Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

The Gillanders house was built around 1900, and was located at 286, rue Principale.  It was demolished in 2008 in order to provide parking behind the Townhall.  Mention of the name "Gillanders" in Potton is an occasion for an anecdote about the Doctor who was well loved and respected in Potton, and who once owned this house.  He, like the house in which his office was located, is now but a memory.  Were we ever to erect memorial monuments one would surely be reserved for Doc Gillanders!

For 45 years, this was the home and office of Dr. H. E. Gillanders, B.A., M.D., C.M.  Henry Edwin Gillanders, of Irish descent, was born on March 27, 1892 in Leeds, Quebec and was educated in medicine at McGill University and graduated in 1920.  He came to Potton in 1921, after buying the practice of Dr. E. H. Henderson.  In 1924, he married Ethel McIntosh.  They had one daughter, Margaret Ethel, who sadly died the day of her birth in 1934.

Dr. Gillanders was Mayor of the Municipality of the Township of Potton from 1939 to 1942 and Worshipful Master of St. John's Lodge # 27, in Mansonville.  Always called "Doc", he was well known and much respected for his ability to diagnose his patient's disorder, quickly and accurately.  He practiced social medicine and attended at the birth of most of Potton's babies of the time, first driving a horse and sleigh, then his Model T Ford.  After adapting his own car to skis bolted on the back wheels, he became the first in the Township to use the B7 snowmobile invented in 1937 by Joseph-Armand Bombardier in Valcourt, in the Eastern Townships.  He faced many difficult situations.  In the spring of 1923, Mansonville and surrounding area was hit with a typhoid epidemic in which roughly 200 people were afflicted and about 20 people perished.^[1] Dr. H.E. Gillanders died on December 23, 1965.

Dr. Gillanders was also an expert marksman, and was a founder of the Mansonville Rifle Club, which is still an active association.  The range is found off Travor Road. 

The Gillanders house was sold to the Albani Coutu family in 1966 and, in 1994, to the Municipality, in order to house the Legion Memorial Library, installed there from 1997 to 2008.

This house was of strong heritage value, distinguished by its four-sided roof, and rounded glass transoms over the windows of the solarium at the front.  A cost analysis for retrofitting this older house for public use, proved far too expensive for consideration.  The Gillanders' landmark home then became a casualty of progress.  It was demolished, and in its place is now a parking lot.