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In the early 1600s, when Samuel de Champlain first explored the St Lawrence beyond Hochelaga, the North American continent was peopled with a series of small nations with amorphous borders. These peoples had highly ritualized communications among them and long-standing enemies and trading partners. Champlain could not know that the Algonquin nations that he met were in the middle of border skirmishes with the Iroquois nations to the south, but he realised quickly that he had to choose sides when his meeting party was attacked.

The town of Val David, the location of the first settlements north of Ste- Adele, was once known by t its post office, Mont Morin. Named for A.-N. Morin, it opened in 1873. The first few families, the Ménards and the Dufresnes, were larger than life, both figuratively and physically. Two Menard brothers married Dufresne sisters and the Dufresne brother did right by a Menard sister. It is no surprise that the Ménards' mother became known far and wide as La Mère Ménard. Smaller than her sons, she was about six feet tall and was a woman to be reckoned with.

As cross-country skiing grew in popularity, and after World War I, overtook showshoeing as the winter sport of choice in Montreal, improvements continued to be made to the sport. The most obvious was the invention of the ski tow. It meant no more puffing up the hill for what felt like hours just to whiz down in what felt like minutes!

The quiet dirt road is canopied by large maple and elm trees. The edge of the road drops off towards small lakes and marshes bordered by poplars and willows, with dogwood and reeds along the shores. On the other side, the low, rolling hills of this, the beginning of the Laurentian Shield, are tree-covered, as well. There are no squared log farmhouses, no cleared fields, no domestic animals, no barns, no schoolhouse, no mail delivery, no blacksmith, no stores, no Orange Lodge, no community dances, no picnics, no children playing… There is a church and cemetery -- that’s all.

Before the mid-19th century, there were only seasonal Indigenous hunters in the Morin Heights region, most likely Mohawks.Government minister Augustin-Norbert Morin came with his Indigenous guide, Simon, in 1850 to survey the area. In the same year the first permanent settlers --three Seale brothers, originally from Connaught, Ireland -- arrived from Lachute.

The Quebec government maintains a website on all the place names in the province. If you check it out at www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca and look at how Lake Louisa got its name, you will find two and a half somewhat conflicting stories. In one, they describe a talented musician named Louisa M. Holland who performed for some surveyors in the 1840's and they subsequently named the lake in her honour.

James Crocket Wilson was born in Ireland in 1841 the son of Samuel Wilson and Elizabeth Crocket. They arrived in Montreal in the spring of 1842, five years before the Irish potato famine hit. While his father had no marketable skills upon their arrival, he taught himself the rudiments of carpentry and mechanics and eventually landed employment with the Grand Trunk Railway making railway cars. He is credited with the design of the first railway snowplough.

A number of the place-names in the mid- to upper Laurentians have come down to us from the original human inhabitants, the Weskarinis Algonquins. This tribe lived principally along the Ottawa River and its Laurentian tributaries, the Lièvre, the Petite Nation, the Rouge and the North. We can only imagine their lives, small family groups living in a hierarchy dominated by ancient traditions and coloured by myth. The summer must have been a time of plenty and of celebration.

While Sir John Johnson left his imprint on the county of Argenteuil in the western corner of the Laurentians, another British hero of the American War of Independence, Sir Francis Rawdon, was honoured in the creation of a Loyalist settlement on the eastern flank. For the entire article, click here: http://www.ballyhoo.ca/placenames/Rawdon.shtml

Thanks to an email I received from Donna Girard of the Shawbridge United Church, I had the pleasure of meeting a few members of the Shaw family. I learned that the Shaw's family name comes from the Shatten clan of Ireland, but that they crossed over to the region of Argyll in Scotland so long ago that, even though their descendants moved back to Ireland in the 1300's, and left there for Canada in 1827, they still consider themselves to be partly of Scottish extraction.

Sir William Johnson was the superintendent of northern Indians based in New York in the 1750's and 60's and was a significant military leader during the Seven Years' War. His particular strength was that he had the confidence of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. He was also a shrewd businessman and established one the greatest fortunes in the 13 Colonies prior to the creation of the United States. He brought his son John with him on his military campaigns and John became a respected military leader in his own right. Around 1752 Sir William took a young Mohawk teenager in as his consort.

According to the Commission de toponymie, Quebec's official naming agency, the township of Howard, created in 1871, was named to honour Sir Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle. Howard was Commissioner of the Colonies during the very difficult period of the American War of Independence and was sent to the colonies in the 1770's to try to pacify the Americans. Despite the resulting war and the creation of the United States, his mission demonstrated that he was a very capable man. He succeeded in getting an audience and in commencing dialogue.

After the signing of La Grande Paix in 1701, ending the French and Indian Wars, the Sulpicians set up a mission at Lake of Two Mountains ostensibly to maintain peace between the Iroquois and the Algonquins. In exchange for this noble and selfless act the French crown gave the Sulpicians exclusive fur-trading rights to the territory. The Sulpicians sold off these rights to French entrepreneurs and did their best to convert the Iroquois and Algonquin to Catholicism.

We call it the town of Weir, but its real name is the Municipality of Montcalm. Even in the phone book, however, it barely clings to its real name. In the Municipal listings in the blue pages the town hall (Hôtel de Ville) is usually listed with its address, most of the time marked as being in the town that is being described. An example of this can be seen in the listing for Prévost, which is identified as being on Curé Labelle Boulevard in Prévost.

(Continued from Part 1)

Curé François-Xavier Antoine Labelle promoted a vision of rapid colonisation of the North-West. He envisaged French- Catholic parishes from St. Jerome north-west, through present-day northern Ontario, all the way to Winnipeg. He spoke with conviction and authority. A tall, energetic and imposing man, well over six feet and weighing more than 300 pounds, he was rarely contradicted. Wherever he was, when he spoke of his dream, people followed. He became known as L'Apôtre de la Colonisation and Le Roi du Nord. He was so positive and convinced of his mission that people were in awe of him.

The coming of the railway in the 1890s opened up the Laurentians to skiers who had previously had to content themselves with cross-country skiing on Mount Royal. Shawbridge became “the gateway to the Laurentians”.

Surrounded by birch trees, stands this old militia barracks and drill hall built c.1830. Local names listed in the ranks were those of Sharpes, Copping, Tinkler, and Rowan, all familiar names in the community today. Local militias were set up during a time when Canada was threatened by rebellion from within and invasion from the United States.

One of the best preserved and most attractive of Morin Heights’ old houses is the home of Augustin-Norbert Morin, built in 1860. Its mansard roof and two-storey design mark it as a classic example of French-Canadian domestic architecture of the period.

What is heritage? Webster's defines it as "property that is or can be inherited; something handed down from one's ancestors or the past; a characteristic, culture, or tradition." In its broadest sense, it would seem that heritage can include virtually everything we receive from our predecessors -- even those things that we consider as bad or negative.