Kamouraska

Kamouraska’s seigneury was granted by Frontenac to Olivier Morel de La Durantaye on 15 July 1674. The grant concerned a shore already used by Indigenous peoples, rather than an uninhabited landscape. Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye acquired the seigneury in 1680, but development was initially limited. The municipality’s history dates the arrival of the first colonial settlers to 1694.

Land grants and church building then gave the settled shore a more concentrated institutional life. In 1759, during the Seven Years’ War, a British attack devastated the district. Rebuilding followed, and the Taché family became important in its economic and social development. Kamouraska’s early colonial history thus includes a substantial interval between the legal grant of a seigneury and the growth of a farming community, followed by destruction and recovery along the Saint Lawrence.