Back on 325 years of history in Rimouski

BY GUILLAUME MARSAN – The territory now occupied by the city of Rimouski was first colonized by the St. Lawrence River.

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Indeed, the royal road between Trois-Pistoles and Rimouski was not completed until around 1818, nearly 125 years after the creation of the Seigneurie de Rimouski. The way of life of the first generations of Rimouski families was therefore largely linked to the rhythm of the tides, the wind and the conditions of navigation.

Due to its favorable geographical position, the Rimouski sector will become quite early in the history of maritime navigation a nerve center for the profession of pilots, first Bic and then Pointe-au-Père. Ships going up or down the St. Lawrence, considered one of the most dangerous waterways in the world, had to make a forced stop in the area to welcome or leave a pilot in charge of navigating the river.

Several tragedies associated with the shipwrecks inhabit the history of Rimouski and its surroundings, such as those of La Macrée, in 1758, or of the Empress of Ireland, in 1914. In this spectacular archival image, we can see the vessel transatlantic Celtic Prince which ran aground on the northern part of Saint-Barnabé Island on July 8, 1918, due to heavy fog. Despite considerable damage to her seabed, there was no loss of life and the ship could be refloated and repaired in Montreal. We also see, almost like a staging, the contrast and the shock between two eras, the carriage in the foreground seeming to flee this iron monster.

A little later, in 1944, the Institut maritime du Québec was created in Rimouski. The most important maritime training center in Canada, this educational institution that trains pilots on the St. Lawrence still demonstrates today how closely maritime navigation and Rimouski have been closely linked.

Guillaume Marsan
Archivist-coordinator at the Archives nationales du Québec in Rimouski

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