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

I

n 1895 Alfred Baumgarten acquired the St. Aubin farm on the Tour du Lac. This was the property from which the small village received its first public water supply through wooden pipes, 17 years earlier, the property that Dr. Lallier, Curé Thibodeau and Edouard St. Aubin exploited through La Compagnie de l’aquaduc de Ste. Agathe des Monts.

According to Donald MacKay in “The Square Mile”, Alfred Baumgarten was born in Germany in 1842, the son of the King of Saxony’s personal physician. He studied chemistry and graduated with a PhD in Göttingen. From there he made his way first to the United States and then to Canada, manufacturing sugar from sugar beets. He became president of the St. Lawrence Sugar Refinery and was known as the Sugar King of Canada.

He adapted well to the British-influenced life of the wealthy of Montreal through his love of the hunt and he built the magnificent building that served as their clubhouse in the 1890’s. It seems much of his life was oriented around the hunt, and, while it is difficult to imagine a British-style fox-hunt over the fields of Ste. Agathe today, it is likely that his large stables above the road were built to serve that purpose.

He was famous for his parties, and, again according to Mr. MacKay, we learn that he had three marriageable daughters and spared no expense in getting the job done: “…An immense ballroom, dripping with chandeliers, was equipped with a floor built on springs to give an extra lift to the waltzing couples. There was a Gothic gallery built on top of the ballroom and extending two storeys to a sky-light set with panes whose colours ranged from deepest gold to palest yellow. With its dark carved wood, white walls and fireplace, the Gothic Gallery resembled a Hollywood dream of a royal hunting lodge in the Black Forest.” One wonders if it worked.

By contrast, his home in Ste. Agathe was a log cabin. He built a large, round-log house that shows some of the influences of the Maxwell brothers. It eventually had stables and galleries and dominated the hillside overlooking the lake. The house stands today, ringed by condos at 154 chemin Tour du Lac, while his city house has become the McGill University Faculty Club. His large stables still exist today, having evolved through being a recreational centre with an indoor skating rink to being further converted into apartments. The balance of the land north of the road became the Manor House, now La Calèche, and the fields became a ski-hill. Today, the hill is built up with houses.

Alfred Baumgarten retired in 1912 at the age of seventy, but his last years were not easy. During the war that began in 1914, he was shunned by a lot of his old friends because of his German origins, and aspersions were cast that he was a sympathiser. Even in Ste. Agathe, there are stories that his house was used by the spy Joachim Von Ribbentrop. He died in 1919.

In the deed confirming payment of his succession duties, his property is described as “…(running) from the King’s Highway to the said Lac des Sables, to about eighteen feet from the line of division between lot number fifteen of the fourth range of the township of Beresford …and lot number 14 … to a certain wild cherry tree standing on the shore of the Lac des Sables, which serves as a boundary between the land presently described…” The King’s Highway is what is now Tour du Lac but was then a road that wound its way around the lake and up along the shore of Lake Manitou, past the original holdings of the Vicomte d’Ivry and eventually up past St. Faustin to the valleys of the Red and Devil’s Rivers.

-“The Square Mile” by Donald MacKay is published by Douglas & MacIntyre.

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