Foreword
For new residents, visitors to Potton, and even for some ‘old timers’ – the origin and significance of the names of our roads, hills, mountains, squares, parks, streets, brooks, lakes and heritage sites in this Municipality can be hard to determine. Certainly it was that way for me, and that really is the reason for this publication. I wanted to better understand and appreciate the heritage of our Township through the significance of its place names. (The French word toponymie translates to toponymy or study of place names, in English.)
The Township of Potton has one main road, 161 roads, 8 “hills”, 18 streets, and 3 squares. In this document, you will find names of bays, brooks, buildings, bridges, border crossings and customs, cemeteries, churches, schools, hamlets, mountains, mines, parks, points, ecological and nature reserves, islands, lakes, ponds and memorials. Archeological, industrial, and historical sites are listed, not to mention marshes, wetlands, and natural sites. More than 350 entries of place names are presented in alphabetical order with map references in this publication.
The Commission de toponymie du Québec officializes the place names suggested to it by the Municipality of the Township of Potton. Part of the process includes a recommendation from the committee of municipal residents known as the Comité consultatif en urbanisme (CCU).
Methodology
To make it easier to use this document, I have located each place on a map of Potton, provided by the Municipal office.
To insure the pertinence and veracity of the notes I’ve written for each entry, I used the following sources:
As my first resource, I used the official information published by the Commission de toponymie du Québec on their website – Topos sur le Web. In the instances where information is not available concerning a place name, the Commission inserts a note to that effect and invites anyone with interesting information to share the pertinent details with them. Potton Heritage Association has contributed significantly by documenting our place names and by giving that information to the Commission.
Secondly, I used information gleaned from municipal documents. On July 17, 2008 in response to our request for information, Mrs. Liane Boisvert, then Director General of the Municipality, furnished the Association with pertinent documents contained in municipal files. In her letter to us, she noted that many roads in Potton were given names reflecting the rural character of our Municipality using themes specifically relating to trees, birds and flowers which might be found in locally. Family names were assigned to honour the ancestry of persons who have lived in Potton, or to commemorate specific historical events. During the first tenure of Mayor Jacques Marcoux (1989-1993), the Municipal Council took up the complete revision of place names in the Municipality. A public consultation followed. Revisions were submitted to the Commission de toponymie and approved. On April 2, 1991, Bylaw # 227 entitled La numérotation civique (civic numbering) was adopted and the process of formalizing our place names was thereby completed.
In the third instance, I used brochures and publications of the Potton Heritage Association and those of the Memphremagog MRC in addition to historical documents, reference books and pertinent websites.
Finally, I consulted members of the Potton Heritage Association and other community members. In some cases, I went to the place in order to try to understand the “why” of a particular name.
My main source of information is indicated following each entry. An asterisk (*) denotes if the building written of no longer exists.
I would be pleased to hear from anyone wishing to correct or complete the information presented in this document. Please feel free to contact me at Potton Heritage Association, Box 262, Mansonville (Québec) J0E 1X0 or on the Web at info@pottonheritage.org.
At the end of this document, you will find a listing of thanks, credits and bibliographic references as well as an index to glossary by map reference, a themed index with map reference and an index of cross references.
Happy reading,
Jean-Louis Bertrand January 2009 | January 2013