Richmond, Now & Then

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Some liken formal histories to four-lane highways. Nick Fonda answers with a meandering country road, quietly charming, with a human face.

If all politics is local, so all history is local… and anecdotal. As the great urban thinker Jane Jacobs said, anecdotes are the only real evidence because they come from stories people tell. Though not a bastion of wealth, Richmond is rich in stories.

Grand Trunk Wreck at Richmond, Aug. 13, 1904. Nine dead, 25 injured.

Some end sadly. Avery Denison carved a community out of wilderness, left many descendants, but was killed by highwaymen in 1826. Young Italian immigrant Ralph Andosca was mysteriously murdered in Melbourne in 1905.

Others are uplifting. Irish orphan Patrick Quinn, ordained priest in 1862, served the booming railroad town Richmond, for 50 years. Anita Mercier Demers surprised lumberjacks in 2013 when, with axe and brush saw, she earned the “Forester Emeritus” award for exemplary stewardship of her woodlot… at the age of 90 plus.

Readers will inescapably yearn to visit Richmond, now and then.

Table des matières

Table des matières
Richmond, Now & Then	1
Contents	7
Foreword	9
Introduction	13
The River	13
Part 1	25
NOW: SNAPSHOTS OF RICHMOND	25
Chapter 1	27
A Town in Troubled Times	27
Chapter 2	31
Christmas on Main Street	31
Chapter 3	35
The Women of Main Street	35
Chapter 4	45
Gunter’s	45
Part 2	55
THEN: EARLY EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT	55
Chapter 5	57
Cushing Brook	57
Chapter 6	63
The Denison Family	63
Chapter 7	71
Daniel Thomas	71
Chapter 8	79
Craig’s Road	79
Chapter 9	89
La Première Canadienne	89
Chapter 10	97
Annance and the Disappearance of the Abenaki	97
Part 3	103
FROM RIVER TO RAIL, MID-CENTURY TO THE GREAT WAR	103
Chapter 11	105
Richmond and the Railway	105
Chapter 12	115
Ephrem Brisebois and the Mounted Police	115
Chapter 13	121
Remembering Father Quinn	121
Chapter 14	129
The College and the Convent	129
Chapter 15	139
John Hayes and the New Bridge	139
Chapter 16	149
John Hayes, Part 2. Plus ça change	149
Chapter 17	153
The Melbourne Township Murder	153
Part 4	159
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY	159
Chapter 18	161
The Native Son	161
Chapter 19	169
The Desmarais Family	169
Chapter 20	175
Alec Crabtree Booth	175
Chapter 21	183
Who Was Johnny O. Toole?	183
Part 5	191
TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY ECHOES	191
Chapter 22	194
Jacques and the River	194
Chapter 23	199
The Last Trapper	199
Chapter 24	205
The New Age Forester	205
Part 6	209
FACING THE FUTURE	209
Chapter 25	212
Flirting with Fluoridation	212
Chapter 26	225
The Last Word	225
Acknowledgements	233
Further Reading	235