Laurentian Heritage WebMagazine

Published by the Association of Gravestone Studies (AGS)Pamphlets, $2.50 to $4.50 each (plus shipping)

In the fall of 2007, QAHN launched its Cemetery Heritage Inventory and Restoration Initiative (CHIRI). Our objective was to evaluate cemeteries of English speaking communities and / or religious congregations in several areas of Quebec, including the Laurentians.

The death toll in a pandemic can be staggering, but a supplementary measure of devastation can also be read into the stories of survivors.

"Grenville" -- as in Grenville Township, Grenville-sur-la Rouge Municipality and Grenville Village -- trace their name back to William Wyndham Grenville, a British statesman who served briefly (1806-1807) as British Prime Minister, during the time that Grenville Township was being established and surveyed.

In May 2008, I got a call from Heather (Stone) Foley, who lives in Rawcliffe, Quebec. She told me James Stone was visiting from BC. I had been a classmate of Heather’s throughout grade school in Grenville and a good friend of her younger brother, James. But I had only seen him two or three times in the intervening fifty years.

Lac Carlin, also known as Carling Lake, is just northwest of Pine Hill, Quebec, along Highway 327, in the lower Laurentians. Today it is the site of an upscale golf course and hotel…a classy resort destination.

If you had to name a première river that flows from the very heart of the Laurentians, you would surely choose the Rouge. The Rouge River runs 220 km, originating in the Réserve Faunique Rouge-Matawin, northwest of Mont Tremblant, and follows a winding course southward. Eventually it tumbles down the south face of the Laurentians and empties into the Ottawa River, just west of Calumet, near the very place I was born. The Rouge has everything; slow meandering turns, lots of white-water rapids ranging from Class I to V in intensity and several spectacular un-runnable waterfalls.

The 1851 census of Grenville Township identified a population of 1,200, split evenly between Catholics and Protestants. The break-down by ethnic group was 362 French Canadians, 544 English-speaking Canadians, and 187 Irish-, 77 Scottish-, 28 English- and 2 American-born immigrants.

Archibald McMillan, who was born in Scotland in 1762, is credited with being the first settler in Grenville.

In 1802, he and his cousin Alan McMillan brought 344 adults and 104 children as Highland emigrants to Montreal, on board the vessels Friends, Helen and Jane. His plan was to set up a Highland style fiefdom in Argenteuil County, with himself as a New-World laird. When land negotiations bogged down, many of his followers settled in Glengarry and Stormont counties in Upper Canada, where relatives and friends were already established.

During World War Two, the fabric of No. 2 Company of the Canadian Forestry Corps drew heavily on the English-speaking sons of Argenteuil, leveraging their skills with the axe and the crosscut saw, honed on the family bush farms of their native county. No. 16 Company was formed around their French-speaking “bucheron” counterparts.