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W

hile the Iroquois and the Algonquin negotiated with the Sulpicians in the Lake of Two Mountains area, events were unfolding elsewhere. With the loss of the 13 colonies, Montreal took on major strategic importance to the British. Trading companies were setting up and Loyalists were arriving in the former French colony. Abandoned by France, all its structures and special interest groups were scrambling to survive and adapt to life under British colonial control. By the beginning of the 1800's it became evident that westward development was not French. The seigneurial system began to grow in upon itself, collapsing under its own weight. Peasants could not simply continue to divide their fields among their sons, and this resulted in a large, landless labour pool. The government was made up of an elected Assembly as well as the British-appointed Governor, who named a Council. Inevitably the Assembly became dominated by the seigneurs, and the Council, by colonial business and development interests, and, as inevitably, one was predominantly French and the other predominantly English. 

By the 1820's Montreal was receiving rural emigrants along with increasing numbers of immigrants from war-torn Europe. Napoleon had been defeated and all the European structures were being challenged by the new industrial era. There were no proper accommodations for these people and in the early 1830's an epidemic of cholera broke out. During the course of the epidemic 6,000 people died. Radicals blamed the British for the epidemic and xenophobia took hold among the French.

To complicate matters, a power struggle between the Assembly and the Council pitted the seigneurs against business interests. The Assembly was working to rule, led by Louis Joseph Papineau, Seigneur of Petite Nation. Serge Laurin, in his book Histoire des Laurentides, points out that Papineau and his allies were very effective at directing the people's anger against the English and the business class and deflecting attention from the abuses of the seigneurs. By 1837 they could not avoid criticism of the seigneurial system, and made every promise imaginable to keep their constituency on side. "J'ai assisté à presque toutes les assemblées où l'on nous disait que nous combattions pour notre religion, pour notre patrie, et bien des fois nos chefs nous disaient pour nous encourager que si nous remportions la victoire les dimes et les rentes seigneuriales seraient abolies ainsi que toutes les taxes et que nous partagerions le bien des riches et les terres des loyaux." (p193, HdL, excerpted from La rébellion de 1837 à St-Eustache, by C.A. Globensky). They had drafted the '92 resolutions' and by the autumn of that year public frustration resulted in several uprisings. The troops were called in, and by the time the dust had settled, over 350 people had lost their lives. Papineau fled to the United States, accompanied, according to some accounts, by a large, boistrous lumberman, who became the Paul Bunyon of American mythology. 

A lawyer named Augustin Norbert Morin, the author of the 92 resolutions, was the real, though unsung, hero of this epoch. He arrived with Papineau at St. Charles in the middle of the battle to try to talk the peasants out of taking up arms. He was arrested in the confusion and sent to prison for a short time. He was not a seigneur, and, in later years, he succeeded in abolishing the seigneurial system. He was one of the founders of Laval University, its first Dean of Law, a minister in the united Canadian government of Lafontaine-Baldwin from 1851 to 1854 and he was the founder of the newspaper La Minerve. He became a judge of the superior court in 1855.

During this same period, probably in an attempt to develop new agricultural regions for the displaced habitant farmers, he set up experimental potato farms in Ste. Adele. The parish itself, founded by him in 1852, commemorates his wife, Adele Raymond, as does, perhaps, Lac Raymond. His name lives on in the township of Morin, Val Morin, Morin Heights, the St. Norbert Parish in Val Morin as well as Lac Morin, or Manitou, as it is known today. It is sad that this remarkable Canadian and Laurentian pioneer has slipped between the charismatic figures of Louis Joseph Papineau and Curé Antoine Labelle. 

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.

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