Piopolis -- New Church, Presbytery and Village, 1909.
Piopolis was the only successful settlement in Compton to emerge from the province's Colonization Societies Act of 1869. It was founded by the General Colonization Society of MontrÄal, which combined the resources of five of that city's societies. The guiding hand behind the Piopolis colony (named after Pius IX) was Abbe Edmond Moreau, chaplain of QuÄbec's volunteer papal Zouaves, who had been in Rome to defend the papacy against the kingdom of Italy. Colonization itself was taking on the attributes of a religious crusade, as the following passage from the QuÄbec Zouaves newspaper illustrates:
What are we to say and think about those who were blessed by the hand of the venerable Pius IX; what tasks can we anticipate that these young men will perform? Certainly their actions will not be inspired by greedy motives of immediate gain; as one of them has said, their deeds will seek to bring only honour to this regiment blessed by Pius IX.
The two-year, five dollars per month subsidy that was offered to the veterans attracted sixty of them to the colony by 1873, but the hardships and their own lack of agricultural experience eventually caused most of these well-educated young men to abandon their clearing efforts. More tenacious settlers soon took their place. The settlement was within the lease limits of the G.B. Hall Lumber Company, which apparently stripped the lots of their valuable timber in 1873, but at least this provided employment for the colonists. By 1875 the colonization society had established sixty- six families, cleared 390 hectares and distributed $4,970 in prizes, a total investment of $13,589.18. The colony had a resident priest, chapel, school, public library, post office and sawmill. As this photograph shows, however, Piopolis still had a rugged frontier appearance (apart from the new church and presbytery) thirty-four years later. Note especially the road, the stones and the decaying stumps which had yet to be removed.
Courtesy: La SociÄtÄ d'Histoire des Cantons de l'Est, Sherbrooke
