^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Kamouraska, Quebec (Canada)

Bas-Saint-Laurent

image by Masao Okazaki, 21 December 2020

Flag

See also:

Flag

Photos of this flag were posted in August 2019 by Luc Vartan Baronian in the FOTW Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/flagsoftheworld/permalink/2837497862931584

I downloaded a shield from the city's website (http://www.kamouraska.ca/images/upload/armoiries-et-logos-1-1565098472.jpg) and used it to produce my best guess drawing of the flag.

The flag appears to be white with two blue vertical stripes of different widths near the hoist and the fly, and the shield in the centre.

Masao Okazaki, 21 December 2020

The municipality of Kamouraska (616 inhabitants in 2016; 4,385 ha) is located 170 km north-east of Quebec.

The domain of Kamouraska was established on the southern shore of the Saint-Lawrence 15 July 1674 by Louis de Buade de Frontenac (1622-1698), Governor of New France (1672-1682; 1689-1698).
The domain was named for the small river that waters it. Louis-François Richer dit Laflèche (1818-1898), 2nd Bishop of Trois-Rivières (1870-1898, claims that he toponym Kamouraska is derived from an Algonquin word meaning "a place where rushes grow near the water".
The first lord of Kamouraska, Olivier Morel (1640-1716), lord of La Durantaye since 29 October 1672, was commander of one of the six companies of Navy Infantry stationed on Quebec. Morel lived in Quebec with his family and did not care for the settlement and development of his domain, except a porpoise fishery he had set up one year before.

Kamouraska was acquired in 1680 by Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye (1632-1702), Lord of Rivière-du-Loup and then the most affluent businessman in New France. Aubert used for years his two domains to illegally trade furs with natives. Kamouraska was land surveyed only in 1692 and plots offered to colonists two years later. Only one inhabitants was recorded in 1693.
Aubert was succeeded in 1700 by his son, Louis Aubert du Forillon. The first church, dedicated to Saint Louis (King of France Louis IX), was built in 1709 while the parish of Kamouraska was canonically erected in 1714.
The domain of Kamouraska was acquired in 1723 by Louis-Joseph Morel de La Durantaye, a son of Olivier Morel, who settled the manor with his family, being the first lord residing in Kamouraska.

Joseph Bouchette, Surveyor General of Lower Canda, visited Kamouraska in 1813, describing a wealthy, active domain inhabited by more than 5,000 and wisely ruled by Pascal Taché (1757-1830), lord since 1790.
Once a regional capital, Kamouraska, located 6 km from the railway, declined with the inauguration of the stations of Saint-Pascal (1857) and Rivière-du-Loup (1860).

The today's municipality of Kamouraska covers only a small part of the former feudal domain, which was subsequently split to form the municipalities of Saint-Pascal, Saint-Denis de la Bouteillerie, Saint-Philippe-de-Néri, Sainte-Hélène and Saint-Germain.

http://www.kamouraska.ca
Municipal website

Louis-Paschal-Achille Taché, Pascal Taché's grandson, married on 1834 Joséphine-éléonore d’Estimauville (1816-1893). The wife soon left his drunkard and violent husband and settled with her two children at her mother, in William Hanry (Sorel). She fell in love there with an American doctor, George Holmes, who decided to kill Taché. After a failed attempt of poisoning by a young servant, Holmes went to Kamouraska and killed Taché with a revolver on 31 January 1839. Arrested and jailed, Joséphine-éléonore denied any involvement in the murder; accused of the poisoning attempt, she was released of all charges in 1841. George Holmes fled to the US, where he was arrested but never extradited to Lower Canada.
The journalist Georges-Isidore Barthe published in 1896 in Sorel the novel "Drames de la vie réelle, roman canadian". In 1970, the writer Anne Hébert published the acclaimed novel "Kamouraska", based on the murder.

http://www.biographi.ca/fr/bio/estimauville_josephine_eleonore_d_12F.html
Dictionnaire biographique du Canada

The arms of Kamouraska are "Vert three reeds or fructed sable a chief wavy azure semy of fleurs-de-lis or. Beneath the shield a scroll or outlined sable inscribed of the same 'Dieu France et Marguerite"'.

The motto refers to St. Louis' three passions, his God, his homeland (France), and his wife (Marguerite de Provence, 1221-1295, married in 1234).

http://www.kamouraska.ca/page/1564512295/armoiries-et-logos
Municipal website

The arms form a kind of rebus of the town's name, allegedly meaning "a place where rushes grow near the water" in Algonquin.
Ivan Sache, 23 December 2020