A new Location
Today Summerlea Golf Club sits on a site of unsurpassed beauty. All the dedicated people involved in the relocation did their work well. Sitting on a hill overlooking the confluence of two mighty rivers, the atmosphere is peaceful and pastoral. Full of birdsong, the gentle presence of neighbouring cows and the croaking of frogs, it is a good place to be on a beautiful summer day.
Bordering the St. Lawrence River, this area consists of fertile sediment left from the Champlain Sea which covered the area from the Thousand Islands to below Quebec. During construction of the Summerlea golf courses, a bulldozer sank and was nearly lost while digging out the lake between the 9th hole of the Cascades course and the 18th hole of the Dorion course. In the process of retrieving the equipment, workers found debris that local archeologists said was left from this sea, 12,000 years ago.
The first occupants here were Indians, attracted by the abundance of food. The woods were full of deer, moose, bears and foxes, and in the hot summers large quantities of beans, corn and squash could be grown. After the 1759 battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, this land was divided into two seigneuries and given to Phillipe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil and his brother in law, Pierre George de Soulanges. The two areas were owned by their families for nearly 100 years. In the mid-1800s the seigneuries were sold after being divided into small acreages in the cleared areas near the river. Arriving immigrants from Ireland bought these parcels and turned them into small farms. Some of these immigrants, the Bradleys and the Ogilvys, married French girls and became Francophones.
There were no roads and all transport was by water; the river was a busy place. Goods had to be transported through the rapids in that bottomed boats pulled by horses on the river bank. As early as 1838 very rough roads were built for the stage coaches to bypass the Cascades and Cedars rapids. The Soulanges Canal was built in 1892, bringing much traffic and prosperity to the area. Three hotels were built to provide food and accommodation for travelers who often had long waits for the boats to get through the locks.
Travel between this western area and Montreal Island was by ferry (25 cents) until 1925, when the first bridge was built. It connected with the rudimentary roads built along the canal that eventually evolved into Highway # 2, the main Montreal-Toronto link. This well-travelled thruway passed by what would become Summerlea Golf and Country Club. In 1959, prosperity in the area ended. Today, only a small amount of traffic goes by as golfers climb up Cardiac Hill – the 11th hole of the Cascades course.
Marion Dunn