Weedon, c1950s. Courtesy BANQ

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

Following the end of the War of 1812 in North America and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe the British government decided to set aside large swaths of Lower Canada to provide the soldiers who had fought in those conflicts with farms. Weedon Township, located 50 kilometres northeast of Sherbrooke, was one such tract and although it was surveyed in the spring of 1818 no veterans came to the area until Major Toussaint Hubert Goddu was granted 202 acres on May 4, 1835. Goddu, accompanied by two friends, moved from his farm at Sainte-Marie-de-Mannoir outside of Montreal to his new home that summer, but seeing the loneliness of the place promptly turned around and returned home.

The township remained empty until 1841 when Germain Biron arrived at the site of what would later become the town of Weedon. His family lived there, alone in the wilderness, until 1847 when they were finally joined by several other French-Canadian families who were seeking opportunities away from the crowded seigneuries along the St. Lawrence River. These new arrivals included the Brière, Fortin, Fontaine and Gauthier families and together they formed the basis of a new community.

In August, 1848 Pierre Founier constructed the first saw mill in the area and later, in 1854, the town’s first chapel was erected. It was also around this time that the government began to offer over 12,000 acres of Crown Land for sale along the First, Second, Third, fourth and Fifth ranges of Weedon Township for the astounding price of 60 cents an acre. Fuelled by the new families coming in to open farms on these lands a growing settlement was established around the church and saw mill and on June 21, 1886 the village of Weedon was officially incorporated.   

By the turn of the century Weedon was a thriving commercial hub of almost 400 people which included two sawmills, a hotel, a creamery, a small carriage factory, and a bustling station on the Quebec Central Railway. As with so many other towns in the Eastern Townships it was the railway which formed that backbone of the community, connecting it and its products to the wider world. When James Miller, the local station agent, discovered rich copper and sulphur containing pyrite deposits about six kilometres east of Weedon in 1908 it was the proximity of the railway that permitted the development of a profitable mine. 

As it so happened these deposits were the largest ones in Canada east of the Great Lakes and mining operations began at this site in 1913 under the direction of the East Canada Smelting Company, which leased the project to the Weedon Mining Company the following year. Over the next eight years the mine produced almost 585,000 tons of ore containing an average of 3.5 per cent copper and 40 per cent sulphur. After a failed experience with trucks, the ore was shipped from the mine to Weedon Station by means of an ingenious aerial tramway. From there it was shipped directly to markets in the United States where it was used primarily in the production of copper and sulphuric acid, a key industrial chemical. The mine closed in May, 1921 following the discovery of larger and more economical pyrite deposits in Texas and Louisiana and two years later the pumps were turned off, allowing the shafts to flood.

This was not, however, the end. As 1930 the provincial government had recognized that the mine appeared to contain sufficient copper reserves to warrant a salvage operation to reopen the pit. Unfortunately, this did not happen until the 1950s when, as the Montreal Gazette noted, a “boomlet” of mining activity occurred in the Eastern Townships that saw several decommissioned mines brought back into production in order to meet the post-war demand for minerals. One of these facilities was the old Weedon Mine and in February, 1951 the Weedon Pyrite and Copper Company began the process of bringing the old mine back into production in order to access the estimated 500,000 tons of viable ore that still remained in the ground. Tests showed that this ore averaged 1.5 per cent zinc, 2.5 per cent copper and 35 per cent sulphur content, more than enough to make the effort to recover it worthwhile.

The reopening of the mine was facilitated by the fact that the original operations had seen the construction of three inclined shafts that accessed 13 subterranean levels. It was the existence of this infrastructure that made reopening the mine economically viable as the most significant work required to access the ore was to de-water the old mine. This took place throughout the summer of 1951 and the flooded shafts were pumped out at a rate of about 70 feet per week. Once reopened in 1952 the mine remained in service again until 1960 when a series of cave-ins halted production. By this time the original deposits discovered by Miller had yielded over 19 million pounds of copper, five million pounds of zinc, 113,500 ounces of silver, 11,000 ounces of gold and 200,000 tons of sulphur bearing pyrite. The mine was briefly reopened again in 1969, this time by the Sullivan Mining Group before finally closing for good in 1973.

With the mine closed the focus of the area’s economy returned, once again, to the agriculture and forestry that it has relied upon 100 years earlier. For the most part, that remains the case even today, although over the past few decades tourism has become an increasingly important economic driver. Today Weedon is a thriving town of about 3,000 people living within Le Haut-Saint-Francois Regional County Municipality. An overwhelmingly francophone community its historical path has taken it a long way from its intended destination as a home for retired British soldiers. But such is the nature of the Eastern Townships, and the manner in which First Nations, English, French and more recent arrivals have all come together to form the rich cultural tapestry that runs so deeply through these hills.