DEVELOPMENT OF THE RICHELIEU VALLEY

Since the early days of the colonial period, the Richelieu Valley has shared in the formation of the Quebec landscape and has reflected, often quite strikingly, the elements that have been associated with its development. Three graduate geography students associated with the Committee on Physical Planning at McGill University, studied the area in 1951–1952 and presented theses on the land use, historical evolution, and urban development of the valley. These have been traced through six historical periods: pre‐1761, 1761–1815, 1815–1839, 1839–1867, 1867–1914, 1914 to the present. Under the French Regime, virtually the entire drainage area of the Richelieu River, extending from the southern fringes of Lakes George and Champlain to the very gates of the St. Lawrence and Montreal, was a vast “no‐man's land”. Apart from the forts, the early settlements were limited to the river banks below the Chambly portage, which was connected to Laprairie, opposite Montreal, by one of the first roads built in Canada. The early British rule brought paradox and profit to the Richelieu. Political ambitions from the south went hand in hand with commercial intercourse, military considerations for the protection of the St. Lawrence were compromised by the ties of the Anglo‐Saxon settlements advancing down‐valley to meet the older French movement from the St. Lawrence, and the defensive centres of the previous regime at St. Jean, Chambly and Sorel, now became the strongholds of a Loyalist group in a French Canadian rural environment. The next period saw the first steam railroad in Canada built between Laprairie and St. Jean, recognizing the commercial value of the southern part of the river route, the beginning of the Chambly Canal, and the evolution of urban centres outside the requirements of military protection. Commercial agriculture and local industries witness the maturity of settlement. By 1867 land occupancy was virtually complete, and the peak in rural settlement had occurred. The institutional fabric of the urban centres developed rapidly in this period, while industry was still of only limited importance. Modern industrialism arose in the next period which also saw a rapid increase in urbanization and declining rural population. The most recent period has witnessed an accentuation of those ties which have cut across traditional valley relations, and brought the centre of the valley within the orbit of metropolitan Montreal. The urban centres have developed distinctive characteristics, and have their own particular problems associated with their industrial structures and physical morphology. Local agricultural specialization have accompanied these changes. These are representative of tendencies that pervade much of the contemporary Quebec landscape.