Laurentian Heritage WebMagazine

Thousands of tributaries, streams, springs and small lakes contribute to the headwaters of the North River system. Most of them seem to bubble right out of the ground as though the Laurentian Mountains were a place where water itself was created. This extraordinary system ties the whole lower Laurentians together in its sustaining web, belying the arbitrary-sounding name that it bears. Ironically the North is the southernmost river in the Laurentians. It is also the least navigable and generally runs at a higher elevation.

(Continued from Part 1)

We call it the town of Weir, but its real name is the Municipality of Montcalm. Even in the phone book, however, it barely clings to its real name. In the Municipal listings in the blue pages the town hall (Hôtel de Ville) is usually listed with its address, most of the time marked as being in the town that is being described. An example of this can be seen in the listing for Prévost, which is identified as being on Curé Labelle Boulevard in Prévost.

After the signing of La Grande Paix in 1701, ending the French and Indian Wars, the Sulpicians set up a mission at Lake of Two Mountains ostensibly to maintain peace between the Iroquois and the Algonquins. In exchange for this noble and selfless act the French crown gave the Sulpicians exclusive fur-trading rights to the territory. The Sulpicians sold off these rights to French entrepreneurs and did their best to convert the Iroquois and Algonquin to Catholicism.

According to the Commission de toponymie, Quebec's official naming agency, the township of Howard, created in 1871, was named to honour Sir Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle. Howard was Commissioner of the Colonies during the very difficult period of the American War of Independence and was sent to the colonies in the 1770's to try to pacify the Americans. Despite the resulting war and the creation of the United States, his mission demonstrated that he was a very capable man. He succeeded in getting an audience and in commencing dialogue.

Sir William Johnson was the superintendent of northern Indians based in New York in the 1750's and 60's and was a significant military leader during the Seven Years' War. His particular strength was that he had the confidence of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. He was also a shrewd businessman and established one the greatest fortunes in the 13 Colonies prior to the creation of the United States. He brought his son John with him on his military campaigns and John became a respected military leader in his own right. Around 1752 Sir William took a young Mohawk teenager in as his consort.

Thanks to an email I received from Donna Girard of the Shawbridge United Church, I had the pleasure of meeting a few members of the Shaw family. I learned that the Shaw's family name comes from the Shatten clan of Ireland, but that they crossed over to the region of Argyll in Scotland so long ago that, even though their descendants moved back to Ireland in the 1300's, and left there for Canada in 1827, they still consider themselves to be partly of Scottish extraction.

While Sir John Johnson left his imprint on the county of Argenteuil in the western corner of the Laurentians, another British hero of the American War of Independence, Sir Francis Rawdon, was honoured in the creation of a Loyalist settlement on the eastern flank.

For the entire article, click here: http://www.ballyhoo.ca/placenames/Rawdon.shtml

A number of the place-names in the mid- to upper Laurentians have come down to us from the original human inhabitants, the Weskarinis Algonquins. This tribe lived principally along the Ottawa River and its Laurentian tributaries, the Lièvre, the Petite Nation, the Rouge and the North. We can only imagine their lives, small family groups living in a hierarchy dominated by ancient traditions and coloured by myth. The summer must have been a time of plenty and of celebration.

James Crocket Wilson was born in Ireland in 1841 the son of Samuel Wilson and Elizabeth Crocket. They arrived in Montreal in the spring of 1842, five years before the Irish potato famine hit. While his father had no marketable skills upon their arrival, he taught himself the rudiments of carpentry and mechanics and eventually landed employment with the Grand Trunk Railway making railway cars. He is credited with the design of the first railway snowplough.