====== McBain, Alexander ====== (died 18 July 1830), lumberman and pioneer. Alexander McBain, from GC, was lumbering on the Laguerre River, in Huntingdon County, Que. (across the St. Lawrence from GC) by 1820. He is remembered as the founder, or one of the principal founders, of the village of Laguerre, on the Laguerre River. In 1823 he built a store in the area where the village was to grow up. McBain had men employed in asheries and lumbering in the area. Just before his death, he took a load of timber of Quebec City, and on his way back purchased supplies for his store. He was killed near his home at the house of a Dr Fortune by a bolt of lightning. His small daughter, who was sitting on his lap, was injured but survived. At the time this happened Alexander McBain was with his father, who was waiting for the subsiding of a storm on the lake to return to his home. Sellar calls McBain’s death an “irreparable blow” to Laguerre and says that “The sudden and entire suspension of his business by the removal of its leading-spirit, gave a blow to the embryo village from which it never rallied.” (pp. 228-229) The village of Laguerre was further injured by the growth of steam transport on the St. Lawrence, which introduced vessels too large to navigate the waters of the Laguerre, and by the local flooding caused by the completion in 1849 of the dam at Valleyfield. Alexander McBain’s widow remarried to a John MacDonald, a native of Scotland, who became in his time the dominant figure of Laguerre. The site of Laguerre is honoured today as that of one of Canada’s “lost villages.” However, the stone Calvin Presbyterian Church, completed in 1851 (and still standing as an impressive ruin in 1995), continued in use into the 1940s. The Rev. John McKenzie and Rev. John Anderson, crossing over from GC, conducted religious services at Laguerre. ---- Sellar (1963) 218-231 * Fraser (1959), various refs. and map, but esp. Chap. 15: “The Deserted Village.” * Ingrid Peritz, “Ruins Tell Tale of Once-Thriving Pioneer Village,” //Ottawa Citizen// 15 May 1995 (also printed //Montreal Gazette//) [<6>]