Roads to Richmond

By Nick Fonda

Roads to Richmond is an unusual, almost quirky road book. Divided into four thematic parts and forty-eight short chapters, it works like a mosaic: the big picture is a moving portrait of a little known corner of Canada—Quebec’s Eastern Townships. The inlaid stones that make up the mosaic are small gems in their own right: brief histories, candid snapshots, curious anecdotes, insightful observations, sobering reflections, stories to make you smile. Part contemporary history, part lyric narrative, it’s a book that puts you behind the wheel and lets you meander along country roads to meet some of the people who make the Townships a unique place where Canada’s two solitudes have grown entwined. A book for the Townships and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baraka Books
• Release date: Oct 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781926824222

Nick Fonda

Nick Fonda is an award-winning reporter who has also wielded chalk in classrooms in Canada and the UK for more than 25 years. He has kept in touch with reality—other than the overwhelming reality of schools—by plying such trades as lumberjack, carpenter, restaurateur and raconteur. Nick Fonda’s non Roads to Richmond: Portraits of Quebec’s Eastern Townships (Baraka Books 2010) was remarkably successful.

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Introduction

R

ichmond is easy to find on a map. Or at least the name is easy to find. There are at least fifty Richmonds world wide and no fewer than four in Canada, of which two are in Quebec: the town of New Richmond is perched on the Gaspé coast; Richmond is tucked into the Saint-François River valley near the northern edge of Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

Any number of roads will take you into Richmond. One of my favourites is Highway 143 which runs southeast out of Drummondville, straight and flat on what was originally a railroad bed. Eventually the road eases down a slight gradient and curves gently towards the southwest before coming to an unexpected crossroad, which once was the village of Wheatland. Shortly after this point the scrub brush gives way to farmland. The road is no longer flat and straight but undulates with the very slight dips and rises of the terrain, never meandering more than a few compass points from its southeasterly course.

At a certain point the road dips, rushes across an all but invisible bridge, and half a kilometre later starts to climb. It climbs up through the village of L’Avenir and continues climbing until a few kilometres later, well out of the village, at the top of a long rise, the countryside is suddenly different. The flat plains of the St. Lawrence Lowlands—rich soil that once served as the bed of a prehistoric sea—have given way to the Appalachian foothills, among the oldest mountains in North America. As you look ahead from the top of the rise you see that the road is going to wind up and down through waves of tree-clad slopes that are too imposing to be called hills and too stunted to be thought of as mountains. You’re looking at the Eastern Townships.

Today, not many people take the 143. Most prefer Highway 55, an almost new, four-lane, divided highway that snakes effortlessly southwards up the Saint-François River valley to Sherbrooke and then on to Stanstead and the U.S. border.

Three-digit roads like the 143—even numbers running east-west; odd numbers running north-south—are often referred to as the old highway by people in the area. Most of the old highways, including the 143, lead from the Main Street of one town or village to the rue Principale of the next, with occasional crossroads, turning sharply off the highway and usually, if the road runs long enough, turning to gravel as well. These thread off into the hills and valleys that some still refer to as the back country. These are roads which cut through hardwood forests and pastures speckled with grazing Holsteins and lead to other crossroads, and from time to time to another village, or hamlet, or the remains of one.

I started developing a taste for driving these roads—the secondary highways and especially the gravel roads—almost four decades ago, when I moved to the Townships, a time when an idle Sunday drive was neither expensive nor environmentally immoral. Over the years my driving patterns changed. For a while driving meant rushing growing kids to hockey practice or music lessons with a side trip to the grocery store. By the time my taxi duties expired I would have found it unconscionable to idly drive around the countryside.

The opportunity to drive gravel roads almost guilt-free was given to me by Eleanor Brown, then editor of The Record, a small paper which likes to bill itself as Quebec’s other English daily. With the excuse of writing news, albeit very soft news, once or twice a week I’d have occasion to drive out somewhere, or perhaps return from somewhere on a meandering gravel road.

This book includes some of those stories, which were first published in The Record, The Townships Outlet or Quebec Heritage News. It also includes some of the incidental woolgathering that’s often an integral part of les petits chemins de campagne.

Chapter 1 

Getting There: Roads, Rails, and Bridges

W

hen I drive to Drummondville (often for my daughter who’s arriving or leaving by train) I inevitably make the return trip on Highway 143. I know the road will never fail to give me a little charge, a jolt, a little adrenaline rush that comes from experiencing something spectacular and dramatic. Before that moment, there’s another one that usually makes me smile to myself or, if I have a passenger with me, urges me to warn, Watch for it! Watch for it! Did you see it?

The bridge at the north end of L’Avenir is what I exhort my passenger to watch for, and more often than not, he or she will miss seeing it. Suddenly alert for whatever has prompted my outburst, my passenger will focus on the roadway asking, What? What? thereby missing the sign. And the bridge.

