Deschambault-Grondines is a municipality of about 2,200 inhabitants in the Canadian province of Quebec, located in Portneuf Regional County Municipality. The municipality was incorporated in 2002 by the merger of the formerly independent villages of Deschambault and Grondines.
The name Grondines was named by Samuel de Champlain himself. "Grondines" is from the French verb "gronder", meaning to rumble or roar. In 1674, The Grondines windmill was built and is the oldest windmill in Québec.
The windmill was first a flour mill, and then a lighthouse. In 1842 the church Saint-Charles-Borromée was built in Grondines. In 2006 the local Fromagerie des Grondines was built, it is an organic cheese farm open to the public.
Some of the famous people who lived here include filmmaker Denys Arcand, who was born in Deschambault.
The patron saint of Deschambault-Grondines is Saint Joseph.
History
. . . At one time, Deschambault was said to have "a pilot every two houses." Very early on "the taste for the sea" developed there, because the St. Lawrence has long been the only way to access the village. "Everything was happening on the river !" says Father Jacques Paquin, coordinator of the Deschambault Navigators Committee." Even after the opening of the Chemin du Roy, a route considered difficult, the seaway continued to be used more than the land route. Deschambault, a village of sailors, Le Soleil. Translated from French.
Seigneurie des Grondines
The 'seigneurie des Grondines' was one of the oldest lordship in the province of Quebec, and was initially granted in 1637 by the Company of New France to Duchess Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot de Pontcourlay, Dame d'atours of Marie de' Medici, and niece of Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIV.
The estate covered a land area of around 90 square miles or nearly 60,000 acres. In 1646, the Governor of New-France at the time, Charles Jacques Huault de Montmagny, gave the concession to the nuns hospitallers, administrators of Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, and thereafter, it was resold in 1683 to Lord Jacques Aubert. Being the father-in-law of Louis Hamelin, the next lord of Grondines, the lordship passed to the Hamelin family afterwards, and was transmitted to their descendants until 1797, following the British Conquest. In 1698, comte Louis de Buade of Château Frontenac award them concessions, extending their lordship with additional islands and isles. This family was one of the eight seigneurial dynasties that lived permanently on their estate for six generations.
Over time, the Hamelins married members of the French-Canadian nobility. The families were the Couillard de l'Espinay, the Denys de la Ronde, partners of Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye, the Fleury d'Eschambault, the Gaultier de Varennes, the Lorimier de la Rivière, the Chavigny de la Chevrotière, and their in-laws included the Barons Le Moyne de Longueuil, the Pézard de Champlain, and the Boucher de Montarville.
A member of this family was also recognized as noble by the Sovereign Council of New France of Louis XIV in 1654, and would join the French-Canadian nobility, being the lord and commander Jacques-François Hamelin de Bourgchemin et de l'Hermitière, a descendant of Jacques Hamelin, bishop of Tulle. In 1766, a member of the Hamelin de Chavigny also appeared in documents of the Canadian nobility, where they asked the king to keep in power the current Governor of Quebec James Murray, with the hope of being less penalized by the injustices they had to suffer after the British conquest.
The signatories, including A. Hamelin, were Luc de la Corne, François-Joseph Cugnet, Aubert de Gaspé, Antoine Juchereau Duchesnay, and a few others. The last lord of Grondines was Senator David Edward Price in 1871, a member of the influential Price family.
Geography
Geology
DESCRIPTION OF THE AREA
« . . . The part of the Grondines map-area underlain by Paleozoic rocks (approximately two-thirds of the whole) is a nearly featureless plain rising in the north and west to 250 feet above sea level, and dropping to tide water level along the Saint-Laurent. » Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (Quebec), Grondines area, Geological report.