QHN Spring 2020 Layout 1

WESTWARD HO! QHN FEATURES JOHN ABBOTT COLLEGE & MONTREAL’S WEST ISLAND $10 Quebec VOL 13, NO. 2 SPRING 2020 News “An Integral Part of the Community” John Abbot College celebrates seven decades Aviation, Arboretum, Islands and Canals Heritage Highlights along the West Island Shores Abbott’s Late Dean The Passing of a Memorable Mentor Quebec Editor’s desk 3 eritageNews H Vocation Spot Rod MacLeod EDITOR Who Are These Anglophones Anyway? 4 RODERICK MACLEOD An Address to the 10th Annual Arts, Matthew Farfan PRODUCTION Culture and Heritage Working Group DAN PINESE; MATTHEW FARFAN The West Island 5 PUBLISHER A Brief History Jim Hamilton QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE HERITAGE NETWORK John Abbott College 8 3355 COLLEGE 50 Years of Success Heather Darch SHERBROOKE, QUEBEC J1M 0B8 The Man from Argenteuil 11 PHONE The Life and Times of Sir John Abbott Jim Hamilton 1-877-964-0409 (819) 564-9595 A Symbol of Peace in 13 FAX (819) 564-6872 St. Anne de Bellevue Heather Darch CORRESPONDENCE [email protected] A Backyard Treasure 15 on the West Island Heather Darch WEBSITES QAHN.ORG QUEBECHERITAGEWEB.COM Boisbriand’s Legacy 16 100OBJECTS.QAHN.ORG A Brief History of Senneville Jim Hamilton PRESIDENT Angus Estate Heritage At Risk 17 GRANT MYERS Matthew Farfan EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MATTHEW FARFAN Taking Flight on the West Island 18 PROJECT DIRECTORS Heather Darch DWANE WILKIN HEATHER DARCH Muskrats and Ruins on Dowker Island 20 CHRISTINA ADAMKO Heather Darch GLENN PATTERSON BOOKKEEPER Over the River and through the Woods 21 MARION GREENLAY to the Morgan Arboretum We Go! Heather Darch Quebec Heritage News is published quarterly by QAHN with the support Tiny Island’s Big History 22 of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Heather Darch QAHN is a non-profit and non-partisan organization whose mission is to help advance knowledge of the history and St. Anne de Bellevue’s Canal 23 culture of the English-speaking communities of Quebec. Heather Darch Annual Subscription Rates: J. C. Wilson 24 Individual: $30.00; Institutional: $40.00; Family: $40.00; Student: $20.00. Five Generations on the North River Joseph Graham Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 40561004. Hindsight 27 Nothing Like the Sun Rod MacLeod ISSN 17707-2670 PRINTED IN CANADA Cover: Canal, St. Anne de Bellevue, 2019. Photo: Rod MacLeod. Vocation Spot by Rod MacLeod e think of things going since 1857, when its Normal School Lake St. Louis. Idyllic as well as out in a puff of smoke, opened in a building on Montreal’s practical. but in the case of the cam- Belmont Street – a respectable location, A lot less practical, however, by the pus of John Abbott but female student teachers coming from second half of the twentieth century. By College in St. Anne de Bellevue it was a outside the city had to board privately, that time, teacher training had become puff of smoke that created it. Except that their lives subject to constant scrutiny as Education, involving higher degrees and the guy behind it didn’t smoke. they navigated the “dangerous” urban increased specialization. In 1965, Fresh from bankrolling several space between boarding house and class- McGill created the Faculty of Education, grand science buildings at McGill room. Despite these challenges, a sur- which absorbed the former School for University, abstemious tobacco tycoon prising number did come from rural Teachers and sought to consolidate in- William Christopher Macdonald turned areas, particularly the Eastern Town- struction downtown. Six years later, his attention to the public education sys- ships, mostly with an eye to obtaining student teachers moved out of the tem. For some time, progressive-minded social advancement through good Macdonald campus and into the new reformers within Quebec’s Protestant teaching jobs. More often than not, they Faculty of Education building on school system had been promoting better opted for city schools, which paid better McTavish Street, leaving the Faculty of school facilities, particularly in rural and seemed more in tune with the Agriculture in St. Anne with buildings it areas, where the one-room did not absolutely need. schoolhouse prevailed. Not for long. Indeed, Macdonald underwrote the already in the works was John investigation carried out by Abbott College, one of a Scots educator John Adams, handful of English-language whose 1902 Report called for “CEGEPs” that formed in the a complete overhaul of rural wake of the Quiet Revolution. schooling, including consoli- Accredited in 1970 but in dated schools (separate need of a permanent home, grades in designated class- John Abbott secured a lease rooms) and more effective from McGill of several teacher training. Impressed, Macdonald campus buildings Macdonald offered to pay to – notably those surrounding build a “model” consolidated the oval green. Within a few school to serve as a showcase years, the CEGEP was for the new ideas. Ormstown ensconced in the facilities in the Chateauguay Valley where generations of teachers was the designated location for this Normal School training. had learned their craft and proceeded to