A city of ups and downs, the 'Queen of the Eastern Townships' is currently riding high
By Ronald Sutherland
SHERBROOKE -- La reine de l'Estrie -- began as a hamlet at the confluence of the Magog and St-François rivers 140 kilometres east of Montreal in the rolling mountains of the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
The site was hardly ideal for urban development. Gilbert Hyatt, a Loyalist from Vermont, settled there in 1793 because the waterfalls in the gorge of the Magog River were a good power source for his flour mill, and for years the spot was known as Hyatt's Mills. Today the city of 85,000 -- 125,000 in the greater metropolitan area -- sprawls out from both sides of the rocky gorge and over the surrounding hills, and driving through it requires roller-coaster stamina.
Until the arrival of Hyatt, the site was a place to pass by rather than to stay. On fishing and hunting excursions, the Abenaki Indians, whose territory extended from the St. Lawrence River to the State of Maine, portaged around the Magog gorge along what is now Marquette Street. The Magog flows out of Lake Memphremagog, which reaches south into Vermont, and into the swollen St-François, which continues to the St. Lawrence. British and American military expeditions, including Roger's Rangers in 1759, also passed right by, tramping the same portage.
Sherbrooke was officially named after colonial governor Sir John Coape Sherbrooke in 1818, and by 1830 had a population of no more than 400. During the Rebellion of 1837, the most significant incident was the tossing of an effigy of Governor Elgin into the Magog River. As for the mills, they multiplied along the gorge. In the century after Hyatt's flour mill came the Ball sawmill and the Goodhue mill, then the Parker carding mill, the Felton sawmills, the Brooks paper mills, and four textile plants -- Lomas, Paton, Magog Woollen and Kayser. In 1884, a hydroelectric plant was installed, permitting the mills to work long into the night.
Sherbrooke thus became a typical mill town. By 1891, the Paton was the largest manufacturing plant for woollens and flannels in Canada. Thousands of French-Canadians and Irish flocked to the burgeoning city for work. Sherbrooke was obviously experiencing an "up", but not
a healthy one. The mills employed large proportions of women and children, often in conditions less than acceptable by modern standards, despite the fact that "La Paton" was cited as a model factory in the 19th Century. In 1946, it was shut down by a strike, followed by another in 1948. Lacking industrial diversification, Sherbrooke plunged into a "down". By the early 1980s, more than 2,000 jobs had disappeared because of factory layoffs and closings, and the rate of unemployment was hovering around 20 percent.
Then came what has been described as le miracle de Sherbrooke. In the last five years, nearly 3,000 jobs have been created by some 30 new enterprises, and the rate of unemployment has dropped to 8.5 percent, two percent lower than the provincial average. Clothing and shoe manufacturing, which in 1982 employed 36 percent of the work force, now accounts for only 24.
Part of the explanation for Sherbrooke's current "up" is a business-minded mayor, Jean Paul Pelletier, 50, an Acadian by birth. Elected in 1982, he presided over the founding of the Sherbrooke Industrial Development Corporation, a consulting body made up of successfu1 industrialists. The vice-president of SIDC, Serge Bouchard, is responsible for seeking new investments, while colleague Réal Patry works on the expansion and modernization of existing industries. Mayor Pelletier travels widely to promote his city. Last year, armed with publicity videos, he was in Korea with representatives of several other municipalities. Pelletier's video, the only one translated into Korean, was shown on national television.
SIDC often works closely with l'Université de Sherbrooke, another significant component of the city's renaissance. Mayor Pelletier himself holds an MBA from the university, which was one of the first institutions in Canada to adopt the "cooperative system", allowing students to alternate between classroom study and work experience at paying jobs. Last year the system enabled 2,300 students to earn $6 million.
The university, founded in 1954, also runs a computer-training centre in collaboration with IBM, as well as other programs linked to industrial development. Notable is GEUS (Sherbrooke University Electronics Group), a microelectronics laboratory directed by Prof. Adrien Leroux. According to Leroux, Sherbrooke and other Quebec universities, which only a few years ago were still in the ice age of scientific research, are now producing some of the best electrical engineers in North America.
The largest of Sherbrooke's flourishing new industries is Shermag, which makes furniture in eight factories and employs 700 workers. Multi-Ind, which produces camping equipment and furnaces among other things, employs 400, and Berkley Wallcoverings Inc. provides 300 jobs. Communications TIE Canada, builders of telephone systems, employs 350.
