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The End of an Era

Vintage black and white photograph of stone ruins on the shores of a river. This is a former mill that was destroyed. On the top of the white border are the handwritten words “Rivière-des-Prairies.”

Ruins of the Charbonneau mill on Des Prairies River on the southern tip of Île Jésus, Saint-François de Sales parish, August 1933, silver gelatin emulsion

Reference: Musée de la civilisation, fonds d’archives du Séminaire de Québec, PH 1987-577

These are the ruins of the second mill built on Moulin Island in St-François, on Des Prairies River, on the southern tip of Île Jésus. The first mill, built on the small estate in 1716, was first destroyed by fire in 1721 at the same time as all the other buildings on the estate, and then a second time in the spring of 1789, during the spring ice break-up. The photograph was taken in August 1933.