Louise Abbott’s six-year project finally concluded
With just weeks before Volume 2 of Memphrémagog: An Illustrated History / Une histoire illustrée (Volume 1) is to be launched, last Saturday the acclaimed Eastern Townships-based documentarian, Louise Abbott, accompanied by her husband and co-photographer, Niels Jensen, and publicist Hélène Hamel, swung down to Newport, Vt., which is at the end of the 33-mile long international lake to present the basis and bones of her most recent work.
The full house of members from both the Memphremagog Arts Centre and the Memphremagog Watershed Association were hushed in awe during Abbott’s presentation featuring some photos from Volume 2, and video clips of lake people reminiscing life then and now.
It has been six years since the author, videographer, photographer, documentarian, and lover of rural life whose passion for local history emulates in all her work and conversation set out to produce a landscape history of Lake Memphremagog. What was to be one book became two volumes. They are both bilingual compendiums of narrative and visuals of the lake. Abbott says that there was simply too much information for one publication that needed to be imparted given all the elements that she wanted to cover.
One could say that this journey has been the epitome of love for the land and water that Abbott has carried in her heart since she was a child. A stickler for accuracy, Abbott says that she could not have brought the ambitious project to the finish line without her two part-time re-
searchers, a translator, her husband, and the enormous support of the Bannerman Family Foundation. Similar to Volume 1 for Volume 2 Abbott gleaned information from archival sources for information as well as from interviews with many permanent or part-time residents of the region. And along the way she has met with many people who shared colourful anecdotes and images of yesteryear to now — people who took time to show her around both on land and by boat.
Abbott says that landscape history is little touched upon on the Canadian side of the border. “My inspiration (for this project) came from landscape histories of New England, in particular, a book called Thoreau’s Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape, in which the author, David Foster, cites Henry David Thoreau’s 19th-century descriptions of the landscape and then compares them with the contemporary landscape. Landscape history was still very young in Canada when I started on my research; I was able to find only a couple of landscape histories here, both of them from Ontario.”
She wanted to learn what the landscape of the Memphremagog region had looked like long before her family had put up a cottage near Vale Perkins in the late 1940s and who later became gentleman farmers on a property reaching Gibralter Point and Austin Bay. She wanted to understand what it had looked like before human beings had ever seen it and to trace the evolution of the landscape from prehistoric times to today.
While in Volume 1, Abbott traced the geological origins of the Memphremagog region and looked at the lives and imprint of the indigenous peoples, the arrival of colonists and the working landscape of the area, she has focused on the recreational landscape in Volume 2. She says, “In Volume 1 I also looked at the transportation infrastructure that developed to meet the needs of the colonists and the industries that arose. I ended with a survey of painters who portrayed the Memphremagog region. I wanted that chapter to serve as a transition to Volume 2, which explores the evolution of the recreational landscape.” Abbott looks at the evolution of the recreational landscape, beginning with the advent of steam travel and the development of tourism in the mid-nineteenth century. “There were two steamboats that dominated the lake for decades.”
Abbott says that the final chapter in the Volume 2 deals with the critical issue of conservation. “It examines the pressures on the lake and the efforts that Memphremagog Conservation Inc. and the Memphremagog Watershed Association are making to counteract those pressures. It is my hope that an understanding of the history of the recreational landscape might assist landowners, politicians, and conservation groups in making decisions that affect not only the human occupants of the Memphremagog region and beyond but also the wildlife and vegetation that rely on the lake and lakeshore for survival.”
That Volume 1 was so popular it sold out quickly. Abbott is happy for the opportunity to have an additional 500 copies reprinted and made available this summer along with 1,500 copies of Volume 2. A percentage of the sales will once again be donated to Memphremagog Conservation Inc. Retailing at $79, copies of Volumes 1 and 2 of Memphrémagog: An Illustrated History / Une histoire illustrée can be picked up during the three scheduled launches where the author will be on site to write a personal autograph:
Saturday, July 8, Galerie Courtemanche, 820 rue Prinicipale Ouest, Magog, 1 to 4 p.m.
Thursday, July 13, Neil Manson’s Barn, four corners at Austin, 5 to 7 p.m.
Saturday, July 15, Studio Georgeville, 20 carré Copp, Georgeville, 2 to 4 p.m.
If you miss the launches orders for the books can be made by emailing Hélène Hamel at: hphamel322@hotmail.com.