FAREWELL TO A LEGEND: MARION PHELPS, 1908-2013 $10 Quebec VOL 7, NO. 2 SPRING 2013 HeritageNews Cow Shows and City Potatoes Farming Heritage: 4-H Clubs and the Visionary J. N. Lamy Heritage Successes East and West The Gaspesian British Heritage Village and the Fairbairn House Busking the Metro, Being Unilingual Emerging Writers Reflect on the Urban Scene QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Quebec CONTENTS HeritageNews EDITOR Editor’s Desk 3 RODERICK MACLEOD The Castle’s many tenants Rod MacLeod PRODUCTION DAN PINESE; MATTHEW FARFAN Letters 4 The view from the Alcan floors Anne Joseph PUBLISHER Potash from the north Beverly Prud’homme THE QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE Naming North Shore communities Gary Briand HERITAGE NETWORK 400-257 QUEEN STREET Timelines 7 SHERBROOKE, QUEBEC J1M 1K7 Keeping heritage alive and well on the Gaspé coast Jessica Campbell The Fairbairn House: making Gatineau Valley history accessible Jessica Campbell PHONE The Westmount Glen Arch: celebrating a vital bridge 120 years on Barbara Covington 1-877-964-0409 A bank of art: the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke Jessica Campbell (819) 564-9595 FAX 4-H 14 (819) 564-6872 Quebec’s young farmers celebrate 100 years Alyssa Fourneaux CORRESPONDENCE [email protected] Why I Don’t Know French Yet 19 WEBSITES Elizabeth Dent WWW.QAHN.ORG WWW.QUEBECHERITAGEWEB.COM Farmville 22 “Charging to the Potato” in Maisonneuve Jessica Grosman PRESIDENT KEVIN O’DONNELL A Day Underground 24 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & Nisha Coleman WEBMAGAZINES EDITOR MATTHEW FARFAN Marion Phelps 27 (February 9, 1908 – January 22, 2013) Frank Nixon OFFICE MANAGER KATHY TEASDALE The Great Wealth of the Ottawa Valley 28 Quebec Heritage News is produced four Joseph Graham times yearly by the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) with the support Edwardian Escapades 29 of the Department of Canadian Heritage and Quebec’s Ministère de la Culture et Recreating the Richmond Nicholsons Dorothy Nixon des Communications. QAHN is a non-profit and non-partisan umbrella organization whose mission is to help advance knowl- edge of the history and culture of the English-speaking communities of Quebec. Annual Subscription Rates: Individual: $30.00; Organization: $40.00 Cover photo: Winners at 1979 Calf Rally in Ormstown. Calf Rally is a Quebec 4-H Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 405610004. annual event. Photo: courtesy of Quebec 4H. ISSN 17707-2670 PRINTED IN CANADA 2 SPRING 2013 EDITOR’S DESK The Castle’s many tenants by Rod MacLeod ike many great institutions, it lost its royal privileges and was obliged Once it was back in their posses- all started with Scots. Well, to sell the property – to yet another Scot, sion, the British formally bought the people of Scottish descent any- William Grant, the enterprising fur trad- house from Grant. Successive British way. They came from Midloth- er who became, through marriage, the governors normally used the house Lian, south of Edinburgh, in the fifteenth Baron of Longueuil. Grant may not whenever they needed to be in Montreal or early sixteenth century, fighting have spent much time in the house, and – including a very distant relation of the against England with French allies – and was probably happy to find a good ten- original owners: George Ramsay, the somehow ended up with significant ant in the form of the British govern- Earl of Dalhousie. One exception to this landholdings and titles trend was John Col- in France. One promi- borne, who had rented nent Ramsay – or a house nearby when Ramezay, as they were he came to Montreal in now styled – came to November 1837 to New France as an lead the armed forces army officer and rose against the rebels, and through the ranks until renewed his lease on his appointment as that house three governor of Montreal months later even in 1704. Claude though Governor Gos- promptly built himself ford’s resignation had a grand townhouse on by then made him act- Notre Dame Street ing governor; Col- with extensive gardens borne knew that the behind and a view new governor, Lord from the upper win- Durham, was due dows of Mount Royal shortly and would to the north and the St. need the Château de Lawrence River to the Ramezay. Colborne south. Here he lived in also presided over the lavish style, well be- abolition of the elected yond his means, until his death in 1724. ment, which was looking for a pied-à- assembly; governors now ruled by de- His children grew up in the house, and terre in Montreal. Although not as grand cree, assisted by a hand-picked set of his widow continued to live there for an- as the Château Vaudreuil on St. Paul monarchy-friendly men who formed the other two decades. Street – occupied by the Collège de Special Council. This body, formed in Contrary to popular wisdom, the Montréal – Claude de Ramezay’s old April 1838, would sit in the