SHERBROOKE Estrie – Eastern Townships – UNIQUE PARADISE REGION OF THE PLANET – OUR ANCESTORS LAPRISE-MERCIER- TRÉPANIER
Surface area: 10,195 km2
Population: 309,975 inhabitants in 2010
Density: 30.4 inhabitants km2
Sherbrooke, queen city and capital of Estrie
Sherbrooke and Mont Orford
Estrie is an administrative region of Quebec located along the border with the
United States, east of Montérégie and south of Centre-du-Québec. Its main cities are Sherbrooke, Magog, Coaticook, Scotstown, Lac-Drolet, Lac-Mégantic and Windsor. It is made up of six regional county municipalities or MRCs and 89 municipalities local.
Our ancestors lived in these towns of Bury, Chartierville, Courcelle, Ditchfield, Gould
Audet or Sainte-Cécile-de-Whitton, Lac-Drolet or Saint-Samuel-de-Gayhurst, Lac-Mégantic, La Patrie, Marsden, Milan,
Nantes, Notre-Dame-des-Bois, Piopolis, Saint-Romain, Scotstown, Sherbrooke, Val Racine.
Le Granit, whose capital is the town of Lac-Mégantic. book night train Lac-Mégantic
Megantic lake
How to get there
From Sherbrooke follow route 112 to East Angus. A scenic route begins at Lennoxville, 32 kilometers from the Vermont-Quebec border on Route 143.
Drive is on Route 108, past Bishop's University, and turns left onto Spring Road, which leads to the village of Ascot Corner. Chemin Rivière de Ascot Corner follows the Saint-François River in East Angus along a section of the historic Gosford Road.
Estrie
Estrie was initially called in English "Eastern Townships", a name that the first English-speaking settlers (late 18th century) used to designate the region, the writer Antoine Gérin-Lajoie translated it into French as Cantons de l'Est in 1858, a reference to the Swiss cantons.
Its name comes from the creation of the British tenure system, the township, in 1791, allowing the grant of land to loyalist settlers who came to establish themselves in this region after the independence of the United States of America.
At the time, French-speaking rural Quebec used French tenure, the seigneurial system. As most of the Loyalists had settled in the part of the colony which today forms part of Ontario (and therefore to the west of the French speakers), the name "Eastern Township '' made it possible to distinguish this establishment.
In 1946, Monseigneur Maurice O'Bready proposed to change this unofficial designation with the term Estrie, easier to integrate into the French language with the adjective estrien. Especially since the term “Eastern Cantons” is a literal translation.
Located 1 hour 45 minutes southeast of Montreal and just a few hours from Quebec, Estrie is on the northern border of three United States states: Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Its neighboring tourist regions are Montérégie to the west, Centre-du-Québec to the north and Chaudière-Appalaches to the east.
Some Estrie villages (like Beebe Plain, near Rock Island, and Stansted) are directly divided in two by the American-Canadian border.
History
Estrie forms a territory with an area of approximately 1.6 million hectares, extending from the seigneuries south of the St. Lawrence River to the American borders and from the Richelieu River to the Chaudière River.
Estrie summit route
The richness of its soil and subsoil, the splendor of its hills and mountains, the wild beauty of several hundred lakes make it one of the most magnificent regions of Quebec.
This region, highly appreciated today by vacationers and tourists, was, under the French regime (1534-1760), an immense territory reserved for Abénaquis of the great Algonquin family who were driven back from the New England states at the end of the 17th century.
In 1792, the imperial government had the territory called the County of Buckinghamshire divided into 93 “cantons” and designated each of these sections with a name borrowed from the map of England.
1792 Division you Buckinghamshire in Townships, birth of the Eastern Townships.
It seems that we have taken at random and without much effort of imagination, terms of favorite places in Great Britain and nothing in this nomenclature recalls a glorious fact or even a geographical particularity. Note that no French name is assigned.
Referred to as Haut Saint-François, this hunting and fishing paradise was for a long time traveled only by Native Americans and fur traders. At that time, no colonization had been made, there was only a trading post located in Grandes-Fourches, the first name of the city of Sherbrooke.
Estrie covered wooden bridge
Under the English regime, from 1760, this situation continued until the American Declaration of Independence. On this date, the inhabitants of New England, who remained loyal to the British Crown, had to go into exile.
A good part of these people that we named "Loyalists" immigrated to Canada; the authorities then decided to grant them land located in this immense and still uninhabited territory.
