Coteau Landing is a village in Quebec situated on the shore of lake St. Francis, just south of the upper entrance to Soulanges Canal. The village’s name comes from the landing-place on the shore of lake St. Francis that was located at the foot of a hillock (coteau), around which the village grew up.

For centuries, the rapids at Cascades, Cedars, and Coteau impeded travel along a twenty-three-kilometre-long stretch of the St. Lawrence River between Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis, just upstream from Montreal. Between 1779 and 1782, the Royal Engineers built three short canals to bypass the Cascades. The first canal encountered as one left Lake St. Louis and headed upstream was “La Faucille,” a 125-metre-long canal, equipped with one lock. Next was “Trou du Moulin,” which was thirty-seven metres long and had no locks, and finally “Split Rock,” which had one lock. A fourth canal was completed near the mouth of the Delisle River in 1782 to bypass the Coteau rapids, while boats were forced to navigate the Cedars rapids. After roughly a decade of use, “La Faucille” and “Trou du Moulin” canals were abandoned in favour of the longer “Cascades” canal built across Cascades Point.

Shortly after the unification of Lower and Upper Canada in 1841, the Board of Public Works decided to build the twenty-four-kilometre-long Beauharnois Canal along the south shore of the river to bypass the three sets of rapids. This canal was finished in 1845 and served for over fifty years until a canal with a greater depth was needed. As this could most easily be accomplished by a canal along the north shore of the river, work on the Soulanges Canal, which is twenty-three kilometres long, has a depth of 4.3 metres, and runs between Pointe-des-Cascades on Lake St. Louis and Coteau-Landing on Lake St. Francis, began in 1892 and was completed in 1899 at a cost of $4,251,158.

The Soulanges Canal was equipped with five locks, each 280 feet long and 46 feet wide, to raise and lower vessels a total of twenty-five metres, and the canal was one of eight that helped link the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. A redbrick, castle-like power house was built eight kilometres from Coteau Landing. At this point, the Grease River passes under the canal through a ten-foot culvert and empties into the St. Lawrence River. This flow of water was used to power two pairs of Victor turbines to generate electricity for powering the locks and lighting the canal so it could operate day and night. The north bank of the canal and piers at the upper entrance to the canal were lined by bright electric arc lights, suspended from white poles at intervals of 400 to 480 feet.

The Department of Railways and Canals of Canada awarded a contract for the construction and installation of range lights for the Soulanges Canal on March 27, 1900 to Farand et Delorme of Montreal. Before permanent range lights were erected, temporary lights consisting of locomotive headlights mounted atop “skeleton-framed towers” were used. On September 12, 1900, Thomas Monro, the civil engineer in charge of the canal, reported: “The fixed red light is working well,” and “it clearly indicates the course to follow.” The range lights were installed in pairs at each end of the canal and allowed the mariner to determine the correct approach to the canal entrances by superimposing a front and rear light.

Before the opening of Soulanges Canal and the establishment of range lights to mark its entrances, a light was placed at Coteau landing in 1872 in the form of a ship’s lantern hoisted on a gallows. Eli Prieur was hired as keeper of this light at an annual salary of $140. In 1877, Alexander Cameron of Lancaster received a $575 contract to construct a square, wooden, pyramidal lighthouse that stood twenty-eight feet tall to replace the earlier light. This lighthouse was placed on the northeast corner of the government pier at Coteau Landing where it exhibited a fixed red catoptric light. E. Chanteloup was paid $355 for the lantern room and lighting apparatus, which consisted of three mammoth, flat-wick lamps set in sixteen-inch reflectors.

Thomas Filiatreault replaced Eli Prieur as keeper in 1890 and served until 1910. A. Gauthier was then in charge of the light for two years followed by W.H.E. Filiatreault, who served until the light was automated in 1914 through the installation of a seventh-order lens and Blau gas illuminant. Blau gas was an artificial illuminating gas similar to propane that was named after its inventor, Dr. Hermann Blau of Augsburg, Germany.

The structure for displaying the light at the wharf at Coteau Landing was likely changed in 1914 as well, as in 1922 it was described as a lantern on a red, square, steel, skeletal tower that was sixteen feet tall.

With the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the Soulanges Canal fell into disuse, but there are reportedly plans to restore the canal and open it as a recreational waterway. Two locks were added to the Beauharnois Canal, which had been rebuilt farther south in 1929 – 1932 as part of a hydroelectric project, to allow it to become part of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Keepers: Eli B. Prieur (1872 – 1890), Thomas Filiatreault (1890 – 1910), A. Gauthier (1910 – 1912), W.H.E. Filiatreault (1912 – 1914).

References

1. Annual Report of the Department of Marine, various years.

No light exists at this location today.

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