L’enfant terrible

L’Avenir—According to the provincial transport ministry, le Pont de l’Enfant-terrible is thirty-five metres long and spans le Grand Ruisseau. In fact, the bridge feels much shorter and has none of the characteristics associated with a bridge: no superstructure, no expansion joints, no sense of height. There is no change in the pavement, not even a slight hump. On the contrary, if anything, the road seems to dip slightly. If you look out the side window as you cross it, you’ll see, beyond the guardrails, an overgrown drainage ditch perpendicular to the road. You have the impression that, at most, you’re passing over a culvert, and until the 143 was upgraded in the late 1990s the road simply passed over a culvert. It was only after the most recent roadwork was done, perhaps a decade ago, that the ministry put up the enigmatic sign: Pont de l’Enfant-terrible.

When I first saw the sign I imagined that a work crew had succeeded in exacting a measure of revenge on some hyperactive, freckle-faced, ten year-old who had driven everybody mad during its construction. What other explanation could there be for such an unusual name, especially in Quebec where so many towns and villages are named after a saint?

As it turns out, there was a hyperactive ten year-old, but he may not have had freckles or red hair, and he certainly didn’t bother the construction crew who built the bridge and roadway.

L’enfant terrible who gave his name to the bridge was a remarkably dynamic individual by the name of Jean-Baptiste-Éric Dorion, who was born in 1826 in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. As a youngster he was likely a bit of a holy terror because l’enfant terrible is a nickname he earned in childhood. He was only eighteen when he became one of the founders of l’Institut canadien de Montréal, a group of intellectuals who actively challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, at a time when it was both rare and courageous to do so. In 1847, at the age of twenty-one, he founded a newspaper which he optimistically called L’Avenir. After the paper folded, Dorion quit Montreal and opened a general store in a part of the country which, until fifty years before, had had no permanent settlements. The village that grew up around the store took the name of Dorion’s then-defunct newspaper. Dorion was elected to the Legislative Assembly of United Canada where his political opponents, searching for insults with which to attack him, labelled him with his childhood nickname, l’enfant terrible. In 1862 he founded another newspaper, Le Défricheur (a name which could be translated as The Trailblazer). Dorion was opposed to Confederation (arguing in favour of annexation to the US along with other upstanding citizens like John Molson and John Redpath) and died in 1866, the year before the provinces of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia joined together to form the Dominion of Canada. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the story is that Dorion managed to do all this before death claimed him in L’Avenir at the young age of forty.

Today, the village of L’Avenir bears its name stoically. For those who are driving through on the 143, unaware of its history, the town’s name—the future, in French—is tinged with irony. Nothing about the place suggests the future, but rather the past. The grey-stone Catholic Church is as disproportionately imposing as the village is small—several dozen houses strung along a main street, la rue Principale. The houses are an irreconcilable mix of relatively new bungalows and slightly seedy wood-frame structures from the turn of the last century. There’s a garage, a tiny Caisse populaire, a small family-run abattoir and a slightly derelict-looking dépanneur. Except for the Caisse, the buildings don’t hint at much prosperity. L’Avenir looks like a rural village that is slowly withering as the agricultural community around it shrinks. The richer farms continue to survive and grow in acreage but the poorer ones are sold to new owners looking for a retreat, a second home. Pastureland and hayfields are rented out or turned into tree plantations. It’s hard to imagine that this is the future of which Jean-Baptiste dreamed when he left Montreal for the green pastures at the edge of the Townships.

* * *

After I cross the Pont de l’Enfant-terrible in L’Avenir, I know that I have one more bridge to cross to get home. I’m fortunate in that much of the time I have a choice of bridges. Whichever one I take will be a real bridge, spanning not a drainage ditch but the Saint-François River.

Officially the two bridges are known as the Frederick Coburn Bridge and the Mackenzie Bridge. More often, you’ll hear them called the New Bridge and the Old Bridge. You might also hear someone talking about the Iron Bridge or the Green Bridge; these too refer to the Old Bridge.

As I approach Richmond on the 143, just before it meets the 116, I can take one of two left turns which will shunt me under an overpass and onto what is now Melbourne Avenue; before the Village of Melbourne amalgamated with Richmond in 1999, this was Main Street. A long kilometre further on, at the first crossroad, a left turn will lead me onto the Old Bridge. On the other hand, if I continue to the intersection of the 116 and turn east, I’ll find myself almost immediately on the New Bridge, a sleek and smooth cement structure that spans two main streets and several sets of train tracks as well as the Saint-François.

Today the New Bridge bears the name of one of the area’s most famous native sons, Frederick Simpson Coburn. Given Richmond’s small size, his fame is proportionally modest, (something that would probably have suited the artist well). Beyond art circles, Coburn’s is not a readily recognizable name; nor can it be said that everyone in Richmond knows the name or who he was. I’ve heard more than one person ask, crossing the bridge that now bears his name, "C’est qui ça, Frédérick Coburn?" (A wonderful place to find the answer is a beautiful book by Evelyn Lloyd Coburn entitled F.S. Coburn, Beyond the Landscape.)

