Coaticook

Coaticook lies on the river of the same name in southeastern Quebec's Eastern Townships, on the border with the United States. The name comes from an Abenaki term, koatikeku, meaning where the river is bordered by white pines, an image of the wooded valley before settlement. The river cuts a gorge beside the settlement, which began in 1818 when Richard Baldwin cleared a parcel of land there. His son then built the first permanent house on the site. In the 1820s and 1830s, British Loyalists and settlers from New England took up farms in the neighbouring townships of Barnston and Barford, around the Coaticook settlement.