But you have to be careful with the term "loyalist". Land was offered free on the basis of an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. The attraction of free land meant that many Americans of varying political sentiments did not hesitate to take an oath to have access to this land. It would therefore be more accurate to speak of American settlement for this region.
The grant of this land was made in the form of a township with an area of 100 square miles (10 miles x 10 miles).
It was at this time that the designation "Eastern-Townships" appeared as opposed to the "Western Townships" of Upper Canada; this territory is the current province of Ontario, created by the Constitutional Act of 1791 because the loyalists refused to live under the same law as Canadians, of French origin.
Loyalists
Colonization is slow to assert itself; the government of Lower Canada which is today's Quebec, suspicious of the settlers, these Americans who arrived 30 or 40 years after American independence and refused in Ontario for bad morals.
Many squat on the land before it is even granted. Furthermore, given that this region has not yet been cleared, many Americans will be unaware of being in Lower Canada territory when they settle illegally. As a result, after 1792, the vast majority of settlers in the Eastern Townships came from the United States.
The government will struggle with few resources for these settlers. He only opened the Craig Road to them in 1811, linking Quebec to Richmond, passing through the townships of Leeds, Halifax, Chester, Tingwick et Shipton.
Without help from administrators, Eastern Townships will develop jointly with the New England states. Before the arrival of the railway in the region, it was easier to trade with Boston and Portland in the United States than with Montreal and Quebec.
American settlers had developed several routes through the mountains to communicate with the United States and trade.
Around 1840, we witnessed the massive arrival of Irish and Scottish immigrants attracted by the land company "The British American Land Co."
They will occupy the region east of Sherbrooke and Compton. For their part, the Irish Catholics will be mainly present in the city, being little accustomed to the type of agriculture practiced in this region. There will be many of them in Richmond and Sherbrooke.
Even if the first French Canadians arrived around 1812 in the region, it was not until around 1840 that we saw the beginning of French-speaking immigration. Their number will become significant from the years 1850-1860.
Today, the population of Estrie is predominantly French-speaking (nearly 90).
Stagecoach on Craig Road, in 1811
In 1810, the Craig Road linked Lévis to Shipton, to Richmond, passing through the canton of Chester; also the Route du Saint-François and the Sherbrooke-Stanstead road opened the first routes of penetration.
At the beginning of the 19th century, in Lower Canada (Province of Quebec), almost all of the population still lived in the seigneuries along the Saint Lawrence River. The territory between the river and the American border had just been surveyed and this region took the name of Eastern Township. This would be the next area to be colonized in Lower Canada.
In 1810, Governor James Henry Craig began the construction of a road to connect Quebec and Boston in the United States. He also wanted to encourage the colonization of a massive English-speaking population. The goal was to assimilate the French Canadian population.
The intended route went from the seigneury of Saint-Gilles to Richmond. At this location, an existing road which today corresponds to Route 143 up to Stanstead had to continue the journey to the American border.
The construction of the road was undertaken in August 1810. It continued for 3 months. 180 soldiers were used for the work.
They cut down trees and built several bridges to make the road passable. Although the road was muddy and the terrain was uneven in many places, this route was passable enough to allow stagecoach service in winter.
In January 1811, the stagecoach service was established. It was to connect Quebec to the city of Boston in a record time of 6 days. The service ended in March with the thaw.
This service was later abandoned due to the difficult conditions of the journey.
The War of 1812 resulted in the abandonment of Craig Road. This could now serve as an invasion route for the Americans.
Several bridges were destroyed and the forest took over. A report from surveyor Joseph Bouchette noted the poor condition of the road.
Settlers still settled there, complaining about the poor condition of the road. Despite some repairs, the Craig road was declared impassable in 1829.
To alleviate this situation, another route, the road Gosford, fut undertaken to promote colonization.
The success of Craig Road is mixed. It made it possible to open the territory to several new inhabitants but not as was to be expected.
The establishment of an English-speaking population was insufficient. The attempt to assimilate French Canadians was a failure. On the other hand, the latter will come to live in this region and they will become the majority.
Saint-Ferdinand
Its route
To leave Quebec, people had to go to Saint-Nicolas and take Chemin Saint-Jean to Saint-Gilles.
The path Craig passes through Saint-Jacques-de-Leeds, then the township of Inverness. It then passes near Kinnear's Mills and then towards the town of Saint-Jean-de-Brébeuf. It joins the canton of Ireland (Ireland). The route from Saint-Gilles to Saint-Ferdinand d'Halifax is current route 216.
