In 2009, as Coquitlam’s French-Canadian neighbourhood celebrated its 100th year, the Maillardville Residents’ Association (MRA) shined a spotlight on its pioneers and places.
Through its website, it paid tribute to 100 of Maillardville’s stalwart citizens as well as offered 100 things to see and do and 100 trivia nuggets about the area.
Longtime resident and MRA president Alain Boire took on the history part of the project with the aim to roll out 10 short biographies each month on a specific decade. He remembers the first half of the century being tough to source out. Certain names came easily, such as Fr. Edmond Maillard — a young oblate from France, for whom the neighbourhood is named — and Emery Paré, Maillardville’s first police chief. But gathering 10 new names a month posed a problem.
As the Poirier branch of the Coquitlam Public Library was closed for renovations, Boire drove over to the Terry Fox Library in Port Coquitlam to conduct his research.
Luckily, as the Tri-Cities has continuously had a newspaper in operation since 1911, Boire accessed microfilms showing archival stories published in the Coquitlam Star.
There were articles about this new enclave called Maillardville in Coquitlam sprouting up around the sawmill in Fraser Mills, which at the time was within the boundaries of New Westminster.
Boire dropped his historical project but returned to it about three years later to do more digging. Again, he shelved it.
But it was restarted earlier this year as the city of Coquitlam marked its 125th anniversary.
Next week, Boire will launch his finished product: a 332-page paperback titled With Hearts and Minds: Maillardville, 100 Years of History on the West Coast of BC. The tome is the first historical book solely about Maillardville.
And it is dedicated, in part, to Jean Lambert — a Maillardville pioneer and a Freedom of the City recipient — and contains an index by Maurice Guibord of Société historique francophone de la Columbie-Britannique. It also contains a timeline and information provided by Emily Lonie, Coquitlam’s archivist, and Bernie Théroux, a Pitt Meadows resident who is the grandson of Théodore Théroux.
Théodore Théroux is often referred to as the night watchman at Fraser Mills but he played a bigger role in the development of Maillardville, Boire writes in his book.
In 1909, after Alexander Duncan McRae and his company purchased the Fraser River Lumber Company, Théroux and Fr. William Patrick O’Boyle (a representative of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver), were tasked with bringing 100 men from Quebec to work at the mill.
McRae’s aim? To displace the Chinese, Japanese and Indian labourers who were caught in the growing anti-Asian sentiment in Vancouver at the time.
Théroux and O’Boyle offered the French-Canadians the opportunity to make higher wages, year round. They also offered cheap land to build homes for their families, on District Lot 46 — the parcel bought by the company from the district of Coquitlam to house its workers — later known as Maillardville.
Most importantly, they also promised them they could keep their language and culture.
The “experiment” of recruiting Quebecois was watched closely. Théroux himself wrote to premier Richard McBride about his journeys — the second happening in May 1910, when he had the help of a 16-year-old bilingual newspaper seller at an Ontario train station named Jean-Baptiste “Johnny” Dicaire. In his book, Boire provides Théroux’s complete list of settlers from his 1909 and 1910 “colonization” groups — a total of 385 “souls,” he wrote to the premier.
Still, Boire’s events-based book also provides tales about Maillardville’s golden years — the 1940s, when it had its own cinema — and its decline in the 1970s.
A Centennial graduate and former executive director of Place Maillardville, Boire said he enjoyed delving into the past of his hometown.
“It was a lot of fun doing it,” he said. “It was like a treasure hunt for me.”
• Copies of With Hearts and Minds: Maillardville, 100 Years of History on the West Coast of BC will be available at Al Boire’s book launch on Nov. 8 and via amazon.ca.
jcleugh@tricitynews.com
BOOK LAUNCH
On Tuesday, Nov. 8, Al Boire will unveil his debut book With Hearts and Minds: Maillardville, 100 Years of History on the West Coast of BC. The event takes place at 7 p.m. at Centre Bel Age (in Place Maillardville community centre, 1200 Cartier Ave., Coquitlam).
