Rimouski

At the mouth of the Rimouski River, the south shore of the St Lawrence looks across a broad estuary towards the distant north bank. The name Rimouski comes from an Indigenous language and recalls the moose once hunted in the area. Here a small seigneurial settlement took root beside the river, surrounded by forest and dependent on the waterway for access to the rest of the colony.

René Lepage acquired the seigneury in 1694 and came to live there with his family in 1696. His descendants cleared land and expanded the settlement; in 1751 Pierre Lepage obtained an enlargement of the seigneury towards Pointe-au-Père. Growth remained slow, and the community relied on visiting priests for many years. From 1790 the Québec merchant Joseph Drapeau acquired shares in the seigneury from his debtors, eventually bringing the Lepage family's long association with it to an end.