When the railway first pushed northward into the Laurentians in the late nineteenth century, its initial purpose was to take out raw materials like lumber, building stone and minerals for the growing industries of Montreal.
By the 1890s, with the coming of the railways, the Laurentians were becoming less isolated, and in the summers, middle class people from Montreal started coming for vacations away from the city. This initiated a new form of economy -- the boarding house farm.
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.
One of the most striking features of the architecture at Echo Lake is the large number of round log houses. These were built between 1935 and 1955, initially by George Binns and other members of the Binns family. Round log style was also used by Binns at the Green Acres area on the other side of the village, off what is now Route 239 to Lachute.
The Young Men's Christian Association, or YMCA, was founded in London, England, in 1844, to provide assistance to young workers during the Industrial Revolution. Seven years later, in 1851, the very first branch of the "Y" was established in North America -- in Montreal.