From Saint-Ferdinand, we reach the town of Vianney and then pass near the small towns of Trottier Mill and Sainte-Hélène-de-Chester. Craig Road continues towards Chesterville and Tingwick where it still bears its name. We then pass to the township of Shipton where Danville is located and then join Richmond by current route 116.
The rest of the route to the United States takes current Route 143 through Windsor, Bromptonville, Sherbrooke, Ayer's Cliff and Stanstead.
Railways
The first railway in Canada opened in 1836, and a frenetic period of railway construction followed which did not spare Estrie, which was served from 1851 via Richmond. In 1853 this same line.
The St-Lawrence & Atlantic was extended to Portland, Maine, in the USA. In 1854, Richmond was connected to Charny (south of Quebec) and in 1861, it was Waterloo's turn to be connected by le Stanstead, Shefford & Chambly Railroad.
These two companies were then absorbed by the Grand-Trunk, which later became the Canadian National Railways (CNR), or the Canadian National. Following all these developments, Estrie finds itself with the densest railway network in Quebec.
The Hays era
In 1895, the Grand Trunk Company is in a precarious situation.
On the advice of John Pierpont Morgan, the London managers of the firm decided to recruit Charles Melville Hays and make him general manager. His new duties took effect on January 1, 1896 and he settled in Montreal with his family.
Hays shows himself determined to turn around the company and restructure its management by announcing that decisions will no longer be made by the board of directors in London but at the head office in Montreal.
He also decided to restructure the network by adding double tracks and grain silos, but also by purchasing new locomotives. He finally distinguished himself from previous directors by taking his advice, no longer from the British directors of the company, but from Canadian field workers.
Canada is experiencing a period of prosperity, conducive to the expansion of its railway network.
This is a problem for Hays, because the management of the Grand Trunk has always refused to expand westward due to costs. Faced with a new refusal from his hierarchy, he resigned and joined the Southern Pacific Railroad In 1900.
The company being absorbed by another whose ideas he did not share, Hays left it in 1902 and resumed his position at Grand Trunk.
The first French-speaking arrivals
The overpopulation of the lordships brings the inhabitants bordering the river looking for living space.
We then see a few bold lumberjacks going deeper into the forest, building themselves cabins and settling there as "squatters".
Around 1850, the work of the Catholic clergy in favor of colonization helped to stop the massive emigration of youth from Lower Canada to the American neighbor.
We then see thousands of French-Canadian families entering the last remaining virgin cantons which were called, at that time,
“Priests’ Grounds”; not because these cantons, Ham, Wotton, Weedon, Garthby, Stratford et Winslow and others belong to the clergy, but rather because they intensely preach the occupation by French Canadians.
Tourism
Today the name “Estrie” is used to designate the administrative region, while the name “Eastern Townships» designates the tourist region.
Located south of the St. Lawrence River, the Eastern Townships tourist region is part of Southern Quebec, a group intended for the tourism promotion of the southern regions of Quebec on various international markets.
The tourist region contains three national parks offering many outdoor activities:
Mont-Mégantic National Park,
Mont-Orford National Park,
Parc national de Frontenac.
Yamaska National Park is located in the Eastern Townships tourist region, but in its part which is part of Montérégie.
The varied relief, the typically loyalist architecture of certain villages (a few are part of the Association of the Most Beautiful Villages of Quebec) and the presence of several lakes are among the tourist attractions of the region.
The Eastern Townships, a region of Appalachian hills located between Montreal and Quebec. The Eastern Townships extend from Granby to Lac-Mégantic, and from Drummondville to the American border.
Estrie Bolton
From the end of the 17th century, the Abenakis went there to hunt and fish. With the exception of the Grandes-Fourches trading post in Sherbrooke, the region was not colonized during the French regime.
Shortly after the end of the American War of Independence, many Loyalists left their homeland for Canada and settled in Missisquoi Bay, northeast of Lake Champlain. In 1791, the British governor decided to grant them cantons.
The first of the 95 townships granted was the township of Dunham in 1796. The region took the name of the (electoral) county of Buckinghamshire in 1792.
The name changes to "Eastern Townships of Lower Canada", as opposed to "Western Townships of Upper Canada", which will be contracted to "Eastern Townships" around 1806.
This expression was translated into “Eastern Townships” around 1833, then into “Eastern Townships” in 1858. The administrative region took the official name of Estrie in 1981. This name is still controversial. The first settlers were Americans, English and Irish.