The executives of these companies are particularly proud of their records of good labour-management relations, profit sharing and employee participation in decisions. They want to eliminate the "boss syndrome", and their efforts appear to be bearing fruit. Long plagued by strikes, Sherbrooke has had only four of any import in the past eight years, and three of those were at long-established multinational corporations -- Dominion Textile, Ingersoll-Rand Canada and Combustion Engineering Canada.
The city's renaissance, it should be pointed out, has been aided by the Canadian Industrial Renewal Board (an agency of the federal Department of Regional Industrial Expansion), which put up half the $11.2 million to establish Communications TIE in town.
More intriguing perhaps is the role of an organization called Pro-Gestion, a group of four young professionals in business administration. Financed by provincial and federal grants as well as local contributions, Pro-Gestion offers guidance on how to conduct market surveys and feasibility and legal analyses to anyone wishing to embark upon a "micro-enterprise" (not more than four jobs). Charging a token $25 and no fee at all for would-be entrepreneurs under the age of 30, Pro-Gestion has assisted at the birth of 95 business ventures, every one of them still going strong.
Selling Sherbrooke to prospective investors is not difficult, according to SlDC's Serge Bouchard. He points out the local advantages in terms of market, raw materials and skilled manpower. For Europeans and Asians, access to the nearby American market is an important factor. Then there is the quality of life in the Eastern Townships: skiing, swimming, boating and fishing in the picturesque Appalachian foothills.
Insofar as shopping is concerned, Sherbrooke has converted the downtown section of Wellington Street into a partly covered mall, while shopping centres are sprouting in all of the expanding suburbs. The largest, Carrefour (Crossroads) de l'Estrie, shelters some 160 shops and services, including about 15 eateries, four banks, three cinemas and a proper cigar store.
Nor is there any lack of cultural stimulation. Both l'Université de Sherbrooke and Bishop's University, located five kilometres away in Lennoxville, which is now really a suburb of Sherbrooke, offer regular programs of concerts and theatre in French and English. There are several summer playhouses in the vicinity, bilingual poetry readings, annual book shows and the Mount Orford International Music Festival. The city has French and English daily newspapers, the Record being the only English daily left in Quebec apart from the Montreal Gazette.
Indeed, adds Serge Bouchard, a major factor in attracting foreign investors to Sherbrooke is that outside of Montreal, the region is the most bilingual in Quebec (39 percent), offering education in both languages from the primary level through junior College and university.
Accommodating the so-called two solitudes of Canada has characterized Sherbrooke from the beginning. One of the associates of Gilbert Hyatt was a certain Jean-Baptiste Nolain, described by the former as a "valiant, sober and good farmer", who in 1799 cleared 18 acres of what would become the Wellington Street district while Hyatt was building his mill. From then on, Sherbrooke and the Eastern Townships in general have enjoyed harmonious relations between anglophones and francophones. During the course of a century the city itself changed from being more than 95 percent English-speaking to a current 95 percent French-speaking, but the transition has taken place with remarkable tranquillity and goodwill.
For the first 28 years after the city's incorporation in 1852, the eight mayors were English. The first francophone mayor, Hubert-Charon Cabana, was elected in 1880, when the English were still a majority. Then, apparently by mutual consent between the two language groups, candidates for the mayor's office alternated according to mother tongue until long after the French had become a majority in 1891. French has been the mother tongue of the five bilingual mayors since 1952.
A glance at the Sherbrooke telephone book reveals that considerable intermarriage has taken place: names such as Yvon MacKenzie, Nancy Gagnon, Edgar Chabot and Jacques Scott are not uncommon. Even more indicative of the spirit of collaboration, perhaps, are business firms like Howard-Bienvenu Lumber, Skinner & Nadeau Jewellers, O'Boyle & Duplessis TV, Conway & Martel Insurance Brokers.
It seems the two linguistic communities of Sherbrooke realized early the practical advantages of working together. Even the name changes that gradually occurred as Sherbrooke became predominantly francophone were accomplished with a minimum of disruption. The old Market Street, for instance, which by 1900 had become a focal point of the French population with the Séminaire St-Charles Borromée on one side and the first Roman Catholic cathedral on the other, was renamed Rue Marquette. "For anglophones," Le guide historique du vieux Sherbrooke notes, "the old street name was preserved phonetically, and for francophones the name of Father Marquette, famous missionary and explorer of New France, was thus honoured." Similarly the former Factory Street, one block away, was uneventfully transformed into Rue Frontenac, rather than Rue de l'Usine!
