Historic Landmarks

George and Lucile Wheeler came to Canada from upstate New York in the late 19th century, attracted by the lumber business; they left a legacy in the resort, recreational, and commercial airline businesses in the Laurentians north of Montreal. They were the first English Protestant settlers in the area.

Vestiges of our past disappear all the time. Or they are altered beyond recognition. Countless historic landmarks have vanished from Quebec’s landscape over the years. Particularly susceptible is our architectural heritage.

An important part of the history of the French village of Ste. Agathe in the treatment there of sufferers of the dread disease tuberculosis. Two English-speakers made an imprint here: Mortimer Davis and D. Lorne McGibbon.

This beautiful stone house on the North River was constructed as a mill in 1831 by the McOuats, and transformed into a house five years later.

Brownsburg was named for George Brown who settled here in 1818 and built mills before 1820. Robert Morrison, from Scotland via Grenville, set up a three-storey woollen mill on Middle Creek which was subsequently run by his sons William and Albert. It closed in the 1930s.

The railway came to Arundel in the 1890s, serving Piedmont, Montfort, Arundel and Huberdeau. The station, built c. 1912, eventually became part of the CNR system. Seen here is David Flanagan, who is the present mayor of Arundel and one of the prime movers in the preservation of the old railway station.

This old schoolhouse, built c.1880 near the land of Arundel’s first settler William Thomson, had as its students the grandfathers of some of the people who inhabit the Township today. It is now a residence.

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.

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.