After 1840, French-speaking colonization became more and more important and French-speakers became the majority between 1871 and 1881. English-speakers now represent less than 10 percent. 100 of the population.
Equipped with an excellent road network since the 1820s, the region experienced considerable growth with the construction of the Grand Trunk Railways of Canada, which linked Montreal to Sherbrooke to Scotstown to Lac-Mégantic to Portland (Maine) to Halifax, N.S. and 1853.
The road and rail networks promote the exploitation and transformation of natural resources including wood, Christmas trees, asbestos, granite, copper and limestone.
The Seven Years' War
During the Seven Years' War between France and Great Britain, the Abenakis, always allied with the French, guided the latter through the rivers of the Eastern Townships, often passing through the site of Sherbrooke, during raids. against the English forts.
When peace was signed in 1783 and shortly after, when the independence of the United States was recognized, the region of Eastern Townships returns for a few short years to the Abenaki populations, who have practiced hunting and fishing there for generations. On the other hand, the American Revolution attracted loyalists to the region and they began to covet land and demand concessions from the government.
Colonization (1802 to 1834).
American Revolution
Jean-Baptiste Nolin
The first white person to settle on the Sherbrooke site was a French Canadian named Jean-Baptiste Nolin, about whom little is known, except that he settled there in 1795 and that he came to make a living from agriculture.
Jean-Baptiste Nolin in 1795, well before Sherbrooke and even before Hyatt Mill's, under the very site of the mural in Sherbrooke, Jean-Baptiste Nolin cleared an 18-acre clearing very close to today's King Street West in the direction of Lennoxville, which we names the Township of Ascot.
Jean-Baptiste Nolin is a single man; little information exists on him, he is unlisted. Where did he come from? How old was he? We imagine this French-Canadian in the prime of age and character, because this territory was harsh, made up of large pines, stones and mountains.
In August 1799, Nolin took the oath of allegiance and thus passed from the probable daily status of “squatter” to that of township substitute partner.
In 1802, Nolin did not participate in the distribution of the granted lots, and Gilbert Hyatt acquired them. Since that time, no trace of Jean-Baptiste Nolin... Could he have left for other adventures? The story does not say…
Sherbrooke
An attempt at colonization took place in 1792 on the east bank of the Saint-François River. The place was then known as de Cowan's Clearance.
In 1793, Gilbert Hyatt, a loyalist from the district of Schenectady, New York, in the company of nine associates, settled not far from the confluence of the Massawippi and Coaticook rivers, near the current site of Capleton, even before the government of Lower Canada (Quebec) officially grants them land.
Over the next two years, 18 other families joined the ranks of the first settlers. At this moment, Hyatt is not interested in the Sherbrooke site. When the crown finally granted the land to Hyatt and his associates in 1801, no rights were recognized in Nolin. He therefore leaves the region.
Hyatt then claimed for himself the lands that the French Canadian had cleared and built a first dam on the Magog, in collaboration with another loyalist named Jonathan Ball, who had purchased land on the north bank of the river.
Hyatt erected a first flour mill there, on the south bank of the river, while Ball built a sawmill on the north bank. With the construction of its mill, Hyatt then made a historic gesture in 1802 by giving birth to the small hamlet of Hyatt's Mill, which would later become the city of Sherbrooke.
At this period, conditions were not very easy at the beginning of the colony of the Eastern Townships; the newly founded villages are too far from urban centers, and the settlers find themselves scattered in the middle of the forest without having access to passable roads.
By the same token, populations often face famine and various supply difficulties.
Also, the development of the hamlet of Sherbrooke, being no exception to the rule, is occurring very slowly.
A lot of effort was therefore put into road construction, so that from 1817, a network of stagecoaches to the main cities of Quebec and New England began to develop.
Subsequently, various waterway improvement projects were undertaken. Some more utopian ideas even propose connecting the Saint-François and Connecticut rivers, with the aim of creating a waterway between the St. Lawrence River and the Boston region, of which Sherbrooke would become the link.
Until 1834, despite the timid improvement of the communication network, Sherbrooke remains landlocked and poorly integrated with the rest of the continent, so that the region is unattractive for new generations of immigrants, which constitutes a brake on its development and limits the profits that merchants and speculators like Goodhue et Felton.
It was only in 1852, after several unsuccessful attempts to bring the railway to Sherbrooke, that the activities of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic began.
