2010
Choquet-tes ReunionSaint-Jean-sur-Richelieu
is celebrating its 400th anniversary of the arrival of Samuel de
Champlain by way of the Richelieu River (formerly known as the Aux
Iroquois River) which runs alongside the city, just like a highway that
in the past linked Lower Canada to the United States, and the
historical site of the Conquest of the Nations, with its Fort St-Jean,
built in 1966-67, by one of our valiant ancestors and soldiers, Nicolas
Choquet, whose remnants are located on the campus site of the Military
College of Fort St-Jean and its museum.
Long ago called the
“National Capital of Ceramics”, and in bygone days
Saint. John and then Saint-Jean, the city became known mostly on
account of its numerous pottery industries (ceramics) and abounds today
with architectural and religious patrimonies that can be marvelled at
when visiting the Haut-Richelieu Museum located in the old covered
market, called the Market Place, meeting site of the market gardeners,
in the Old-Saint-Jean.
In the
18th Century, Saint-Jean was recognized as the 4th port of importance
in Canada and as a city for railroad transit in the 19th Century when
the train first made its appearance. The Canadian National Dorchester
locomotive thus crossed the distance between La Prairie and Saint-Jean
on the first railway in Canada in 1836. Nowadays, there only remains
the Canadian Pacific Station, built in 1887..
