Looking northward from Grenville, about three miles, one sees the Laurentians rising sharply a few hundred feet, presenting a formidable barrier. To the northeast, a stream called the Kingham River cuts through, draining a small valley which reaches back into the hills at the eastern edge of Grenville Township.
The River:
The history of Lanaudière is first and foremost a story of the great settlement movement along the St. Lawrence River, the only major highway for the original inhabitants and, later on, for the new arrivals from France.
The Indigenous heritage has been traced back as far as the 14th century through archeological sites in Quebec. Today, in the far north of the region, the village of Manawan remains a reserve where a community of Attikamek lives.
One of the most obvious landmarks in the Morin Heights and St. Adolphe d'Howard area was the large dome on top of Lac St. Denis Mountain. This enormous puffball mushroom lingered on long after the base, Canadian Forces Station Lac St. Denis, closed in 1986. There are also the remains of a village on the shore of Lac St.Denis that originally housed the base personnel.
Nominingue is above all a lake! On the Indigenous peoples’ route to their hunting and fishing territories. Algonquins, Iroquois and others travelled the tributaries of the Ottawa: the Nord, the Rouge, the Petite-Nation, the Lièvre et the Gatineau. It was their custom to name locations they visited on their travels. Does "Nominingue" have its origins in the Iroquois or the Algonquin languages? Who could tell? According to Mr. B.A. de Montigny, Nominingue means in Iroquois: "red paint".
The Township of Abercrombie, comprising Shawbridge, a part of Piedmont, the village of Ste. Adele, and Fourteen Island Lake, was named for General James Abercromby. Exactly why he should have been so honoured is a bit of a mystery. It could be someone’s sense of humour — an encrypted message to the future inviting us to look back and see that the victors in war are not always winners.
A major concern for the entire historical community of Quebec has been, and remains, our vast and varied religious heritage. Regardless of language or denomination, our cities, towns and countryside are populated by empty, or seasonal, or much diminished churches, many of which have old cemeteries attached to them.
Tracing your family roots can be challenging, many times disappointing, more often that not frustrating yet rewarding. As I have been “chasing down” my family, I have been fortunate to have made contacts with other individuals who not only share the passion for genealogy, but our families are sometimes related to each other. Our paths crossed by way of Argenteuil and Terrebonne counties in Quebec and sometimes in Montreal.
The earliest nineteenth century settlements of the Laurentians were intended to be agricultural, in spite of the unpromising terrain and the very short growing season.
Where the North River divides the first mountain ranges of the Laurentians from the St. Lawrence plains, the settlement of what later became Shawbridge was established in the early nineteenth century. The first inhabitants came from Ireland and many descendants of these families still live in our area.
Ste. Agathe and the surrounding lakes have been the favoured destination of generations of North Americans. Ours is a Quebec town that has absorbed and reflects all of the various cultural influences that make up Canada.The indigenous peoples, the Weskarinis-Algonkians, wintered in our area for centuries before their fateful defeat at the hands of the Iroquois in 1651. Even so, its name may well come from the Algonkian word Mittawang, meaning sandy shores.In 1849 the first hardy settlers arrived, a handful of families with descendants in the community to this day.