The promoters, all from Sherbrooke at the start, had tried to attract various support from the mayors and chambers of commerce of Boston and Montreal, as well as with the governors of the Canadas and States bordering the Eastern Townships, with the aim of finding partners to carry out the project.
The BALC itself had invested there by purchasing 480 shares in the railway. Once built, the line would connect Montreal, Sherbrooke and Portland, Maine and thus become part of the Grand Trunk network.
As a result of this development, came the appearance of a first municipal government in 1841, whose area of influence more or less coincided with the limits of the judicial district of Saint-François at the time, with its leader -location City of Sherbrooke.
At the same time, with the significant rise in British merchant and industrial bourgeoisie during the 1840s, the Tories were increasingly part of the Sherbrooke political landscape, opposed to the reformists, most of whom were farmers.
The influence of the Tories nevertheless faded towards the end of the decade, a phenomenon mainly due to the coming to power of the reformist-liberal government of Lafontaine and Baldwin, which had the effect of putting the Tories in opposition.
Grand Trunk Central Railways Sherbrooke
Sherbrooke 1920
Quebec entered the industrial era during the 1870s. It entered on its knees, or almost. From 1860 to 1870, wooden shipbuilding collapsed completely. From now on, the ships will be made of iron. “Quebec does not have the infrastructure to launch into this type of construction in a context of international competition.”
This crisis comes on the heels of another hard blow to the local economy. During the period 1840-1860, Britain became free trade.
It gradually eliminated tariffs that favored Quebec wood.
Fortunately, prices held up for a while, which softened the shock without, however, preventing the decline of Quebec's number one industry.
Britain as the one and only market is becoming a reality of the past. Trade with the United States flourished and a Canadian economic entity was created whose tariff policies influenced local industrial production from the 1870s to 1880s. "In this context, Montreal becomes the financial and railway capital, a hub, while Quebec is marginalized.”
So far, the economy of Quebec relies on qualified workers, skilled master craftsmen in shipbuilding or shoemaking, to name just two examples. But that too is in the past. In this second half of the 19th century, the mechanization of factories and the possibility of hiring unskilled workers began.
In Quebec, the shoe industry is one of the first to experience the transformation. In Montreal, several sectors are already fueled by the mechanization of work, including metallurgy.
Despite everything, a certain industrial start is being felt. “Between 1880 and 1930, and during the Second World War, Quebec was a predominantly industrial city.
The port, undermined by the decline in the timber trade, successfully turned to the export of mining, forestry and cereal products, but it lost its status for imports.
Despite the lack of competitive advantages, a few industries were established and prospered: leather, tannery and shoes, metallurgy, cigarette manufacturing, etc.
The dominant industry of the time was a paper mill, l’Anglo Pulp and Paper.
It was towards the end of the 1920s that the British company installed this factory (the largest in Quebec) at the confluence of the Saint-Charles and the Saint-Laurent.
Two other industrial sectors stand out: the manufacture of corsets and that of ammunition. At the turn of the 20th century and until the 1930s, corsets produced in Quebec captured a good portion of the Canadian market.
As for the manufacture of ammunition and firearms, it is gaining importance, especially with the Second World War.
In fact, this conflict brought renewed energy to the Quebec economy. Even shipbuilding picked up again until the Allied victory.
After 1945, only the paper industry was still important, the rest of the activities only responding to local needs.”
Highlands of Scotland
Starting from the upper St. Francis River passes through dense forests in the mountainous hinterland, far from the barren Scottish north coast. However, the cadence of Gaelic once echoed in the rocky fields and crofters' cabins.
Farm families in the Highlands of Scotland facing famine in the 1830s.
Landowners hoping to profit from selling wool to industry allowed tenants of farmland to make way for sheep.
Farmers were crowded into small seafront lots called Crofts, where they were put to profit collecting and processing seaweed for soap factories. Crofters came to depend on potatoes for food.
When poor harvests made them poor, the owners were forced to emigrate.
Sixty families boarded the ship energy in Stornoway on the Island of Lewis in 1838, bound for the family wilderness property in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Based in London, British American Land Company increased ownership rights to crown land in the district and engaged locals in building roads, bridges and mills.
With much of the Haut-Saint-François district unsuitable for grain crops, immigrants turned to logging. Joined by French Canadian and Irish Catholic settlers, the Highlanders built a lifestyle based on forestry and small-scale agriculture. By the late 1800s some 3,000 Gaelic speakers populated the area.
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