To date, Louis S. St-Laurent is the only Canadian Prime Minister born in the Eastern Townships. His life began in Compton in 1882. St-Laurent's parents, a French Canadian father and an Irish mother, ran a general store and were of modest means.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of Canada's most illustrious Prime Ministers was born in the village of Saint-Lin in the Laurentians in 1841. Laurier studied law at McGill University where he received his degree in 1864. The young lawyer practiced in Montreal for a few years, but soon moved to the Eastern Townships, where he served as editor of a small newspaper in L’Avenir.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of Canada's most illustrious Prime Ministers, spent much of his adult life in the Eastern Townships. Laurier, who was born in Saint-Lin in the Laurentians in 1841, studied law at McGill University where he received his degree in 1864.
The young boy was standing in front of a small wooden table on which laid a birthday cake with four lit candles. You could see the gleam in the little guy’s face, and his underlying smile of knowing that this was his day to be celebrated, and his day alone. Dressed in a clean white shirt, dark slacks, and a clip-on bow tie, we could sense what he was thinking as he continued his bright-eyed stare into the candles. We could almost feel his wonder at what other miracles life would bring, and that this birthday was certainly one of them.
The early history of the Eastern Townships Telephone Company is also the story of Carlos Skinner. A jeweller and watchmaker by trade, and a native of Waterloo, Skinner, according to writer Paul Delaney, was a "man of boundless energy with an abiding curiosity in new scientific developments."
Mail delivery in the Eastern Townships dates to about 1800. At that early date, virtually all of the settlers in the region were recent arrivals from New England. These people were anxious to maintain their ties to their old country and to the friends and family they left behind.
The first newspapers in the Eastern Townships served the New England settlers who populated the region at that time. They provided news (lifted from other papers, and mainly from Europe and the U.S.), political speeches, texts on religion and morality, farming techniques and technological advances, and advertisements and articles of local interest.
Several commercial steamers have operated on Lake Memphremagog over the course of its history. This 44-km (27-mile) international lake, whose southern quarter lies within the state of Vermont, is the longest stretch of navigable water in the Eastern Townships. Newport lies at the south end of the lake, Magog, at the north.
(Continued from Steamers of Lake Memphremagog, Part 2)
(Continued from Steamers of Lake Memphremagog, Part 2)