A few word on the history of the Roman Catholic parish of Sainte-Claire d’Assise.

The village of Rivière-Beaudette is located in the province of Quebec on the most eastern border point of the province of Ontario. This village was created from a part of the Nouvelle-Longueuil Seigniory conceded by the marquis de Beauharnois and Gilles Hocquart, respectively governor and the administrator of Nouvelle-France to Sir Joseph Lemoyne, knight of Longueuil.

Here is, in a few short words is the explanation on the name Rivière-Beaudette. On the foreland of the delta of the small river, there was built at the beginning of the century, a small relay outpost for the travelers of the heights, and for anyone there has been made available inside a bed nicknamed beaudet for the travelers to rest. Then one day, the little construction was destroyed leaving as a unique memento "its bed nicknamed beaudet," which stand there for many years and was always noted by boater and coureurs-de-bois passing by on the river and this became a landmark for all and everyone that continued to call the place by the same name. This was the origin of La pointe au beaudet.

The municipality of the village of Rivière-Beaudette received its official civil registration on October 4^th 1916 and its has now a population of 1402 persons and more than 2000 persons within tourists season.(Ref: La Cartothèque Géo-Montages Ltée, 1996 2° édition)

The growth of the Sainte-Claire d’Assise of Rivière-Beaudette parish has been achieved through many distinct stages. The actual church was opened as a place of worship on June 4^th 1905. The old chapel was at the time build out of wood and it was erected nearby the early school on the land given by Christin LeRoux.

On July 2nd 1905, Mgr. Médard Émard blessed and consecrated the first chapel with mostly all the parishioners being present. According to the statistics of the time, the servicing of the parish counted 63 families including 8 English speaking families; 232 partaking of the holy communion and 180 non-partaking. The canonical erection of the parish took place officially on April 15^th 1916 and at the same time, the area of the former parish was enlarged in a considerable way, with a part of Saint-Zotique added to it; with that, an amount of 25 families were added to the parish and following this annexation, the first pastor was named which was D.N. Legros.

Through the following decades, improvements were done to the actual church building. On February 1922, a steel structure was added in order to solidify the old structure which was now defective and dangerous. Afterward, on July 1926, a sacristy was constructed at the same time as a new belfry on and over the roof of the church. (extract of the daily newspaper "Le Journal", article by Daniel Grenier)

Behind the church, there is the parish cemetery where my father Victor LeRoux and my grandfather Osias LeRoux are buried and rest forever.