Countryside

A special correspondent who visited the Northern Townships on several occasions was  delighted to note the impressive results of settlement there. He expressed his sentiments in a November 1885 article the newspaper Le Nord. When Curé Labelle began the task of colonization, he wrote, virgin forest began 50 km beyond the Saint-Jérôme town limits. By 1885, the trees had been replaced by several townships, with homes built up to 240 km from Saint-Jérôme. The old building sites along a short expanse of cleared land along the road northward had disappeared, “making way for pretty houses surrounded by stables, barns, and spacious granaries. Herds of cows graze on hillsides in the rich pasture, and all around wealth seems to reign.”