Work Archives | The rivers of Prairies and Mille Iles: regional development

In-Depth Cleaning

The Association pour l’aménagement de la rivière des Prairies was active in the 1980s. The organization’s goal was to make changes to certain stretches of the river. The […]

Hello, North!

In the late 1950s, a huge road construction project got under way. Quebec’s first highway connected the heart of the Laurentians, Sainte-Agathe, with downtown Montreal. The artery cut […]

Slowly, Please!

After the Porteous Bridge was destroyed, a new wooden bridge was built in 1854. The Plessis-Bélair Bridge was named in honour of the family that came to own […]

Interview with a Former Ice Cutter, Paul Vaillancourt

Mr. Vaillancourt: “We worked 10 hours a day, six days a week. We could do in one day—when there weren’t any problems, you know—we could cut over 3,000 […]

Everyone at Work

Winter was rough for many residents. Many of them applied to be day labourers for ice-cutting companies. This gave them some extra income to tide them over the […]

Ice-Cutting Tools

The men who performed this hard work had specialized tools. The Société d’histoire et de généalogie de l’Île Jésus has two examples. An ice saw with a single […]

Cutting Ice

One of the flagship ice-cutting companies in our region was Glacières Sainte-Rose. It was run by the Bastien and Ouimet families. One of these entrepreneurs was Joseph Ouimet, […]

Raftsmen on the River

More information about raftsmen can be found in popular histories than official documents. That’s not surprising, since their occupation existed before photography was even invented! This watercolour was […]

Turgeon Mill

A few photographs of the Turgeon Mill. This one was taken from the shoreline at Saint-François. The mill was built in the 19th century across from Île Saint-Jean […]

Drawing of a Mill

The Du Crochet Mill left its mark even though few physical traces of the building remain. The archives of the Séminaire de Québec contain a lot of documentation […]

Indigenous Relics

Indigenous populations left traces in the area, even if they did not settle here permanently. They used it as a temporary rest area during their travels on the […]