Description of Historic Place

Founders’ Site consists of an open, grass-covered lot at the end of Caissie Street in Saint-Antoine. The designation relates to the site and not to the uninhabited one-and-a-half-storey house which currently stands on the site.

Heritage Value

Founders’ Site is designated a Local Historic Place for its association with the founding of Higho de Cocagne by the three Desroches sisters one spring day in 1832. That site would eventually become the Village of Saint-Antoine.

Before the Parish of Saint-Antoine got its name in 1873, the new colony was called Higho de Cocagne. In 1832, the three Desroches sisters, Marguerite, Geneviève, and Barbe, went with their husbands to a sugarhouse on what is now Grub Road. The three women ventured into the forest where they found high ground and fertile soil. Marguerite Desroches planted a stick in the earth, saying “This is my property. My sisters, now claim yours.” That gesture was very important for the Village of Saint-Antoine because Geneviève and Barbe did, in fact, lay claim to properties by the old cemetery and the current stone church, and these were the first three properties in the village. The following year, in 1833, the sisters and their husbands moved onto those properties, thereby becoming the first residents of Saint-Antoine. Other families followed suit, settling there permanently.

The location of this site alongside the Higho de Cocagne Institutional Centre - the historic location of the village’s first school and churches - demonstrates that the settlement of the Desroches sisters spawned the early infrastructure of what would become Saint-Antoine. Although the house that currently sits on the site is not directly related to the earliest occupants, vestiges of an old well that date back to when the first house was built in 1833 still exist, leading to the possibility that further potential archaeological resources exist on that site.

Source: Village de Saint-Antoine - File A1- "Lieu des fondatrices"

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe Founders’ Site include:
- open, grass-covered lot;
- location alongside the Higho de Cocagne Institutional Centre;
- vestiges of an old well that may have been used when the first house was built on the site in 1833;
- yet to be discovered archaeological resources relating to the early settlement of the site.