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PRESERVING MEAT

Canada is often called the land of the maple. Indeed, the maple leaf is our national emblem. The Eastern Townships is one of the areas in Canada best suited for maple syrup production. In fact, over half of the North American crop was, and still is, produced in the Province of Quebec.

The 19th century saw the growth of agricultural societies all over the Eastern Townships.

Cows were milked in the morning and evening. Before the advent of electricity and milking machines, the chore had to be done by hand. It took about an hour for two or three people to milk twenty cows.

During the winter, when the ground was frozen and covered with snow, the men and boys of the farm would take their axes and cross cut saws and drive their teams of horses into the woods. Since the foliage was all gone, the underbrush was not thick, so the teams could move about with relative ease in the forest.

Apples have been cultivated for the past four thousand years. They were introduced to North America from Europe by the early colonists in both New England and Canada. It has been recorded that the first apples in North America were grown in Acadia in 1635.

Before the invention of modern refrigeration techniques, cutting blocks of ice from frozen lakes and streams was an important wintertime task for local farmers.

A good hay crop was vital for the survival of any farm. It was hay that fed the animals over the long winter, when the fields were covered in a deep layer of snow.

After the long Townships winter, spring was the time to do repairs and renovations on the farmhouse and outbuildings. Before the fields could be worked, there was a lot of work to be done.

Apart from Henry Seth Taylor, who built Canada's first steam-powered horseless carriage in 1867, another Eastern Townships man who deserves mention as an early carmaker is George Foote Foss. Born in 1876, Foss was a prosperous mechanic, blacksmith, and bicycle repairman from Sherbrooke. Like Taylor before him, he was also an ingenious tinkerer.

The first man in history to send wireless broadcasts of voice and music, and the inventor of the sonic depth finder, submarine signaling devices, and over 500 patents, was Reginald Fessenden, a native of the Eastern Townships. Born in Brome County in 1866, the son of an Anglican minister, Fessenden spent much of his youth in Ontario.

Henry Seth Taylor was a natural tinkerer. Born in Stanstead in 1833, he loved to experiment with machines, and during his lifetime he is said to have invented a number of things, including the first sofa-bed and an early "talking machine". Taylor is best known, however, for building Canada's first steam-powered car, which he unveiled at the Stanstead Fair in 1867.

Born in Coaticook in 1862 and educated at the Coaticook Academy, Frank Henry Sleeper was the nephew of industrialist Lewis Sleeper, and the son of mechanical inventor Wright Sleeper, both also of Coaticook. From a very early age, Frank Henry Sleeper, like his father, was fascinated by the intricate workings of machinery.

One of the greatest inventors and industrialists of the Eastern Townships, Joseph-Armand Bombardier, was born in Valcourt in 1907 to Anna Gravel and Alfred Bombardier, a farmer turned general merchant. The eldest of eight children, Bombardier, from an early age, combined a talent for tinkering with a passion for machines.

Created in 1954 from the Catholic Séminaire St-Charles Borromée, the French-language Université de Sherbrooke was at first a three-faculty university granting degrees in law, arts, and science.

The first Catholic school for girls to be established in the Eastern Townships was Mont Notre-Dame in Sherbrooke.

Unlike their English Protestant counterparts, in the late nineteenth century, French Catholic schools in the Eastern Townships became increasingly dominated by religious orders. By the early 1900s, schools run by Catholic nuns and brothers were established in most towns of any significant size all across the Townships.

Bishop's University in Lennoxville was founded in 1845 under the sponsorship of the Anglican Bishop of Quebec, George Jehoshaphat Mountain. Chartered to grant degrees in 1853, the school in its early years it was primarily a centre for classical education and the training of the Anglican clergy.

Located in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains, the village of Inverness is remarkable for its rolling landscapes and its roads that wind through valleys and around green hills offering a unique sight on the grounds, the pastures, the brooks and the forests.

Early Steps in Cowansville's Development