Baptism by Water

Richmond—When I received the invitation to a bridge christening (an event I’d never before attended) in May 2009 , I asked if a bottle of champagne would be involved, as when passenger liners are launched.

Teri Coburn, who had extended the invitation, laughed, If there is a bottle of champagne, I certainly won’t break it!

According to the Annals of Richmond County, May 24, 1903 was the last time there was a bridge christening along this stretch of the Saint-François River. There was no champagne that day either. Rather, a bottle of clear sparkling water was broken in full consistency with the temperance sentiment of the majority concerned in the ceremony. As recounted in the Annals, the major figures of the ceremony were the wives of the mayors of the three municipalities (Richmond, Melbourne and Brompton-Gore), Mesdames Hayes, Ewing and Weed, who cut the symbolic ribbon to open the bridge.

The Annals describes the event in 1903 as an all-day celebration at which cabinet ministers were present. There was a parade, a luncheon, speeches, culminating finally with a banquet and a concert. The bridge was named in honour of the honourable member, Mr. P.S.G. Mackenzie, who has done so much to bring about its construction. Mackenzie, a graduate of Richmond’s St. Francis College who went on to become a lawyer and politician, had been instrumental in obtaining a grant of fifteen thousand dollars towards the completion of the bridge, the total cost of which was fifty-one thousand dollars.

It’s easy to imagine that there were at least a few skeptics in the crowd that day, back in 1903, who looked askance at the new bridge and predicted an early demise for it. Up to that time, bridges were prone to mishaps and were short-lived.

The first bridge built across the Saint-François River was erected in Sherbrooke in 1846. The following year, a bridge was erected spanning the river from Melbourne to Richmond. This second bridge was a wood structure that crossed the river less than a mile upstream from the emplacement of the 1903 bridge. In 1848, still new, it suffered severe damage during spring flooding and had to undergo major repairs. When it re-opened, it was as a toll bridge and served the community for over three decades before being condemned and eventually demolished by dynamite.

In 1882 a steel bridge, erected at a cost of forty-five thousand dollars, came into operation. It too was a toll bridge and, like its predecessor, suffered at the hands of Mother Nature. In 1889, two of the bridge’s five spans were taken out by ice on the Melbourne side. Then in 1901, the whole bridge was carried down the river by the ice. Again the people of Richmond and Melbourne resorted to a ferry in order to communicate.

None of the skeptics at the inauguration outlived the Mackenzie Bridge. The structure operated as a toll bridge for the first ten years until 1913, when the citizens of Richmond and Melbourne had another fete to celebrate freeing the bridge. After World War I, it accommodated the transition from horse-drawn wagons to tin Lizzies and later high-horsepower cars. At some point, a sidewalk was added to allow pedestrians to cross without worrying about horses and cars. The steel bridge weathered floods and ice jams, but by the time the baby boomers started driving their parents’ Fords and Chevies, it was clear that traffic had changed dramatically and increased radically. Traffic no longer meant what it had at the beginning of the century when Dominion Engineering had riveted the steel structure together.

A new bridge was clearly needed to accommodate the three secondary highways—the 116, 143 and 243—that converged in Richmond to cross the river.

The structure that went up and opened for traffic on August 17, 1964 was constructed by Quebec Engineering Limited. According to Hélène Beauchesne, spokesperson for the Ministère des transports du Québec (MTQ), the estimated cost of construction was $393,964. Yet, the Annals published in 1966 cites the cost of the new bridge as $1,019,879.

Cost over-runs would not be new. Both the wooden bridge and the first steel bridge turned out to be more expensive than projected. We do know that when the blasting was done to prepare the footings for the bridge, they ran into problems, said the MTQ spokesperson. We also know that the bridge required two and a half million pounds of steel to support the cement structure. The bridge is three hundred and thirty-seven metres long, the roadway, ten point three metres wide with another three point nine metres of width to accommodate two sidewalks. One of these is open to snowmobile traffic in the winter. The bridge was refurbished in 2007-08 at a cost of four point four million dollars.

The decision to christen the new bridge, forty-five years later, followed a somewhat circuitous route which began in the Windsor offices of the cultural agent of the Centre local du développement économique de la MRC du Val-Saint-François, Annie Vincent.

2010, said Mme Vincent, is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Frederick Coburn, one of the country’s major artists. We approached the Town of Richmond with the idea of doing something to honour him. We also wanted to do something that would acknowledge our heritage and allow us to take pride in it.

The request to name the bridge went from the Town to the Commission de toponymie du Québec and eventually to the transport ministry which had the appropriate signs made.

There were other names suggested for the bridge, including that of John Hayes, a medical doctor who served on several occasions as mayor of Richmond and who wrote extensively about the area.

In an age when name recognition is