St-Joseph-du-Lac

Saint-Joseph-du-Lac is a municipality in the Laurentides region of Quebec, Canada, part of the Deux-Montagnes Regional County Municipality.

History

The territory of the municipality of Saint-Joseph-du-Lac was part of the Lac des Deux-Montagnes Seigneury for over a hundred years. This seigneury was granted on October 17, 1717, to the Sulpician Order of the Ecclesiastical Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris, who already were lords of the Island of Montreal. In 1783, the Sulpicians signed a total of 25 concessions. Over the next ten years, from 1782 to 1793, 81 lands on the Saint-Joseph side were granted to settlers. In 1803, Côte Saint-Joseph Road was extended northward to allow settlers to travel to Saint-Benoît.

Around 1850, the inhabitants of the Saint-Joseph Concession started the process to obtain a parish, which was formally established in 1853. Two years later on July 1, 1855, the Parish Municipality of Saint-Joseph was formed. It extended over a length of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Lake of Two Mountains to the limits of Saint-Benoît Parish, and a width of 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi). The population at that time was 1020 people in about 180 families.

In 1856, the post office opened, being identified as Saint-Joseph-du-Lac in order to distinguish it from the many other locations called Saint-Joseph. In time this name also came to be used for the entire municipality.

In 1953, the southern portion of the municipality along Lake of Two Mountains separated from Saint-Joseph-du-Lac and became the Village Municipality of Pointe-Calumet.