Source: Courtesy of Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec / 52327/1956203

SCALLON, ÉDOUARD, businessman; b. 1813 at Saint-David-d’Yamaska, Lower Canada, son of Mathew Scallon, an Irishman who immigrated to Canada in 1810; d. 15 March 1864 at Joliette, Canada East.

In 1837, at age 24, Édouard Scallon settled at L’Industrie (Joliette), and went into partnership with Barthélemy Joliette*, the local seigneur, and Joliette’s brother-in-law Charles Peter Loedel, both of whom were contractors and lumber merchants. They exploited the forest on the banks of the Rivière L’Assomption, upstream from the village of L’Industrie. The partnership lasted ten years. During this period Scallon diversified his investments and in 1840 bought the distillery built by Barthélemy Joliette. Unfortunately it was gutted by fire the following year, and Scallon decided not to rebuild.

In 1847 the three partners and Gaspard Tarieu Taillant de Lanaudière had the St Lawrence and Industry Village Rail-road Company incorporated. This railway was to link the St Lawrence and L’Assomption rivers following the dividing line between the seigneuries of Lavaltrie and Lanoraie. On 15 July 1853 the Societé d’Exploitation Forestière Scallon et Leprohon was formed, which included, besides Scallon, the principal contractors of the region: Bernard-Henri Leprohon, Gaspard de Lanaudière, and his aunt Marie-Charlotte Tarieu Taillant de Lanaudière, Barthélemy Joliette’s widow. The company worked a farm and more than 120 miles of forest. That year Scallon built a sawmill and a flour mill. Five years later he sold the sawmill to an American for $20,000.

Through the lumber business Édouard Scallon managed to amass a fortune evaluated at about $100,000 at the time of his death in 1864. He was involved in land speculation and was probably the largest money-lender in the district. He even lent sums to Marie-Charlotte de Lanaudière, the seigneur of Lavaltrie, at the extremely high rate of 12 per cent, and took back mortgages on ten of her properties, including the fief of Lavaltrie.

Short and unprepossessing, Scallon was a cultivated man who had many contacts in other countries, particularly the United States and England. In 1862 he took a ten-month rest cure in France. He was the founder and president of an affiliate at Joliette of the Institut Canadien of Montreal, namely the Institut d’Artisans et Association de Bibliothèque of L’Industrie, which was formed in 1858.

In his will Scallon bequeathed most of his fortune to the parish of Joliette for the construction of a trades school for the less privileged, and to the Sisters of Providence for the expansion of the hospital built on land he had already given them. The École Industrielle, which opened in 1884, became a kindergarten after 1905.

Édouard Scallon died suddenly on 15 March 1864 at age 51, when he was at one of his lumber camps. He was certainly one of the most important architects of the rapid growth of Joliette and the surrounding district. His marriage with Mathilde Ducondu, on 14 Sept. 1841, was childless, but he adopted a daughter, Hermine.

Roger Barrette