In the upper left we can see the cotton mill belonging to the MontrÄal Cotton Company, the eastern extremity of the bay on Lake St. Francis, and part of the Beauharnois Canal which enabled boats to bypass a series of rapids.
The building in the centre is the city hall, surrounded by smallhouses belonging to the mill workers. In 1908, the city's population was approximately 10,000.
By 1910, there were eleven cotton mills in QuÄbec. The mills in Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were quite small in comparison. The Valleyfield mill, alone, employed as many workers as all eight Ontario mills. Cotton textiles represented a key industry in QuÄbec. Contractors and financiers found it more profitable to set up businesses in QuÄbec because of the province's specialized labour force (many workers had long been employed in New England mills), its economical energy sources (water power in Valleyfield, for example), and the power of MontrÄal financiers.
