Schooners versus the railway

The arrival of the railway around 1860 radically changed the transportation and consumption habits of people living along the shores of the St. Lawrence River, whose life was governed by the comings and goings of schooners. The market for orchard fruit on the Côte-du-Sud underwent major upheavals, as explained by Paul-Louis Martin, historian and owner of La Maison de la prune in Saint-André (Kamouraska):

TRANSCRIPT

[Paul-Louis Martin is seated at a table in front of an antique wardrobe and recounts the following:]

The Grand Trunk Railway reached Lévis in 1854. And then, of course, people wanted to extend it to Rivière-du-Loup, and all the way to the Maritimes.

A debate took place in the Assembly of the United Province of Canada in Quebec City to decide where the route should go. And there were two possibilities because there were, of course, two parties in the National Assembly, or the Assembly of the United Province of Canada, as it was called.

So one party proposed that the route be laid out along the river, on the coast, where most of the villages, small well-established towns, businesses and so forth were located. All the way to Rivière-du-Loup, where it was to arrive in 1860.

But the other party proposed heading inland for the following reasons: the land was a little less well developed there than along the river. Therefore, it would probably cost less to expropriate it and, above all, it would cost less to build bridges because the rivers were not as wide as at their mouth.

[Black and white photo of a steam train in motion]

The railway was to make its way quietly from Lévis, head inland and then develop, make it possible to develop a second row of villages, Um… located of course all along the train route, to Rivière-du-Loup and then the Matapedia Valley.

As a result, all of the merchants established along the river were now going to compete with the new merchants who were going to set up shop along the railroad. And along the railroad, they of course had to coordinate their activities with year-round arrivals and shipments, whereas the merchants along the river were obviously seasonal due to the presence of ice in the winter for or at least six months. There wasn’t very much to transport or bring in.

This also meant that fruit growers who had quietly hoped to ship their produce by rail with the arrival of the railroad would be faced with the opposite outcome: all of the fruit, whether it came from Nova Scotia, Ontario or California and even later from British Columbia, would arrive a month before local produce, on account of the climate. So, slowly, you were going to see a decline in the orchards established along the coast.