House of Monsieur Jules Gauthier at the GRAND-BRÛLÉ. (Source Musée McCord - ferme A. Gauthier, Grand Brulé, Saguenay, ca 1906: Wm. Notman & Son - VIEW-4072) |
HISTORY
House of the pioneer Jules Gauthier
Mill of Father Honorat at the Grand-Br
ûléThe town of Laterrière, formerly called GRAND-BRÛLÉ, is now part of the greater urban area of Haut-Saguenay called, rightly or wrongly, the CITY OF SAGUENAY or simply SAGUENAY.
The pioneer Jules Gauthier, ocean going navigator and farmer of St-Irénée in Charlevoix, probably arrived there on the 4th of September 1852 with his wife Marie Girard to take possession of the 14 lots of the Oblate Fathers at the Grand-Brûlé of Laterrière following the recall of Father Honorat by his superior in 1849. This transaction, costing $1,800, was conditional to the exchange of a half lot owned by Jules in St-Irénée.
Jules Gauthier probably started the construction of his house soon after his arrival while the mill of Father Honorat was already in operation for the commodity of the pioneers of Grande-Baie settled on farms already partially cleared following a great fire.
Father Honorat's mill, named by the historian Victor Tremblay in honor of its founder, Father Jean-Baptiste Honorat, Oblate, was built in 1846. This missionary had seen that the great fire of 1846 was the chance to liberate the workers, from the tyranny of the lumber camps, who lived timidly and poorly under the domination of William Price and his associate Peter Mc Leod jr. Appropriate land for the development of a new colony, he had discovered a large burnt out area, the result of a fire in 1841. So, associating with some thirty settlers who had come from Grande-Baie (today the city of La Baie in the Saguenay), he started his work of colonizing. Upstream from the site chosen for the mill, he had also discovered a source of water which would serve to power the sawmill and flourmill established under the same roof. Immediately, this mill was the key element for the founding what would become the first free colony in North America.
Having become extremely disrupting to these two persons, Price and McLeod, the good Father Honorat had to leave the Saguenay and his settlement of Grand-Brûlé in 1849. The Oblate domain, including the mill and its outbuildings in Grand-Brûlé was sold to Jules Gauthier on the 29th of January 1853. Having been in service until the early 1840s, the mill, which had closed its doors, was completely abandoned until the sale of its ruins in 1969.
And these ruins have a long history.
On the 27th of may 1969, this mill changed hands for the first time since its sale to Jules Gauthier, and it was very nearly providential because were it not for madam Hélène Vincent, there would be no trace of this mill today since in the same year it was nearly demolished as part of a project which included the old Gauthier sawmill.
A journalist at the time, Hélène Vincent was making a feature on Laterrière where Jean-Noël Tremblay, the Minister of Cultural Affairs of Québec, lived. He had lauded the beauty of this area so much that madam Vincent decided to stay a few hours. This was when she discovered, abandoned at the end of a narrow road, the ruins of the mill which she found charming.
With the help of her husband, Henri Lapointe, linked to the past because of the profession of her ancestors and with the collaboration of their sons, she started the restoration of this mill described by Monsignor Victor Tremblay of cradle having favored the birth of the colony of Grand-Brûlé. However it wasn't until 1973, after having invested a lot of work, that she was able to have it declared a historic building and only after having consented to the demolition of the roof and rebuilding it according to the norms of the original. Madam Vincent stated that it was a difficult undertaking made possible not through ambition but by a deep and sincere attachment to all that which comes from the past.
The mill was opened to the public, after completion of the necessary renovations which preserved the things form the past while maintaining a certain mystery as if the first operators of the mill still worked there. Mme Vincent lived at the mill and received dozens of visitors for whom she served as a knowledgeable guide. Unfortunately, human greed and negligence would soon manifest themselves! Visitors grabbed precious objects which had been reliving the glorious past of the mill. Some were so audacious that they shamelessly took personal items of Madame Vincent from drawers in her bedroom!
Madame Vincent was forced to close the mill to the public. Actually, I believe she still lives there.
This, briefly, is the history of the mill of father Honorat.
Gérard Gauthier gauge@videotron.ca for your comments.
September 2005
An interesting article by Marie Claude Bouchard published promotional magazine: "LATERRIÈRE, PORTE OUVERTE", p.38 has been sent to me by a friend. I have no other information since I received only one detached sheet from the magazine in question.
House of Monsieur Jules Gauthier at the GRAND-BRÛLÉ. (Source Musée McCord - ferme A. Gauthier, Grand Brulé, Saguenay, ca 1906: Wm. Notman & Son - VIEW-4072) |
