| Hérouxville | |
| Flag Size: | 120x100px |
| Pushpin Map: | Canada Central Quebec |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location in central Quebec |
| Coordinates: | 46.6667°N -109°W |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Established Title: | Founded |
| Established Title1: | Constituted |
| Named For: | Joseph-Euchariste Héroux |
| Leader Title: | Mayor |
| Leader Name: | Bernard Thompson |
| Area Footnotes: | [1] [2] |
| Area Total Km2: | 53.03 |
| Population Total: | 1340 |
| Population As Of: | 2011 |
| Population Density Km2: | 25.3 |
| Population Blank1 Title: | Pop 2006-2011 |
| Population Blank1: | 8.5% |
| Population Blank2 Title: | Dwellings |
| Population Blank2: | 650 |
| Utc Offset: | −5 |
| Utc Offset Dst: | −4 |
| Blank Name: | Highways |
Hérouxville (formerly called Saint-Timothée d'Hérouxville) is a parish municipality in the Mékinac Regional County Municipality in the administrative region of Mauricie, in the province of Quebec, Canada.[1] Its watershed is mainly part of the Batiscanie.
Hérouxville is directly on the route to Saint-Tite and the Festival western de Saint-Tite, in addition to being the northeast gateway to Mauricie, a region renowned for its lush forests and quaint villages.
Hérouxville is small rural farming parish. Its main economic activity is agriculture; forestry and recreational tourism are part of the local economy. Hérouxville also offers its visitors throughout the year the facilities and services of:
According to the revised development plan of the Mékinac Regional County Municipality, effective February 27, 2008, Hérouxville had 104 chalets, 22 farms operating in 1685 hectares under cultivation, 13 shops/services and 3 industrial facilities.[3]
Since 2007 the name of Hérouxville has been known in the lexicon of Quebec as shorthand for intolerance, after the town's councillors instituted a "code of conduct" for an immigrant population which did not exist, in a move which was widely perceived as xenophobic and racist.[4] [5]
The village is crossed by Route 153 between the municipalities of Saint-Tite on the east and Shawinigan on the southwest. Hérouxville is 9.6 km from the center of Saint-Tite and 13.3 km from Grand-Mère.
Hérouxville is the gateway to the northeastern part of the Mauricie, a corner known for its forests and small towns. A farming village, this place offers its visitors the Laurentian Forest, with its lakes and rivers.
The town centre is in the style of the seigneurial period: Rang Saint-Pierre, as Main Street, where the houses are never really distanced but deep soil. Its tallest building is the church Saint-Timothée.
The municipality of Hérouxville extends around the northern part of Lac-à-la-Tortue, while the municipality of Lac-à-la-Tortue administered the rest of the lake and surrounding area. In 2001, the municipality of Lac-à-la-Tortue merged with the city of Shawinigan.
The lake, which is surrounded by cottages and residences, includes the first seaplane base in the civil history of Canada. Airmen arrived there in 1919, inaugurating the first commercial flight of Canadian history, immediately after the end of the World War I. Originally, the aviation of Lac-à-la-Tortue used to monitor forest fires. Gradually, the seaplane base has developed a large tourist resort and for hunting and fishing stays in the northern regions.
Despite its proximity to the Saint-Maurice River, the territory of Hérouxville is drained by three sub-basins:
Thus, the territory of Hérouxville is mainly part of the watershed of the Rivière des Envies, a tributary of the Batiscan River.
A sector of wetland covering three municipalities is southeast of Lac-à-la-Tortue, head of water between the watershed of Lac-à-la-Tortue (including the outlet of Lake Atocas), the rivière à la Tortue and Rivière des Chutes:
The name "Saint-Timothé" was assigned to this Catholic mission, as Tite, Thècle and Timothé were disciples of St. Paul in the first century. The origin of the name "Hérouxville" was a nod of respect to Father Joseph-Euchariste Héroux (1863-1943), founder of this Catholic parish. He exercised his priestly work from 1897 to 1899 in the mission of Saint-Timothé. He opened the civil registers. Through his work, he contributed to the canonical constitution of the parish of Saint-Timothée, on September 15, 1903.
