Français
Welcome Page
Regional History
Laurentian Place Names
What's It Worth
Associations
E-mail us

T

he year was 1895 and the train to Ste. Agathe had been in operation for only three years. Elizabeth Wand, a nurse from New York City, a single American woman of the Victorian age, arrived in our small town and began to assess its potential as a health spa. She had read something about the area in Harper's Magazine and decided that it sounded like a great location to look after 'nervous wrecks and convalescents'. At age forty, she walked away from fifteen years of nursing and became a pioneer in a new country, with a new language, setting up a health retreat.

Not only had she identified what would become Ste. Agathe's vocation for the next fifty years, but she also initiated it, and, thirty years later, documented it for posterity. Her story, called Quisisana, published in 1925, is one of the best and most objective accounts that we have of Ste. Agathe in the late 1800's. Here is a short excerpt from her stay at a hotel, which she failed to identify: Chicken Fricassee sounds good, but when the heads are left in---enough said, even if they are beautifully cleaned. When some of the guests spoke to mine host about it, he replied, "Good enough for me, good enough for you, you no lak, you go, plenty more come." The independence of the people is something to be admired. It is their country, wrestled from the wilds, hewed and made to blossom in their own way; if it doesn't suit you, go somewhere else..

After only five days in Ste. Agathe, Wand left to visit doctors in Montreal. She offered her services for convalescing patients, but received little encouragement. Upon her return, she rented a small house, which rapidly filled up with guests. She describes them as convalescents, but says they arrived without forewarning. She was so encouraged that she decided to build a proper home for her work: I evolved something new in the way of a house. When the framework was going up it caused a great sensation, it was octagon in shape and looked something like a cyclorama. The remarks made by passers-by were anything but flattering. I pursued the even tenor of my way, and when the veranda was added, both inside and outside were charming, and compliments were many.

The house can be found at 173 Tour du Lac, at the corner of Victoria. Wand sold it to R. Wilson-Smith, the mayor of Montreal, for his own use, it operates today under the name of Auberge de la Tour du Lac. Wand found it too small for her rapidly expanding clientele and built a more appropriate house somewhat further up the hill. This new building has not survived, or at least, we haven't found it. There is a picture of it in her book showing a one-and-a-half storey house with a sloped roof, large balconies and both a round dormer and shed dormer on the second storey. She named it Quisisana, translated as 'here is health' in her book. The new house had electricity, hot and cold water and a fireplace. Business continued to improve and she soon gave in to pressure from her clients to stay open all winter. Believing that the secret to healing was to keep her guests active and outdoors, she persisted: The air being so dry, we didn't feel the cold, although the temperature at times registered forty below zero, but during the daytime with the sun shining brightly we donned our snowshoes and skimmed over the frozen snow. We dressed ourselves warmly and defied Jack Frost or, ordering the horses and providing ourselves with hot soapstones for our feet, and with our rugs wrapped around us, we drove for miles over the well-beaten roads made hard by the logging teams.

During the seven years that she operated in Ste. Agathe, the town burgeoned around her. It was rapidly becoming a popular holiday destination and was gathering increasing importance as a regional centre. Hotels sprang up, the Anglican Church was built, the first Jewish religious services began and the lumber industry developed into wood manufacturing to supply the boom. Soon even the outlying farms and lakes were being rapidly converted into country retreats, and in 1899, Dr. Richer's tuberculosis sanitarium opened on the hill above what today is the Autoroute near Chemin de la Montagne, climbing up to Trout Lake.

Sadly, Wand's vision of Ste. Agathe as a centre for convalescence failed to take into account how the tuberculosis sanitarium would influence her own clients: Seven years have passed in Ste. Agathe, the sanitarium for tubercular patients has opened, and Ste. Agathe will vie with Saranac in its treatment of those afflicted with this scourge. Needless to say that this now affected my work, and I found a serious decline in the number of my guests, although we were quite a distance from the sanitarium. She had just taken a mortgage to improve her property, but her family in New York had endured setbacks, obliging her to return there for the winter: When I returned in the spring, and called on the man who held the mortgage, saying that I was going up to the mountains, he said, "There is nothing belonging to you there, I have sold everything." I made enquiries, but the bitter truth was revealed and I found myself stripped of all I possessed. I consulted a lawyer, but possession is nine points of the law; I had lost everything.

Elizabeth Wand returned to New York, where she worked as a nurse and looked after her ailing father. When she next returned to Ste. Agathe in 1925, she wrote her memoirs from which I have quoted so liberally.

* This phrase, used many times in publicity related to Ste. Agathe, is credited to Wand.
- Italicised sections copied verbatim from Quisisana, by Elizabeth Wand, privately published in 1925.

Joseph Graham has written a book that features a select number of stories of Laurentian places and how they got their names. To learn more, click here.

<<  Previous      History Index      Next >>

This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the author. © Joseph Graham