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
Construit en 1762, toujours en opération et encore mû par la seule force de l’eau, le moulin Légaré est en Amérique du Nord, le plus ancien moulin à farine n’ayant jamais cessé de fonctionner. Le moulin Légaré est aussi la plus ancienne industrie toujours en opération au Canada. Le moulin fut la propriété de la famille Légaré de 1907 à 1978, année où la ville de Saint-Eustache en fait l'acquisition. Depuis 1976, les bâtiments appartiennent à la Ville de Saint-Eustache et en 1978, l'administration du moulin fut confiée à la Corporation du moulin Légaré.
The Eastern Townships' principal city is Sherbrooke. With a population of 150,000, it dominates the region. Sherbrooke is situated at the confluence of the St. Francis and Magog rivers. In Abenaki times, these two rivers were important navigable waterways for travelling through the region.
From 1860 to the early 1900s, the St. Francis Valley was the main centre in Canada for the production of slate. At that time, there were no less than ten slate quarries in the area around Richmond, Melbourne, Kingsey, and Danville. Entire villages grew up around the quarries which provided a living to hundreds of workers for the most part from Great Britain.
Three components make up the explosive combination of black powder: saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sulphur, and charcoal (carbon). In its heyday, black powder had two primary applications: blasting powder for use in mining operations, and gunpowder for hunting.
Since about the 1870s, the inhabitants of this area, some twenty kilometres northeast of Richmond, were aware of the strange substance which veined the rocks on a hillside known as "Webb's Ledge." It was a Welsh miner named Evan Williams, who, visiting his parents in 1881, first identified the substance as the mineral asbestos, and recognized its commercial value.
In its infancy, hydroelectric power in the Eastern Townships was in the hands of a variety of small, local companies.
Beginning in the 1850s, the Eastern Townships were the centre of a massive "copper rush". One of the first copper mines in the area was in Leeds Township. Immense deposits were soon discovered in Acton, Bolton, and most important of all, Ascot, where rich concentrations of copper ore (and sulphur) were discovered in 1859.
Stanstead’s local indigenous stone, and the mainstay of the local economy, is a variety of granite most often referred to as “Stanstead grey.” Stanstead grey has been quarried and worked in and around Beebe (which is now a part of Stanstead) for generations. But what exactly is this durable stone?
In the early years of settlement, farmers had to make their own shoes, harnesses, and other leather necessities. When a cow died, the farmer and his wife would scrape, cure, and stretch the hide. The leather could then be used for making everything from patches for mending clothing to door hinges.
When tanneries began to appear in villages, the nasty chore of curing cowhides was not one that was widely missed by many people.