John LeBoutillier, originally from the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel, became a very successful Gaspé merchant and political figure. He was originally employed by the Robin Company, important fish merchants, where he learned the skills of the cod fish trade.
In the 1800s railways were needed in the Eastern Townships to get to raw materials, for fast travel, the growth of businesses, and to fill in the desire to build more railway lines. In the past most people didn’t have cars to travel with or trucks to carry materials. Railways met this need.
A tourist steam train runs between the city of Gatineau and the village of Wakefield for about eight months of the year, bringing visitors through the wooded hills and along the scenic Gatineau River.
In response to a plan to connect Montreal’s airport to the downtown by diverting the existing CPR tracks around the Bell Centre and old Windsor Station to a new elevated terminus with multi-story commercial and office space, Michael Fish has publicly expressed his opinion that it would be cheaper to demolish the Bell Centre and reopen the old Windsor Station as a commuter
The line of cruise boats known as "the Alouette" has been catering to summer visitors to Lac des Sables in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts for over sixty years.
The snowmobile taxis / school buses that roamed Morin Heights village streets and roads in the 1940s and 1950s "must have been the most unusual vehicles to ever trek through the snow," as Sandra Stock described them.
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.
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)