Founded in 1898, the post office in the village was named "Saint-Timothé d'Hérouxville", to pay tribute to Father Héroux. The civil erection of the municipality, as of 13 April 1904, was formalized by publication in the official gazette of Quebec, confirming the name of "Municipality of the Parish of Saint-Timothé". Historically, in popular usage, the terms "Saint-Timothé" and "Hérouxville" were often juxtaposed to designate the town, the village, the station, the post office, the municipality, the school board, etc. This double appellation proved confusing in the public mind. The spelling "Timothée" varied according to the authors or sources: Thimothée, Thimothé, Timothé, etc. In addition, two areas of Montérégie (QC) use the toponym Saint-Timothée, creating occasional errors for deliveries.
To avoid these toponymic confusions, the municipality adopted in 1983 the designation "Saint-Timothé de Hérouxville". The "Commission de toponymie du Québec" (Geographical Names Board of Québec) formalized the toponym "Hérouxville" on January 9, 1986.[7]
The Mauricie's major rivers Saint-Maurice, Batiscan, Sainte-Anne (Les Chenaux) and their tributaries cross the territory of Mékinac RCM
The proximity of Hérouxville with the Saint-Maurice River had a major impact on its economic development from 1850 to the end of the nineteenth century. The first steamboat arrived in batteries to 1853–54. Completed in 1880, the railway from Trois-Rivières reached Grandes-Piles (Saint-Jacques-des-Piles), causing a rush in forestry industry up to the Haute-Mauricie (Upper-Mauricie) area. The construction of the railway to Lake Saint-Jean, then the Transcontinental Railway, and the harnessing of Shawinigan Falls and Grand-Mère (Grand Mother) Falls by hydroelectric dams changed the region. Then batteries were no longer the same economic utility as the site of transhipment between steamship of the Saint-Maurice River and trains.[8]
The village was founded in 1897 by Father Joseph Euchariste Héroux and became the Catholic parish of Saint Timothy as of September 15, 1903. The church was built in 1904 according to the plans designed by architect Charles Lafond. While the civil foundation was recognized April 13, 1904.
Agriculture has played an important role in the history of Hérouxville, including providing supplies for missions and projects of the St-Maurice Valley.
Hérouxville received international attention in January 2007 when its town council passed measures concerning practices which the residents deemed unsuitable for life in Hérouxville for potential new immigrants, despite the fact that the town has no immigrant population.[9] Hérouxville has a population of about 1,300 residents who are entirely White, francophone, and nominally Catholic.
The mayor and the municipal council approved a code of behavior for immigrants, which occurred in the context of a debate on "reasonable accommodation" for other cultures in Quebec.[10] [11] [12] The code forbade carrying a weapon to school (even if symbolic), covering one's face, and indicated that accommodation of prayer in school will not be permitted.[13] It also stated that stoning women or burning them alive is prohibited, as is female genital cutting. It attests that "Our people eat to nourish the body, not the soul" and that health-care professionals "do not have to ask permission to perform blood transfusions."
The code was widely criticized as being premised on racist and insulting cultural stereotypes.[14]
Quebec Premier Jean Charest called Hérouxville's measures "exaggerated" after town councillor André Drouin appeared on a popular Quebec television show called Tout le monde en parle and said the reasonable accommodation situation had reached a state of emergency in Quebec.[15] The town later revised the standards after a delegation of Muslim women from the Canadian Islamic Congress came to meet townspeople.[16]
La Presse columnist Alain Dubuc writes that
In a 2011 documentary, former councillor André Drouin claimed that the creation of the code was a "joke" designed to "provoke" the population in order to make things change.[17]
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Hérouxville had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of 54.72km2, it had a population density of in 2021.[18]
Population trend:[19]
| Year | Population | Variation (%) | Median age | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 4.6% | 49.9 years | ||
| 2011 | 8.5% | 48.9 years | ||
| 2006 | 3.1% | |||
| 2001 | 3.0% | |||
| 1996 | 4.9% | |||
| 1991 |
Mother tongue:
Note: According to the federal census of 2006, 260 inhabitants of Hérouxville have some knowledge of French and English.