Document generated on 10/02/2021 2:08 p.m. Histoire Québec The impact of railways on Stanstead: 1850 to 1950 J. Derek Booth Volume 14, Number 3, 2009 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/11391ac See table of contents Publisher(s) Les Éditions Histoire Québec ISSN 1201-4710 (print) 1923-2101 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Booth, J. D. (2009). The impact of railways on Stanstead: 1850 to 1950. Histoire Québec, 14(3), 10–18. Tous droits réservés © Les Éditions Histoire Québec, 2009 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ VOL nin n \ ni i mi The impact of railways on Stanstead: 1850 to 1950 by J. Derek Booth D' J. Derek Booth was educated at McGill and is Professor Emeritus of Geography at Bishop's University. He is the author of several books on the role of railways in Quebec. This article is based on a lecture by Derek Booth on the occasion of the opening of the Stanstead Historical Society's Summer 2005 exhibition, "Arrival and Departure: The Regional Train." Le Dr J. Derek Booth a fait ses études à l'Université M'Gill; il est actuellement professeur émérite de géographie à l'Université Bishop's. Il a beaucoup écrit sur l'histoire des chemins defer du Québec. Le présent article est basé sur une conférence que Derek Booth a prononcée lors de l'ouverture de l'exposition « Arrival and Departure: the Regional Train », à la Société historique de Stanstead à l'été 2005. For almost a century, from 1850 the Maritimes, the distribution of in Canada (which included the to 1950, the railway dominated population was largely confined opening of the first Lachine all other forms of transportation to the coastal regions; in Quebec, Canal in 1825) sought to enhance in Canada. All of the economic, it was in valleys of the St. Law­ and to extend the reach of social and geographic patterns rence, Chaudière and Richelieu Canada's waterways. Overland that were created throughout the Rivers; and, in Ontario, farms travel in inland regions remained country during this period were and villages stretched along the difficult. Some new form of trans­ influenced by the railway as an shores of the St. Lawrence River portation was required to pro­ enabling factor. and of the lower Great Lakes. In vide access to the vast regions of every region, there was little North America that lay at some In the period before the coming settlement or economic activity distance from navigable water­ of the railways, the patterns of beyond a narrow fringe lying ways. settlement and economic growth inland from navigable water­ in Canada were tied exclusively ways. Between 1825 and 1850, a The solution to this transport to waterways and to canals. In flurry of canal building activity conundrum was the railway. The development of the steam engine and its application to pulling wagons along fixed lines of rails rninahDmida held out the promise of a new transport technology that suffe­ red from none of the limitations of water transport. In the first instance, it was relatively inde­ pendent of topography; it could go where no navigable rivers flowed and thereby make accessi­ ble vast tracts of land not hither­ to economically accessible. It moved faster than any ships ply­ ing seas, rivers or canals. It could carry prodigious tonnages of freight, unlike its overland predecessors, the stagecoach and buckboard wagon. And it could do all of these things year round Grand* a»rs dr l'immigration dana lea Cantona de I'Eat Principal Accra» Routes of Eastern Townships Settlers while Canadian water craft lan­ guished through the long frozen Grands axes de l'immigration dans les Cantons de l'Est - Principal Access Routes of Eastern Townships Settlers. (Source : BOOTH, }. Derek, Musee McCord, Université M'Gill, Montreal, winter months. 1984, p.23) In the years after 1825, an epi­ the regional economy was lar­ construction of a railway to an demic of 'Railway Fever' swept gely isolated from the main­ ice-free port on the American over Western Europe and North stream of North American eco­ east coast in order to be able to America. It started in England, nomic life. Great internal pres­ maintain year-round export (and spread to the United States and sure for the construction of rail­ import) of goods and raw mate­ then moved northward to ways which would link the rials. New York, Boston and Canada. By the 1840s it was region to the outside world came Portland, Maine were the three endemic in the Eastern Town­ from within the Eastern Town­ primary contenders and, through ships. The railway was hailed as ships, from people like Moses a variety of more or less colour­ the new and universal cure for