. Laurier, who was born in Saint-Lin in the Laurentians in 1841, studied law at McGill University where he received his degree in 1864.

The young boy was standing in front of a small wooden table on which laid a birthday cake with four lit candles. You could see the gleam in the little guy’s face, and his underlying smile of knowing that this was his day to be celebrated, and his day alone. Dressed in a clean white shirt, dark slacks, and a clip-on bow tie, we could sense what he was thinking as he continued his bright-eyed stare into the candles. We could almost feel his wonder at what other miracles life would bring, and that this birthday was certainly one of them.

The early history of the Eastern Townships Telephone Company is also the story of Carlos Skinner. A jeweller and watchmaker by trade, and a native of Waterloo, Skinner, according to writer Paul Delaney, was a "man of boundless energy with an abiding curiosity in new scientific developments."

Mail delivery in the Eastern Townships dates to about 1800. At that early date, virtually all of the settlers in the region were recent arrivals from New England. These people were anxious to maintain their ties to their old country and to the friends and family they left behind.

The first newspapers in the Eastern Townships served the New England settlers who populated the region at that time. They provided news (lifted from other papers, and mainly from Europe and the U.S.), political speeches, texts on religion and morality, farming techniques and technological advances, and advertisements and articles of local interest.

Several commercial steamers have operated on Lake Memphremagog over the course of its history. This 44-km (27-mile) international lake, whose southern quarter lies within the state of Vermont, is the longest stretch of navigable water in the Eastern Townships. Newport lies at the south end of the lake, Magog, at the north.

(Continued from Steamers of Lake Memphremagog, Part 2)

(Continued from Steamers of Lake Memphremagog, Part 2)

A catastrophic flood wreaked havoc throughout northern New England and the Eastern Townships in the fall of 1927. The disaster was the worst flood on record.

Born on December 12, 1912 in Coaticook, third child of Stewart Curtis and Mary Wellman (Lovell) Smith, a fifth generation Canadian and descendent of the prominent Lovell family, respected for its diverse business activities, and its many years in Federal, Provincial and local politics representing Stanstead County.

The shores along lakes and rivers were often the most suitable routes for railway lines. Level, low-lying terrain free from major natural obstacles (especially steep grades and river crossings) offered the most inexpensive, if not necessarily the most direct, route.

Up until the 1840s, the bridge in Sherbrooke was the only one across the St. Francis River. Like many rivers in the Eastern Townships, the St. Francis was crossed by means of ferries at villages situated along its course. Such was the case in Richmond until the first bridge was erected there.

The 19th century saw a massive railway boom all across the Eastern Townships. Driven by the need to access raw materials, the desire for rapid transit, and a mania to build more and more branch lines, companies vied for territory and markets. By 1900, a network of local and regional railway lines crisscrossed virtually every corner of the region.

For many years roads in the Eastern Townships were primitive and impassable to wheeled traffic for most of year. Travel on horseback, by sleigh in winter or on foot, were the norm. People going to market could drive their animals or carry their goods by oxen, but travel was slow.

The first commercial ferry on Lake Memphremagog, and certainly one of the first in the Eastern Townships, was Moses Copp's ferry, in the aptly-named village of Copp's Ferry (later Georgeville). About 1797, shortly after his arrival in the area, Copp built a scow, which operated by manpower (oars) between the east and west sides of the lake.

The first settlers found no roads. They came to a land of virgin forest. They had to blaze their own trails, and find their way around swamps and over streams. They travelled in winter from New England, because snowshoes and a laden sled required a narrower path than an ox cart, and because they could save time by travelling over frozen lakes and rivers.