Ramezay Château de Ramezay was never the home would do. house (save for the few months when home of the governors of New France Two years after making this pur- Durham filled the colony’s highest of- other than a brief period when Claude chase, in late 1775, British command fice and moved the council to Quebec) substituted for Governor General Vau- pulled out of Montreal, retreating from until it was dissolved in February 1841. dreuil during the latter’s absence in the the invading American troops. Upon his The last of Lower Canada’s governors, old country. In 1745, Claude’s surviving arrival, Richard Montgomery, leader of Charles Thomson, decided to spurn children opted to sell the house – to the the invasion, moved into the house and Quebec altogether and live year-round in Compagnie des Indes, which was found- established his headquarters there. After Montreal, in the Ramezay house. ed by another Scot, John Law, Louis Montgomery left to attack Quebec (and In 1841, the parliament of the new XIV’s chief banker. After two decades die, on New Year’s Eve), other Ameri- Province of Canada moved, along with of operating out of rented rooms about can generals were based in the house – Thomson (now Baron Sydenham), to town, the Compagnie finally had a home including Benedict Arnold, who wel- Kingston. When Montreal became the of its own in the old Ramezay place. comed such visitors as Benjamin capital in 1844, the governors took up The Compagnie substantially rebuilt the Franklin (who slept elsewhere) and residence in the elegant villa called house, giving it the appearance it retains Fleury Mesplet (who reputedly kept his Monklands at the western edge of what today. printing equipment in the Ramezay would later be known as West Mount. After the conquest, the Compagnie basement). The Château de Ramezay was fitted up 3 Plaque by the Château de Ramezay’s main door. Photo: Rod MacLeod. QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS as government offices, and a large four- ployees presumably did not mind the cisive moment in the history of architec- storey brick annexe was built on the east noise from the presses or the smell from tural conservation: it petitioned the mu- side by local contractor nicipal government to Hector Munro. The purchase the Ramezay new facilities were house as a place to ready for occupation on house the Society’s col- May 1, 1849. Unfortu- lection of historic ob- nately, a week earlier a jects. The city did so, Tory mob had burned and immediately leased down the parliament the house to the ANSM building in Youville for a nominal annual Square, and the govern- rent of $1. The museum ment decided to leave opened on May 1, this political hotbed and 1895. In time, the move its headquarters brick annex and other to Toronto. (This additions were demol- would not be the last ished and the old house time a Montreal-based equipped with modern corporation would gas and light facilities, make that exact deci- and up-to-date toilets. sion.) Today, one can ad- The expanded mire the expanded col- Château de Ramezay lections of this delight- was now a building in ful museum and in search of a purpose. Fortunately, the city the operating room. good weather even sit in the garden out- court was looking for a venue, its old By 1893, the Quebec government, side, which recaptures the sights and quarters having burned down some years the owner of the Ramezay house since smells of what Claude de Ramezay and earlier and its replacement being barely Confederation, had lost interest in it as a his family would have enjoyed three started. By the time the new court house property and decided to sell. Horrified centuries ago. Probably no building in (known today as the “old court house,” at the prospect of a buyer tearing down Canada has gone through anything like not to be confused with the “new-old this two-centuries-old structure, the An- as much in order to get back to, more or court house” across the street designed tiquarian and Numismatic Society of less, where it started. in the 1920s by Ernest Cormier) was fin- Montreal organized what was to be a de- ished, the legislation creating normal schools had just been passed. Montre- al’s École normale Jacques-Cartier (the Letters Catholic counterpart to the McGill Nor- did keep a file of some interesting pa- mal School on Belmont Street) took up The View from the Alcan floors pers and photographs, and, of course, re- residence in the Ramezay house’s member some highlights of these times. Munro wing in 1857, while the Council When I read Rod MacLeod’s piece I thought you might be interested in of Public Instruction for Canada East, about Place Ville Marie (“Fixing a some of my memories of the hole itself, established by the same legislation as Hole,” QHN, Fall 2012), I smiled at the filling thereof, and eventually the the normal schools, came to occupy the finding common ground and just knew I rise of a building that surprised us all.