Colby, CC. Colby, A.B. Foster, ful exercises involving sleighs economic depression, isolation L.S. Huntington, A.T. Galt and racing through the winter forests and as the means to achieve a Ralph Merry. Each had his own with sacks of mail, Portland was wide variety of economic and particular vision. eventually chosen as the termi­ social objectives. Among the peo­ nus for Montreal's railway. ple most susceptible to this epi­ With an increasing amount of demic were politicians, business­ trade in forest and agricultural At the same time that a desire men, landowners, speculators products moving out of Canada was expressed in Montreal cir­ and mayors. Farmers were often to the United States and to Great cles to build a railway that would less sympathetic to its effects. Britain, the port of Montreal, inevitably have to pass through Locally, Moses Colby and Ralph lying at the junction of the the Eastern Townships, there Merry, among many others, were Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers was also much interest from affected. and their respective western hin­ within the region to have such a terlands in Ontario, emerged as railway built. All that remained For the next fifty years, loud the transport hub of eastern was to choose the precise route voices were raised within the Canada. One of the major limita­ and to find the money for the Eastern Townships in favour of tions of the rivers and of the project. The history of chartering, building railways and, by 1920, canal systems, however, was planning and building of rail­ scarcely a hamlet in the region their seasonality. For the winter ways in Stanstead County, in was without its railway station. months, they were inoperative Stanstead Township and in the In the Eastern Townships, as and the volume of goods now Town of Stanstead, in the period elsewhere in Canada, railways moving for export demanded a between 1850 and 1890, reflects and politics became inextricably year-round means of transport. many aspects of the complicated intertwined. processes by means of which A railway was the obvious solu­ railways were conceived, The Eastern Townships - tion and in the 1840s a strong planned, promoted and some­ Regional Anomaly movement grew in Montreal times built. mercantile circles to promote the The Eastern Townships was arguably the largest area of agri­ cultural settlement in Canada that lay at any distance from a navigable waterway. By 1850 the region had a population of over 80 000, with strong southward ties to the United States (and hence with an increased suscep­ tibility to Railway Fever). But because of the absence of any commercially navigable water­ ways and of the complete inade­ quacy of the road network for moving large quantities of agri­ cultural or resource commodities, iiisTiiiRi: in I:BI:I NDIE18 3 2MS Stanstead County's First valleys. Consequently, when the The problem was to find the Railway line was completed in 1853, money for railway construction while Stanstead County had its from within the communities In 1845, the St. Lawrence and first line of railway passing through which the line was to Atlantic Rail Road - later through the Townships of Barn- pass. Not everyone was as Railroad - was chartered, along ston and Barford, the Township enthusiastic for railways as were with its American counterpart, and the Town of Stanstead were the Eastern Townships entrepre­ the Atlantic and St. Lawrence left to one side. The aspirations neurs and politicians. Farmers Railroad, to build a line of rail­ of its citizens to get a railway of living close to Montreal on the way joining Montreal and their own were left unfulfilled lowlands saw no great advan­ Portland, Maine. If Montreal and for the time being. tage in a railway since they had Portland were the two fixed ends access to the urban market and of the line, an equally fixed point The Stanstead, Shefford & they already had a railway in the on its route was the town of Chambly Railroad form of the Champlain and St. Sherbrooke. It was the head­ Lawrence Railroad which ran quarters of the British American When the St. Lawrence and between St. Johns (St-Jean) and Land Company and home to Atlantic was completed from Laprairie. Alexander Galt, one of the prin­ Montreal to Portland, in 1853, its cipal backers of the railway. route largely bypassed the most The first indication of financial densely settled parts of the difficulties on the part of the There were loud voices in Eastern Townships in the coun­ SS&C was the change of its wes­ Stanstead, among them that of ties of Missisquoi, Shefford, tern terminus from Chambly Moses Colby, who wanted the Brome and Stanstead.