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

R

everend Théophile Thibodeau was not a typical priest. He assumed responsibility for the parish of Ste-Agathe-des-Monts in 1878 and, while he was loved and respected in his parish and is credited with the colonisation of Archambault township and the construction of a chapel, his real passion was his homestead. It consisted of a large portion of a peninsula in Ste- Agathe's Lac des Sables known today as Greenshields' Point. As a result, four years after assuming his parish responsibilities, he managed to resign and return home.

His parishioners were not ready to let him off that easily, however, and two years later he succumbed and accepted the responsibility of Curé. He assumed the mantle of spiritual leader on the eve of Ste-Agathe's bleakest period. A man who appreciated his comforts, he raised enough money to have a more suitable presbytery built, and it was from this new building that he guided his flock through a year of a plague of smallpox, probably the worst plague that our province had experienced in the past 125 years. Michael Bliss describes the horrors of the plague in his book "Plague: A Story of Smallpox in Montreal". While a vaccine had been developed and even administered years before, the Catholic community of Montreal feared that the vaccine was a plot to destroy the French and discouraged vaccinations. The result was a plague that ran rampant through the city and outlying communities forcing the whole region to be quarantined. In the small village of Ste-Agathe, fifty people would die from it that winter. Following hard on the plague, the region experienced three years of drought so severe that by the end, farmers' seed stocks were gone and many farmers simply left. Finally on April 9th, 1888, the new presbytery caught fire and the good Curé lost his life trying to save the building. Some residents of the Point still remember being told the old story of how the wind whistling through the trees on the Point is the song of the departed Curé.

In 1893, Octavien Rolland, son of Jean-Baptiste Rolland, founder of Rolland Paper, acquired the point from the estate of the Curé and it soon became known as Rolland's Point. The Rollands held the property for 20 years and sold it on to James Naismith Greenshields in 1913.

The peninsula consisted of 80 to 100 acres of land with over 12,000 feet of lake frontage and was without a doubt a very prestigious property. At the time many wealthy, influential people acquired property on Lac des Sables and built large impressive country villas. There is no remaining evidence of any such building being undertaken by Greenshields. In fact, one reason given for his acquisition was for his son to have something to do while he cured from tuberculosis at the Laurentian Sanitarium. Despite the family's apparent casual interest in the peninsula, it became known as Greenshields' Point. The Greenshields family held the property for 19 years until 1932 and it eventually sold to developers under the name of the Mitawanga Company.

No one will ever really know if Ste-Agathe's Lac des Sables took its name from the Algonquin word Mitanhwang, meaning "on the sand". The lake was once commonly known in English as Sandy Lake, and it is possible that the two engineers who acquired Greenshields' Point in the 1930s were playing on the Algonquin roots of the lake's name. It is also possible that some Algonquin terms were familiar at that time, but there are no records of an Algonquin community in the region.

Once the redevelopment was completed, the Mitawanga Association of property owners replaced the Mitawanga Company but sixty-six years later people still refer to it as Greenshields' Point.

James Naismith Greenshields was born in Danville, Quebec on August 7, 1852. He studied law and was called to the bar in 1877. He was hired as the third lawyer in the defence of Louis Riel in 1885. According to George Goulet, author of The Trial of Louis Riel, the defence team of Fitzpatrick, Lemieux and Greenshields began by vigorously challenging the authority of Magistrate Richardson and when their challenge was summarily dismissed, they proposed a plea of insanity, a decision that was opposed by their client. They attributed their decision to information obtained from certain undisclosed parties and most likely were referring to Riel's period of confinement in two insane asylums in Quebec from 1876 to 1878. Perhaps because of his involvement in this high-profile case, Greenshields' later interests turned to commercial and corporate matters. He was involved in Shawinigan Water and Power and Wabasso Cottons. He encouraged two of his sons in the creation of Greenshields & Company, later Greenshields Incorporated, and subsequently Richardson Greenshields. While the Richardson name relates to a Winnipeg entrepreneur, he seems to have been unconnected to the magistrate in the Riel trial. One of Greenshields' sons died during the First World War and a second died later, presumably of tuberculosis. The third became the owner of Greenshields' Point who sold it in 1932.

So few people know the history of the Greenshields family that it does not seem to serve as an explanation of how the name survived. Another explanation might be that it is just an exotic, important sounding name that seems to reflect the verdant grandeur of the Point. In either case, its survival might suggest recognition of the contributions of the English community to the Laurentians.

Special thanks to Erik Wang, President, Mittawanga Association

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.

Return to Laurentian Place Name Index

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