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F

rom sixteen years of age, in 1905, Osias Renaud worked at the sawmill built by Anaclat Marier on the Tour du Lac in Ste. Agathe. The water flowing out of Lac des Sables drove the mill. It is hard to imagine today that the outflow of the lake could keep 12 men working; twelve families fed. The Parent brothers, who had acquired the mill, installed a new 40 horsepower turbine around that time, and milled flour as well as wood. The Parents also maintained a full general store selling animal feed, hay, flour, groceries, metal work, piping and even dry goods. In the winter, the men would log. Altogether, they kept 55 men working year-round. Eventually, their mill even drove the first electric generator in Ste. Agathe. Today we watch the water run bucolically under the bridge and can only imagine the busy scene that took place 100 years ago.

When Osias Renaud started working he was paid 50¢ per 10-hour day, but within a few years his salary doubled to one dollar per day. He started off as a clerk but soon progressed to the machines. While working there, he milled the wood that would become the benches in the new stone church that was being built on Rue Principale.

By 1910 Ste. Agathe already had a railroad station, hotels, vacation homes, a multitude of businesses, schools and churches, and two tuberculosis hospitals were being built. It was a full, real town, almost a city and it swarmed with vacationers coming to all the hotels. In the winter there were bobsleigh and dog sled races, and people were even skiing over the farms. There were 6 men's clothing stores, 4 barbershops, 6 butchers, 3 shoe stores as well as 2 separate shoemakers and 6 milliners. This was in sharp contrast to the town of Renaud's recent childhood. As he recalled in his memoirs, only a dozen years before he would go off to school in shoes fashioned from the treated hides of his own family's cattle. The youngsters would skate on these same cowhide shoes with reject blades from the blacksmith tied underneath.

By the time he was twenty, he had saved up a little money and, encouraged by his brother-in-law, he went to Montreal to study photography. When he returned he continued to practice it with friends. Around 1910, he took over a small building on St. Vincent Street, and, living upstairs, he set up a photographic studio on the main floor. The tiny building still stands and is a pet shop today.

The photographic technique that he had mastered involved preparing his own collodion-coated glass plates one by one prior to each shot. By this time George Eastman's Kodak was a popular camera for amateurs, but professional studios used a much larger camera, and these individually prepared glass plates allowed the photographer a lot more control. Renaud mastered these techniques and over the next ten years his subjects included Senator David, Edouard Montpetit, Henri Bourassa and Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

During the Great War, the Laurentian Sanitarium became a sprawling military complex housing both TB and gas victims, and business was good for local entrepreneurs, but Osias Renaud closed his business in 1921. Renaud was 32 years old, in the prime of life and owner of a successful business, but in April his second child, Yvette, was born and his little studio and upstairs apartment may have begun to feel a bit small. He decided to leave photography behind, and a month after his daughter was born, he acquired the Lee farm on the road to Ivry for $4500. Years later, when queried by his children about why he had chosen the life of a farmer, he simply responded that man was made to earn his living by the sweat of his brow.

Whatever the reasons he left photography, within a few years the Renaud farm would become Ste. Agathe's Model Farm, designated a ferme de demonstration by the Ministry of Agriculture and Osias Renaud would go on to win other honours in his new profession. In a farm produce contest, his farm came in second place behind the farm of Senator Raymond, owner of the Montreal Canadians, and one can imagine that, if the Senator's farm was in the contest, there were many other wealthy gentleman's farms vying for the honours. In 1935, his milk cows were producing at almost four times the average rate for Quebec cows, and he kept 150 pigs and 350 chickens as well as producing potatoes, cabbage, carrots, hay and oats. He was a member and one-time president of the Coopérative agricole de Ste-Agathe, something that is hard to imagine ever existed when we look at Ste. Agathe now.

Osias Renaud lived to 93 and his many children and grandchildren still live in the Laurentians. A part of his photo collection is stored in the Musée du Québec à Montréal, and a part is in a private collection. Chemin Renaud, the road that cut through his farm to join Ste. Agathe to Lake Manitou, is also a lasting memorial to him.

References: Les Mémoires de Osias Rénaud with special thanks to Yvette Rénaud Lortie and Normand Lortie; A History of Photography by Dr. Robert Leggat

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