History Articles

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.

Tamaracouta Scout Reserve was opened as a Scout Camp in 1912 with funds provided by a group of generous citizens led by Colonel E. A. Whitehead. Originally a farm, the property formerly belonged to the Dawson family of Mille Isles.

When most people—especially Montrealers—talk about going to “the Laurentians” they are referring to the rugged but pristine recreational and wilderness areas in southwestern Quebec, including the impressive ski hills and trails in and around Saint-Sauveur, Val-David and Mont-Tremblant.

1) Deux-Montagnes refers to which of the following?
a) A lake.
b) A town.
c) An MRC.
d) All of the above.

2) Which of the following is a lake in the Laurentians?
a) Lac des Six îles.
b) Lac des Seize îles.
c) Lac des Soixante îles.
d) All of the above.

1) d) All of the above.
2) b) Lac des Seize îles, between Morin Heights and Arundel.
3) c) The municipality is situated at the northeast extremity of the old Milles-Isles Seigneurie, which took its name from the Milles-Isles or (Milles-îles) River, which was famous for its many islands, and which separates the Laval Island from the north shore.
4) a) The lake was christened by Saint-Jérôme magistrate Benjamin-Antoine Testard de Montigny in honour of his seven sons.

October 5, 2004 -- As an amateur genealogist, I felt duly intimidated trying to conquer Canadian genealogy from Texas! When my father, Richard GRAY died in 1999, I found several documents linking him to Rawdon. With a hope and a prayer, I contacted Beverly Prud’homme at the Rawdon Historical Society to see if they had any information on the GRAY family from there. I sent what little information I had. My father was the son of George William GRAY & Alice Elizabeth WARD; George’s parents were John William GRAY, and his wife was Bertha Jane HIGGINS. That didn’t get us very far.

Born Maude Babin in St. Andrews East in 1869, Maude Abbott was orphaned as a young child by the death of her mother. The first cousin (once removed) of that other distinguished native of St. Andrews East, Prime Minister Sir John Abbott, Maude Abbott was adopted by her maternal grandmother, who had Maude’s family name legally changed to Abbott.

After Champlain and the first Europeans appeared in the New World some 400 years ago, the Algonquins became embroiled in the fur trade and in the bitter British-French-Indian wars of the seventeenth century.In 1653, the Iroquois drove the hunters of the “Petite Nation” into a corner on the shores of Le Petit-Lac-Nominingue where they, with their families, were massacred. A little more than a hundred years later, loyalist refugees and soldiers fleeing the American Revolution in 1776 fetched up in the lower Laurentians where they began farming.

Herman Smith-Johannsen is considered one of the world’s great ski pioneers. Born in Norway in 1875, he was a mechanical engineer by training, educated in Norway and Germany. As a young man, his career took him to the United States. In Clevelend, where he settled, he specialized in the sale of heavy machinery, and met his wife Alice, with whom he would have several children.