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I

n the 1840s, when A.N.Morin began his experimental farm in the area we know as Ste. Adele, he hoped to keep discouraged farmers from abandoning their traditions and their country and believed that, given the opportunity to own their property and to control their own destinies, they would demand the freedoms that their American neighbours had fought for. While many habitants were leaving for New England where they could work in mills and factories, those who followed Morins lead and moved to the Laurentian mountains were among the toughest, shyest, and most determined to continue to farm.

In the 1890's when the railway came through, the new station was named Belisle's Mill in honour of Joseph Belisle, who owned a mill for grinding grain, sawing wood and carding wool. He was not the only miller in this progressive little corner of Ste. Agathe. When the parish broke away in 1917, it became known as Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-Belisle in honour of the mill as well as of the priest in the mother parish of Ste. Agathe, Curé Jean-Baptiste Bazinet. The town was incorporated in 1921 using the same name, mostly out of habit, but in 1923, the post office was renamed Val David in honour of L.O. David. It fell to the large institutions, Canadian Pacific, the church and the Post Office to name their properties, and the name of the Post Office soon became the colloquial name for the region.

Also in 1840, as Upper and Lower Canada were forced to merge and the seigniorial system was in rapid decline, Ignace Bourget became the second bishop of the Diocese of Montreal, a territory that ran from the American border to James Bay.

While Morin encouraged farmers to colonise the northern wilderness, Bourget went to Europe to solicit well-organized religious orders to locate missions in his diocese. He saw a power vacuum created by the defeat of the progressive elements in society in the failed rebellion of 1837. Among the institutions that he convinced to establish themselves here or that he had a hand in creating were the Christian Brothers, the Oblate Brothers, the Congregation of the Holy Cross, the Sisters of Providence, the Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, the Sisters of Misericorde, the Sisters of Ste. Anne, the Viatorians and a new group of Jesuits. He fought continuously against the Institut Canadien, influenced by republican thinkers and leaders like Louis-Joseph Papineau. The Institut differed with the Church on many issues. It proposed non-denominational schools and separation of Church and State. It was formed in the early 1840s and was a forum for the progressive influences that had been active during the preceding decades. It steadily lost ground to Bourget and the Church who organised at the parish level and led the faithful to believe in the infallibility of the pope.

Morin espoused the ideals of the Institut Canadien, but was a pragmatist. His communities were Catholic, and he encouraged that because the Church could organise all the social infrastructure such as schools and medical care. The small parishes that he encouraged included Ste. Adele, Ste. Margeurite and Ste. Agathe. His colonists pushed still further north, but beyond Ste. Agathe, the land rises rapidly and the small trail that served as a northward road in the 1860s had to rise over a mountain that became known as La Repousse, because it pushed them back, drove them off. By 1871 they had finally established a mission that they fittingly called La Repousse. This little settlement was located in the highest plateau of the Laurentians, 300 feet higher above sea level than Ste. Agathe and 900 feet higher than Ste. Adele. Beyond it, the hills dropped away again into the Diable and Rouge river valleys, losing all 900 feet in the process.

In the meantime the David family continued to make its mark.

Two years after Morin died in 1866, Bourget appointed Antoine Labelle to the parish of St. Jerome. Thus the Church inherited the mission that Morin had started and Curé Labelle became the assistant to the Minister of Colonisation. While he was driven by the passion to keep his congregants from moving to New England, he did not share the ideals of the progressives. Labelle wished to get past La Repousse and populate the Rouge river valley before the Protestants from Arundel got there. He had a handicap because the Protestants were moving slowly up the fertile river valley, but his handicap was tempered by his large number of Catholic settlers and by the fact that the Protestants, indifferent to any contest, were more interested in moving west. Soon a mission was established in the valley under the name Grand Brûlé.

The names La Repousse and Grand Brûlé reflected and described the experience of the settlers. Many of Morins colonists had fought in the uprisings in 1837 and 1838. Those who were aware of the ideals of the Patriotes knew that it had nothing to do with the Church. Whether they understood it as an attempt to throw off the yoke of the monarchy and establish an American-style republic or whether it was simply an opportunity to hit back at the huge influx of English-speaking newcomers, the Church was just a part of their background noise. They, like Morin, could not see how the social development was being determined from the pulpit. It was an insidious process of extending influence. Ste. Adele had been named for Morins wife, but Ste. Agathe was named for an early martyr and Ste. Lucie was named for another martyr who had been inspired by Ste. Agathe. These ancient mythological figures, who endured great pain and suffering for their beliefs, were held up as inspirational examples to the young and impressionable. Thus the messages and priorities of the Church took hold in the minds of the children.

When Samuel Ouimet was named curé of the missions of Grand Brûlé and La Repousse on February 15, 1879, almost 40 years after Borget had been named bishop, he celebrated the occasion by re-naming the two missions after two brothers whose shared Saints Day was February 15th. These brothers, St. Faustin and St. Jovite, were also martyrs. They were among those early Christians who were fed to lions as part of public entertainment in Roman times. The lions refused to eat them, and while the masses attributed this to their holiness, the authorities responded by beheading them. La Repousse, the older mission, became St. Faustin and Grand Brûlé became St. Jovite. The influence of the Church had become so strong that the erasing of local identity resulting from the naming of these two communities after mythological heroes was celebrated as a blessing. The Catholic Church ruled and the progressive ideals of Papineau, Morin and the Institut Canadien were forgotten.

References: La Société canadienne-francaise au XIXe siecle, Gérard Parizeau; municipalité Saint-Faustin-Lac-Carré; www.catholic-forum.com; Ignace Bourget Paul Bruchési

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