ambitious building, but when local The Macdonald School for Teachers nurture students in all corners of opposition scuppered this plan, Macdon- revolutionized the education of teachers Quebec. It is fitting that this seminal in- ald looked to St. Anne de Bellevue, by providing a more relaxed atmos- stitution’s successor is also devoted to which lay at the western tip of the Island phere, modern learning facilities, nurturing youth in a gorgeous setting. of Montreal right on both the CPR and standardized accommodation, and a lo- It is in this spot that QAHN will Grand Trunk railway lines. This largely cation easily accessible by train. When hold its Annual General Meeting and rural area would become home to two the Normal School closed in 1907, Convention in June, marking both its interrelated Macdonald projects: an agri- McGill’s student teachers moved to own twentieth anniversary and John cultural college (an idea he had been brand new residences in St. Anne and Abbott College’s fiftieth. Quebec pursuing for some time with Canada’s studied in grand red-tiled-roof buildings Heritage News is pleased to showcase first Agriculture Commissioner, James designed by Protestant education’s the college, and the larger region known Wilson Robertson) and a school for favourite architect Alexander Cowper as the West Island, in this issue. teachers (the original notion of a Hutchison. Happy reading! There will be a “model” school). Both were affiliated The main buildings were grouped short quiz next period. with McGill, constituting a second cam- around a grassy oval, rather like a pus for the university. village green, which gave onto yet more Teachers had been trained at McGill greenery leading down to the waters of Aerial view MacDonald College, 1937-40. Photo: McCord Museum, VIEW-26237.0.1. An Address to the 10th Annual Arts, Culture and Heritage Working Group Meeting, Montreal by Matthew Farfan The Arts, Culture and Heritage Working Group Meeting, held at hugely important pieces of Quebec’s Anglophone puzzle. But our Thomson House, McGill University, Montreal, on February 11, community also includes members of other cultural and visible- 2020, consisted of representatives from community organizations minority groups that for various reasons have tended to gravitate and from the federal and provincial governments. towards English-speaking Quebec. One only has to think of the many members of the Jewish, Black, Italian, Chinese and I’d like to talk a little bit about Anglophones. Indigenous communities, among others, to see the diversity that I guess we could say that 2019 was the year of the “historic characterizes English-speaking Quebec. Anglo.” That term’s use by some politicians in Quebec has led to References to diversity appear throughout QAHN’s Strategic a fair amount of confusion, considerable irritation, and not a little Plan. Emphasis in that document is placed on outreach to cultural humour among the Anglophone community, historic or other- communities, and on partnerships with Indigenous communities wise. that “promote heritage and foster reconciliation and Leaving off the “historic” part, let’s talk about the term understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous “Anglophone.” Most dictionaries define Anglophone simply as Canadians.” “someone who speaks English.” Seems plain enough. But could So, it has long been our policy to define “Anglophoneness” this not include Francophones who also speak English, or even very broadly. Back in 2007, we hosted a colloquium at the multilingual people who speak English? It’s a word that came in- McCord Museum on multiculturalism. That was the year of to popular use in Quebec in the 1970s; it tends to connote those “reasonable accommodation” in Quebec; we submitted a brief to who speak English as their mother tongue (as opposed to “Fran- the Bouchard-Taylor Commission underlining the historic diver- cophones,” whose mother tongue is French, or “Allophones,” sity of Quebec’s English-speakers. In 2010, we co-hosted a whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, but who may Gaspesian Regional Heritage Summit in New Richmond. That speak one or both of those languages). That said, many Anglo- event was trilingual and tricultural: English, French and phones still cringe when they hear the word, especially when it’s Mi’kmaq. QAHN’s quarterly magazine, Quebec Heritage News, applied to them. Is that because they don’t like being labeled? Or has featured countless stories about the disparate cultural groups maybe because the word seems to imply unilingual? that make up the Anglophone community. Admittedly, the term “Anglophone” has always made some Our recent project, “Diversity and Achievement in Anglo- of us at QAHN wince a little bit. It’s only slightly less awkward phone Quebec,” funded by Canadian Heritage, included a bilin- sounding than “English-speakers,” or “English-mother-tongue- gual exhibition on the contributions of cultural groups ranging speakers.” So, it’s ironic that we have it in our name: the Quebec from the Irish to the Jews to the Blacks; from the Chinese to the Anglophone Heritage Network.

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