Local History

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.

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!

(Continued from Part 1)

Alter and Sima Levine arrived in Montreal in 1903 along with their seven children. They met others here who, like them, had fled the pogroms in Russia. Their new country was full of hope and freedom. There was no dark authoritarian presence watching their moves, no pogroms, and the immigrants could freely share their stories, hopes and fears. Almost drunk with a sense of freedom, a number of these new Canadians decided to establish a commune off in the countryside where they could farm and reorganise their world.

Dr. Grignon, in his Album historique de la Paroisse de Ste-Agathe-des-Monts suggests that Octavien Rolland gave rise to the huge influx of wealthy businessmen who purchased large properties in our area. In French, these people are called villégiateurs. It translates as “people who stay, sojourn or vacation in the country”, but to date I have failed to find an English noun that expresses the same meaning.

In 1894, Dr. Camille Laviolette of Laval University convinced the Provincial Government to set aside a large parcel of Laurentian property for the creation of a forestry reserve. His plan was to build a tuberculosis sanitarium in a completely protected environment. The proposal, originally drafted in 1893, was accepted in July 1894. Dr. Laviolette had studied in Paris, London and Berlin. He was a member of la Société Française d’Otologie et de Laryngologie de Paris, a specialist at l’Institution des Sourdes et Muettes, and was a medical doctor at the University of Laval.

Théophile Thibodeau became curé of the parish of Ste. Agathe in 1878 and simultaneously homesteaded a large peninsula at the far end of Lac des Sables. He was the community’s spiritual leader during Ste. Agathe’s most difficult years. He inherited a parish that was just discovering that the fields would not yield, and the local farmers were either leaving or looking for other ways to make a living. Several of these hard-working pioneers built hotels.

In 1894 Harper’s Magazine carried an article about the Laurentians by McGill University principal Sir William Dawson. A young nurse in New York, upon reading it, decided that she had to visit, and set off to Ste. Agathe. Her name was Elizabeth Wand, and her seven year love-affair with our area is documented in her memoirs.

For the entire article, click here: http://www.ballyhoo.ca/history/FreshAirandCleanWater.shtml

Curé Labelle’s time, 1868 to 1891, was one of great change in Ste Agathe. While the town grew, the forests almost disappeared and along with them went species of wildlife we’ll never know. When Jacques Cartier first visited the St. Lawrence River in the 1500’s, he reported fauna of much greater variety than we find today. His chronicler made particular mention of the large number of seals that lived in the St. Lawrence valley. The horsehead, or grey seal, is mentioned, along with its smaller cousin, the harbour (phoca)or dotar.

There is no evidence of any settlement of Europeans, English or French, in the Ste-Agathe area prior to the community that began with the Dufresnes and the Menards in 1849. There may have been camps for coureurs de bois and for lumberjacks, but nothing more. Loyalists and British veterans had been settling along the Ottawa Valley since the end of the American War of Independence, and they tended to move upstream along the tributaries. Thus the English towns of Lachute and Brownsburg a little further upstream along the North River from St.