The late Msgr. Maurice O'Bready, who was vice-rector of l'Université de Sherbrooke during the early 1960s, coined the word "Estrie" as a substitute for Cantons de l'Est and Eastern Townships, and that convenient term -- meaning "place in the east" -- is often used by English and French alike. He also conducted a bit of a campaign to have Sherbrooke changed to Cherbourg, but a group of students as a prank came up with their own petition, pointing out that Cherbourg was of dubious authenticity, probably more Germanic than French, and suggesting that if Sherbrooke were going to be given a new name then it should be a good old French-Canadian name like
O'Breadyville! After that, the kindly monseigneur's campaign quietly expired.
In view of the harmonious French-English relations in Sherbrooke, it is fitting that the university should have created a bilingual graduate program leading to an MA and a PhD in Comparative Canadian Literature. The program has attracted students from around the world as well as from throughout Canada. In the planning stage is an undergraduate program for students who wish to develop bilingual skills appropriate to the contemporary Quebec business world. Now serving a student body of some 10,000, the university is accumulating distinctions in a variety of fields, notably medical and scientific research.
The city's night life has also experienced a series of ups and downs. Back in 1825, the downtown property just below where the cathedral now stands was purchased by two brothers named Otis and Ira King for 4,000 gallons of moonshine. The city then boasted many inns and taverns, one of them doubling as the Loomis Bakery.
After the initial high-spirited era of the King brothers and their publican confrères, Sherbrooke alternated between temperance and free-wheeling. In the 1880s, the Salvation Army concluded forceful campaigns against alcohol. According to several accounts, the Salvationists blocked the exits of the Continental and other hotels, singing hymns and haranguing customers. But their targets were evidently sober enough to retaliate with snowballs and other missiles. The Army, true to its name and not given to turning the other cheek in those days, fought back with clubs.
When arch-conservative Msgr. Georges Cabana became archbishop of Sherbrooke in 1952, he managed to suppress nightclubs and floor shows in the entire area under his jurisdiction, so that Sherbrookers fancying a night on the town had to go to some other town, generally sin-city Montreal. After Cabana's 16-year reign, the spirits of Otis and Ira King rose again. Sherbrooke now has innumerable cafés, clubs, hotels, motels, brasseries and lounges both downtown and in the suburbs.
Despite the current bustle of the city, there are more parks and green spaces now than a few years ago. Hyatt's legacy of dingy mills is gradually being erased. Part of the abandoned and unsightly Paton textile plant has been converted into residences for senior citizens. Now the passerby crossing the King Street bridge over the Magog River can gaze down at water tumbling over a dam, a lawn along the shore, a large swimming pool in the backyard, and cheery curtains in the windows. On the other side of the bridge is the Lac des Nations, a widening of the river ideal for water-skiing and canoeing.
Not all the people who use Sherbrooke's parks do so simply for recreation. Despite the current "up", the city still has problems, as Alain Soucy, coordinator of the Unemployed Workers' Movement, is quick to point out. "Prosperity is relative," says Soucy, noting that Sherbrooke has an average weekly salary of $386, $40 less than the average for Quebec.
Sherbrooke could do more to clean up its rivers and clear away a few other view-obstructing old factory buildings. As the new 800-hectare (2,000-acre) industrial park in the outskirts becomes more fully occupied, it should be possible to restore the shores of the two rivers to something resembling what they used to be when the white waters of the Magog thundered down the gorge to join the steady flow of the St-François.
Then there is the enigma of the Sherbrooke Airport. From all accounts it is a perfectly good airport, capable of handling medium-sized jets and with enough space to be expanded for larger planes. In a good week about a dozen charter flights use it. Airport officials cannot explain the total absence of commercial flights in a region as large and dynamic as Sherbrooke is today.
How long will Sherbrooke stay "up" this time? There is an Abenaki legend about an outcrop in the St-François downstream from where the rivers converge. The crag is known by its Indian came, Mena'Sen, and as islet of the Solitary Pine, for a pine tree that once took root in a crevice in the rock and grew to a great height before being toppled by a storm in 1915. According to Abenaki tradition, the tree commemorated the victory in 1692 of one of their chiefs over an Iroquois chief in single-handed combat. If so, the tree had survived for about two centuries.
The economy of mill-town Sherbrooke was like that solitary pine. It grew to an impressive height, but the bigger it grew the more precarious it became, because its roots were shallow. The economy of Sherbrooke today, with more than 170 diverse industries, is more like a forest of saplings than a solitary tree, and the forest seems likely to keep growing for a long time.
