TourBackpacker: Wink : How Rouyn-Noranda came into existence

How, why and when was my home town of Rouyn-Noranda discovered. In the beginning of the 1900's, there was one man Edmund Horne. He was a prospector from Nova Scotia. He was the first to set foot on the actual town site. After a third search he found a huge copper deposit. In these years there was nothing but forests and lakes in this region. By the late 1920's there was a small village that started growing after many people came mainly for mining.

Edmund Horne

Rouyn was named by the name of Sir Jean-Baptiste de Rouyn and became a municipality in 1926. A second town came to life to serve the needs of the mine. Noranda was that second town, originally named from two words 'Northern Canada'' and became Noranda. It also becomes a town in 1926.

The first settlers and their homes

In 1937, the local newspaper 'La Frontiere' makes it's first copies (sign of a growing community), it still is in print to this day. In 1940, there is finally a road that is built to join Rouyn to main cities of the province like Montreal. Between the 50's and the 60's, the french and english languages have been part of the story in these years. Noranda was mostly english due to the eastern European foreigners (polish, Italians, Yugoslavs, Germans and Ukrainians, hired to work in the mine, while Rouyn was mostly french the regular french canadians settlers. A unique landscape in those days where a synagogue, a Russian Orthodox Church and Catholic Church all in the same urban area. The population mostly english in the beginning became mostly french later on to up to 80%.

Since 1966, Rouyn and Noranda are named the capital of the region of Abitibi-Temiscamingue. In '76 the mine definitely stops extracting ore, over 59 million tons of copper, gold and silver were extracted in almost 50 years of activity. It soon becomes one of the biggest foundry in Canada that keeps the town running. The sister towns lived has peaceful neighbors for a long time. It became one and only city in 1986, becoming Rouyn-Noranda.

Maison Dumulon - First General Store of Rouyn, built in 1924 and still standing

In 2001, the town celebrated it's 75th birthday with over 35 000 in population. The population is now a little over 41 000 since the town had to join with many smaller village around, which are now neighborhoods.

So this was a quick 'Wink' at how my hometown came to be what it is now.

Source : Archive pictures from 'Bibliotheque et archives Nationale Quebec'

Following are some pictures of the town today.