The first known non-Indian to penetrate the Arundel area was English-born Stephen Jakes Bevan, who made his living hunting and trapping furs as early as the 1820s. Settlers did not arrive in this area until much later. In 1857, Sidney Bellingham, MLA for Argenteuil, who did surveys and encouraged settlement, was given a large grant of land.
A glance down Metcalfe St. reveals the Protestant church, the English elementary school, and many houses built by English-speakers. This is the late 19th century home of the Crowes who ran the saw mill and general store. It is said that when the saw mill caught fire, the pile of sawdust burned for twenty years.
According to Quebec’s Commission de toponymie, the chain of mountains known as the Laurentians (les Laurentides in French) extends from Lake Témiscamingue on the Ontario border all the way across Quebec to Labrador. Geologically, the Laurentians were formed over a billion years ago and constitute Quebec’s portion of that vast u-shaped region around Hudson Bay known as the Canadian Shield. The Laurentians are famous for their lakes, mountains, and abundant natural resources. They are also home to some of the finest skiing in eastern North America.
Ste. Agathe, a sleepy farming village in the hills, became a railroad boomtown with the arrival of the train. These big, snorting steam engines captured the hearts of people and changed the social structure everywhere in the world. More than a railroad town, Ste. Agathe became a vacation destination for the builders of this new society, including the railroad men.
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The town of Val David, the first settlement north of Ste. Adele, had its post office named Mont Morin in 1873, in honour of A.N. Morin. The first few families, the Ménards and Dufresnes, were larger than life, both figuratively and physically. Two Ménard brothers married Dufresne sisters and the Dufresne brother did right by a Ménard sister. It is no surprise that the Ménards' mother became known far and wide as La Mère Ménard. Though smaller than her sons, she was about six feet tall and was a woman to be reckoned with.
Dr. J. Roddick Byers contracted tuberculosis in Sherbrooke, where, he later acknowledged, he had been overworking, delivering four babies a night and taking no time off. He took the rest cure at the Trudeau sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York, where he developed a good relationship with Dr. Hugh Klinghorn, an ex-patient himself who served on the ward and was devoted to the study of tuberculosis.
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The North River's name can be traced back to the time of the granting of the first seigniory of Argenteuil in 1682. The focal area was at its mouth where it joins the Ottawa River and the early maps show the North River with the West River flowing into it. G. R. Rigby in his 1964 history of Lachute notes that early surveyors marked La Chute (The Falls) on the North just upstream of where the West joins it.
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.
From sixteen years of age, in 1905, Osias Renaud worked at the sawmill built by Anaclat Marier on the Tour du Lac. The water flowing out of Lac des Sables drove the mill. It is hard to imagine today that the outflow of the lake could keep 12 men working; twelve families fed. The Parent brothers, who had acquired the mill, installed a new 40 horsepower turbine around that time, and milled flour as well as wood. The Parents also maintained a full general store selling animal feed, hay, flour, groceries, metal work, piping and even dry goods. In the winter, the men would log.
The year was 1895 and the train to Ste. Agathe had been in operation for only three years. Elizabeth Wand, a nurse from New York City, a single American woman of the Victorian age, arrived in our small town and began to assess its potential as a health spa. She had read something about the area in Harper's Magazine and decided that it sounded like a great location to look after 'nervous wrecks and convalescents'. At age forty, she walked away from fifteen years of nursing and became a pioneer in a new country, with a new language, setting up a health retreat.