Last modified: 2017-04-12 by rob raeside
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The municipality of Île-Dorval (5 inhabitants in 2016, therefore the least
populated Canadian municipality; 19 ha, therefore the smallest Canadian
municipality by its area) covers the island of the same name, which is located
500 m off the southern coast of the Island of Montreal. Accessed only by a
ferry, the island is made of 58 summer estates. Incorporated as a town in 1915,
Île-Dorval was merged with Montreal in 2002 and recovered municipal independence
in 2006.
Dorval Island and the two neighbouring islets were originally
known as Courcelles Islands, for the Governor de Courcelles, who granted them in
1668 to Pierre Picoté de Belestre. In 1673, François de Dalignac de la
Mothe-Fénélon was commissioned to establish an Amerindian mission on the
islands. purchased that year by the Order of Saint-Sulpice. After the failure of
the mission, the Order transferred the islands to Agathe Saint-Pierre, who would
marry Pierre Le Gardeur de Repentigny. The next owner, Lean Bouchard, lord
Dorval, assigned in 1691 new names to the islands: Dorval, Bouchard (aka Boucher
/ Bushy), and Dixie. Acquired in 1751 by Antoine Meloche, Dorval Island was then
used as a source of wood and a place of stopping by fur traders. Sir George
Simpson, President of the Company of the Hudson Bay, acquired Dorval Island in
1857, and erected a summer manor in the western part of the island. He welcomed
here famous guests, such as Prince of Wales Albert Edward (later, King Edward
VII), the painter Frances Hopkins and the photographer William Notman. After the
death of Simpson in 1860, the island was rented by General Fenwick Williams,
Commander in Chief of the British force in North America., who established a
military camp and a cemetery.
The Supreme Court invalidated in 1899 the sale of the island made in 1854,
allowing the return of the Meloche family, which would stay there until 1911.
The three Meloche brothers sold the island in 1911 to Samuel Carsley, a real
estate agent from Montreal. The next year his son, Leonard Carsley, formed with
Robert Mitchell Ballantyne and Peter William McLagan The Dorval Island Park Co.
Ltd., which purchased the island to establish a "pleasure park".
http://patrimoine.ville.montreal.qc.ca/inventaire/fiche_zone.php?zone=oui&requete=simple&id=1246
- Grand répertoire du patrimoine bâti de Montréal
Ivan Sache, 28 March 2017
The flag is shown by François Beaudoin in Symboles de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal, Vexilla Belgica, 1982. It is red with a shield placed inside a green ring.