Month: November 2024

By Jazmine Aldrich

As Canada honours those who fought and died in armed conflicts, we at the ETRC wish to shine a spotlight on a few of the Eastern Townships’ monuments commemorating local valour.

One of the best-known soldiers’ memorials in the Eastern Townships is the “Monument aux Braves” on rue King Ouest in Sherbrooke. This monument has become an emblem of Sherbrooke and a landmark – to such a degree that its significance might be lost on the City’s youngest and newest inhabitants.

The Monument aux Braves is composed of bronze statues that were cast in Belgium and granite from Stanstead quarriers. The monument is oriented eastward, facing down the well-travelled hill toward the St. Francis River.

Sherbrooke’s soldiers’ memorial was first dedicated on November 7, 1926 by Mayor James Keith Edwards. The dedication ceremony drew a crowd of over 6000 people; with Sherbrooke boasting a population of roughly 24,000 people in 1926, that is roughly one quarter of population!

A plaque on the western side of the monument lists the names of 249 soldiers from Sherbrooke who died during the First World War. In 1948, a second plaque was added to commemorate those who died during the Second World War.

Sherbrooke’s emblematic monument was designed and sculpted by artist George William Hill who was a Townshipper, born in Shipton. After the First World War, Hill sculpted many military memorials in Quebec, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. Among his other local creations were soldiers’ memorials found in Magog and Richmond.

Hill’s Richmond monument was unveiled on November 10, 1924 in what is now known as Remembrance Park. Similar to the Sherbrooke monument, the Richmond memorial is made of cast bronze and local granite.

The sculpture was erected by the United Municipalities of the Townships of Cleveland and Melbourne; the Villages of Melbourne, Kingsbury and New Rockland; and the Town of Richmond. It was unveiled by Mrs. Belford, a mother of a fallen soldier whose name is memorialized on the monument.

The dedication ceremony was punctuated by the Richmond Brass Band, and marked by prayer as well as the laying of wreaths by individuals and groups, including one from the Richmond Memorial Committee which was laid by Richmond’s Mayor R.E. Dyson.

The south side of the monument is dedicated to the First World War soldiers from Melbourne, while the north side is dedicated to those from Richmond and Cleveland Township; the west side of the monument lists the WWI battles in which these local soldiers fought, including the Somme, Passchendaele, and Vimy Ridge.

In October 2000, Richmond’s First World War memorial was rededicated alongside the memorials for the Second World War and Korean War, which were moved to Remembrance Park from the Royal Canadian Legion. The monuments remain protected by fences and a municipal bylaw due to past issues with vandalism.

On November 7, 1927, yet another soldiers’ memorial was erected – this time, in East Angus. The monument was unveiled by Colonel E.B. Worthington, with Mayor J.A. Bothwell serving as Chairman for the occasion. The monument initially commemorated the 22 soldiers who died and 107 who served in the First World War, with a second plaque being added after the Second World War.

The unveiling was quite a to-do, involving speeches by Col. Worthington, Rev. E. Merrill Wilson, Major Leonce Plante of Montreal, and the town’s Mayor Bothwell. The ceremony, held in Post Office Square, was reportedly attended by “thousands” of people and was followed by a dance in the evening.

The entire initiative was credited to East Angus’ Bluebird Club, which was founded around 1924 by a group of young ladies who wished to secure a fund “to commemorate in a tangible form the splendid deeds of their townsmen,” according to the Sherbrooke Daily Record. A group of veterans presented the President of the Bluebird Club, Miss McLellan, with a bouquet of flowers at the evening’s dance, in recognition of the Club’s efforts and accomplishments.

As another Remembrance Day comes to pass, let us all reflect on the lives that were given in hopes of a better future, and be grateful for the luxury of relative peace afforded to us in the Eastern Townships. Lest we forget. If you would like to learn more about the legacy of remembrance in the Eastern Townships, please contact the ETRC Archives by email at etrc2[at]ubishops[dot]ca or by telephone at 819-822-9600, extension 2261.

By Jazmine Aldrich

Cycling is a popular sport and pastime for Townshippers and tourists alike, especially during the warm summer months – but when were bicycles introduced to the Townships, and what was their impact?

As with most trends in the Eastern Townships, the machine cycled its way here from metropolitan Montreal and from the United States. The term “velocipede,” or “vélocipède” was coined by German inventor Karl Freiherr von Drais, known as “the father of the bicycle,” with the invention of his Laufmaschine (dandy horse) in 1817. The late-1860s and 1870s in Montreal saw a booming interest in the penny-farthing (high wheel) bicycle, which was named for the British penny and farthing coins resembling the respectively large and small wheels of the bicycle.

One of the earliest mentions of a bicycle in a Townships newspaper dates from 1881. On October 21 of that year, the Weekly Examiner of Sherbrooke published a poem entitled “To One of the Bicyclists.” If the title alone does not imply that bicyclists were not-so-numerous in 1881 Sherbrooke, the personal tone of the poem certainly does; the author of said poem expresses a strong distaste towards the subject’s “spindly” legs, which were on display in his cycling attire. Other choice descriptors for the bicyclist’s legs included “scraggy” and “pipe-stems” – one can only hope that the target of this pointed critique did not recognize himself in this description.

Despite the growing presence of bicycles in populous Sherbrooke, the Weekly Examiner reported on September 28, 1883 that the people of Cherry River – which the paper affectionately described as a “quiet little back country village” – “had their curiosity considerably excited […] by the appearance on the street of a regular thorough bred Bicycle.” This mechanical marvel was ridden by an American nephew of Adam Sager, Esq. of Cherry River. The nephew, Amherst Sager, hailed from Lawrence, Massachusetts. The newspaper wittily reported that while “Mr. Sager says that upon a good road he can outdo the best of horses”, it had rained the day prior and there was “no news worth mentioning.” Many cyclists today would still commiserate with Mr. Sager’s experience of road conditions in the Townships – paved or unpaved!

By 1896, it seems that while bicycles were still an exciting invention in the Eastern Townships, they were folding into the regular routine of life. The Sherbrooke Examiner published several advertisements relating to bicycles in its June 12, 1896 issue. McKechnie’s dry goods store on Wellington Street in Sherbrooke advertised “Ladies’ Bicycle Jerseys” at $2.25 each. Meanwhile, Abbott and McKindsey in Lennoxville advertised “The Cleveland Swell Special” which they labeled as “The Combination of Art, Science and Brains”; the advertisement went on to call it “a perfect bicycle of which its manufactures, its riders, and as a specimen of home manufacture, every patriotic Canadian is justly proud […].”

An advertisement of particular note in the same newspaper issue was for George Foss’ newly-opened Bicycle Repair Shop, located at 12 Water Street (today, rue des Abénaquis) in Sherbrooke. George Foote Foss invented the Fossmobile, Canada’s first successful gasoline-powered automobile, that very same year at the age of twenty. A short distance away on Wellington Street, another member of the Foss family, A.H. Foss, was renting out bicycles by the hour, day, or week.

We hope that this brief ride through Townships history will inspire you to enjoy the beauty of a Townships summer on two wheels! If you would like to learn more about the history of the Townships, please contact the ETRC Archives by email at etrc2@ubishops.ca or by telephone at 819-822-9600, extension 2261.