If these roads could speak: Tales of Sutton

Glen Sutton is one of the oldest hamlets in the Township of Sutton. It is nestled in the magnificent Missisquoi River valley and surrounded by mountains. Come and admire its fields, barns and old homes: just follow the picturesque route called The Townships Trail (Chemin des Cantons) a road that takes you deep into the Anglo-American heritage of the Eastern Townships.

Two studies have noted that the Missisquoi River valley in the Sutton area, which includes the hamlet of Glen Sutton, is of national and even international interest, and endowed with great visual appeal. The riverbanks and floodplain create a rich natural resource.

The Missisquoi valley is also a symbol of the daily cross-border life experienced by Glen Sutton inhabitants for over a century: families living on both sides of the border, buildings built right on top of the boundary line, people smuggling alcohol during Prohibition in the United States, “international” businesses, not to mention architecture that drew its inspiration from Vermont and New England. It was definitely a “border culture,” an identity forged since settlement began in 1799.

1816 is known as the year of freezing and starvation, the year without a summer …

Throughout the northern hemisphere, the ecological balance was off. Countless species of birds that were normally only seen in the depths of the forest, invaded the cities. Birds fell dead to the streets. Trees lost their budding leaves. Elsewhere on the planet, snowfalls were stained with brown, blue, yellow and sometimes even red!

People speculated wildly on the probable causes of this strange phenomenon. Some blamed sunspots, others an avenging God. Some even went so far as to blame Benjamin Franklin, accusing his new and widespread invention of the lightning rod of blocking the sun's rays from warming the Earth.

The real cause was the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora. Its power was such that thousands of cubic meters of debris and ash, not to mention 200 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas, were projected into the stratosphere. A fine dust permeated the earth's atmosphere for several years, filtering out the sunlight. This caused the earth's temperature to drop drastically, especially in the northern hemisphere.

In Sutton, the desperate pioneers planted a second crop of corn, potatoes and beans between the two periods of freezing but to no avail. Corn was the staple food for poor families, and without it, starvation became inevitable. Almost 90% of the harvest failed in certain areas of Quebec. And the cost of what little food did survive the frosts soared out of the reach of many.

In Europe, famine provoked riots: armed crowds stormed bakeries and grain markets. Some historians believed that this famine created conditions conducive to the typhus epidemic that killed millions of people from 1817 to 1819. Mary Shelley was inspired by the darkness of 1816 and its stormy nights to write her novel Frankenstein. Its dark and gloomy atmosphere echoed the conditions in much of the world.

Here in our region, 1816 was the "straw that broke the camel's back" for many pioneers who couldn’t face the misery of the first years of settlement. Many left for the cities or went West to places like Ohio or the Northwest Territories, convinced that Sutton's climate had changed permanently. Richford, on the other side of the border, became a ghost town. The few inhabitants who decided to remain survived with difficulty.

The story of the Jones family can be found in the first history book of the Eastern Townships.
This text is largely based on an article by Carol-Ann Griffin, “Sutton’s Year Without a Summer” published in the fourth Heritage Sutton booklet in 2004. The Heritage Sutton booklets are a goldmine of information about Sutton’s history and heritage.

The Historic Glen Sutton Church is open for group tours. Please book at least three days in advance before coming to the site. Call (514) 948-1313 or write to [email protected]