Français
Welcome Page
Properties for sale
Regional History
Laurentian Place Names
What's It Worth
Associations
E-mail us

T

o the Weskarini Algonquians, Manatonga Soutana (Mont Tremblant), was a central geological feature. Their mythology warned that if we upset the natural order, the great Manitou would cause the mountain to tremble. Dr. Laviolette foresaw the importance of the mountain when he pushed for the creation of a reserve to protect the fresh air around his tuberculosis sanitarium in 1894. In 1902, controversy raged about the low rent that a private club paid for exclusive usage of significant piece of land bordering Lac Tremblant. Somehow Dr. Richer, a pioneer in tuberculosis treatment, was never offered the reserved Tremblant land for a sanitarium, so in 1899 he built his in Ste. Agathe.

A government bill created Mont Tremblant Park in 1895 to guarantee the pure air for a sanitarium that was never built, but there were others who may have envisaged it more as a park to protect nature, or perhaps simply wished to protect their private interests. The elevations of the railroad stations suggest that Ste. Agathe was the highest point in the mountains. Its station was 1214 feet above sea level, while St. Jovite's was only 690 feet and Ste. Adèle's was at 660 feet. Ste. Agathe also had a small village that was on a lake, a very attractive feature, with its open farmland radiating out into the hills. Mont Tremblant, despite its 3175-foot summit, was away from the railroad corridor in the wild environs of the park. Ste. Agathe grew; Mont Tremblant slept.

Joe Ryan saw the potential of the mountain in 1938 and determined to make it into an international ski resort. With his American sense of fair play, his inherited fortune and his capricious personality, he cajoled the smaller resort owners into cooperation, and soon Mont Tremblant became the most important ski resort in Eastern North America. During this same period, Ste. Agathe became one of the major tuberculosis treatment centres in Canada, easily holding its dominant position against a mere winter resort.

By the early 1950s Joe Ryan was dead, his money gone, and tuberculosis was cured. Slowly the area drifted into the economic doldrums. In Ste. Agathe, the treatment centres began to close, and Tremblant limped along under less inspired management. The smaller hills fended for themselves, but many did not make it, and soon the inns, first in Ste. Agathe, and eventually in Mont Tremblant, closed up, burnt down or changed hands. Serge Dubois, in a presentation to the Canadian Club last winter in Ste. Agathe, described how the Dubois family lost Villa Bellevue in 1991 after 79 years of family ownership, simply as a result of the lack of cooperation of the Tremblant management. Gray Rocks went through a bankruptcy shortly afterwards. Sadly, at around the same time, rescue was arriving, too late, in the form of Intrawest.

During that long period of economic difficulty, our image of the Laurentians developed. The background community of vacation homes slowly moved closer to centre-stage simply because of the vacuum left there. 'Up North' took on a special connotation. Cottages were easy to find and could be rented for years on end, but were a serious financial risk to buy as the Montreal population waxed and waned. By the mid-nineties, the huge government and private investments in Tremblant were beginning to be felt, while Ste. Agathe, with its regional hospital, began to recover as a community offering services, if not night-life, to its stable vacation home population. Today, Intrawest has added as many new units in Tremblant as exist in all of Ste. Agathe, and it intends to double that number with its next phases. Ste. Agathe is benefiting from the more stable economic environment that Tremblant has fostered. As importantly, there is a trend away from urban centres, and aging vacation homeowners are retiring and becoming full-time residents. Already those of us who have lived here for years, seeing Ste. Agathe as the tired old regional centre, are feeling the presence of a new, larger centre to the north. Instead of our remote lakes in the woods, we are seeing ourselves in a service community in the shadow of a giant resort. We are in the middle of a twenty-year period that is changing the nature of our region. From a real estate point of view, the values will rise, but many of us will pine for the bucolic, peaceful 'up north' of our youth.

Sources- Mont Tremblant: Following the Dream by Louise Arbique; Serge Dubois presentation to the Canadian Club, January 2001; Tremblant Express; previous issues of the Ballyhoo.

Return to What's it Worth index