Laurentian Heritage WebMagazine

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.

In Dr. Grignon's Album Historique de Ste. Agathe, written in 1912 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the parish, he describes the first three colonists who homesteaded in our region. These three men, Narcisse and Olivier Ménard and their brother-in-law Jean-Baptiste Dufresne, had clearly responded to A.N. Morin's initiative in encouraging homesteading of the north country. Despite Morin's noble efforts with potatoes, however, the real economic mainstay would never be the farm, but rather, the pine tree, and these three men were well equipped to exploit it.

The signing of La Grande Paix by the Iroquois and the French in Montreal in 1701 brought to an end the wild days of the French-Indian Wars. These wars reflected the European conflicts: the French fought the Iroquois who were allied with the British, while the Huron, Nipissing and Algonquin were either neutral or took the side of the French. As we saw last time, the Weskarinis, who were the indiginous people of our Laurentian area, were casualties of these wars, having been massacred by the Iroquois on the shores of Petit Lac Nominingue in 1751.

According to Serge Laurin, the author of Histoire des Laurentides, the Algonquin Amerindians who lived in this region were the Weskarinis, a small branch of the Lower Algonquin tribe. The Upper Algonquins lived in the Abitibi region.
For the entire article, click here: http://www.ballyhoo.ca/history/TheWeskarinis.shtml

The Laurentians are situated in the Grenville geological province, a slowly moving land mass that collided with the Canadian Shield a billion years ago. It is precambrian. That means that is it was formed before there were any signs of animal life. The cambrian period began with the first signs of animal life only 650,000,000 years ago.

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

As the economy of the lower Laurentians evolved after the start of settlement in the 1830s, certain areas thrived and grew, or withered and dwindled at different times.

Pioneers trekked on foot and by ox-cart from Berthierville and l’Assomption to the wilderness that would become Rawdon. These people of Scots, English, French, and mostly Irish ancestry arrived as early as 1817. Seen in the foreground is local historian Beverly Copping Prud’homme, a descendant of the Coppings who came in 1819. Beverly fondly remembers her grandfather’s steam-run mill.

When American Hezekiah Clark arrived in the area of Lachute on the North River in the 1790s with his family and other pioneers, it was a wilderness. Settled by Americans who had been uncomfortable living with seigneurial law, and Scots moving up the North River from the St. Andrews East area, a village soon developed along the river near the rapids. But it wasn’t until the coming of the railway that the village became an important centre.