The Story of Sherbrooke's Ingersoll - Rand, commonly just called the Rand, is not only the history of a prolific industry, but a glimpse into the lives of the thousands of men and women who worked there. In Sherbrooke, almost everyone knows someone who worked in the sprawling west-end shops of the Rand.
There was little time for educating their families when the first settlers arrived in Eaton in the early 1800s. Clearing the land, growing food, building log homes, and preparing for the long cold winters, kept them far too busy to leave much time for teaching literacy and academic subjects to their children.
The first New England settlers arrived in what would become Eaton Corner in the late 18th century. There were no roads so they had to trek through the wilderness on foot, following old Indigenous trails and bringing with them only what they could carry on their backs.
One of Sherbrooke's most recently developed attractions -- and certainly one of the most colourful ways that the city has spruced itself up over the past few years -- is the collection of eleven (so far) larger-than-life, tromp-l'oeil murals that have appeared over the past decade on vacant walls in and around the old downtown core.
