Apartment for rent in the Jésuites neighbourhood: neighbourhood guide

The neighbourhood is named after the Jesuits, to whom Henri de Lévis granted the seigneury of Notre-Dame-des-Anges on March 10, 1626. The estate, enlarged in 1637 and 1652, stretched north from the rivière Saint-Charles. The Jesuits only began developing it in 1652. The seigneury kept its boundaries and its farming role until 1855.

In 1742, the Jesuits built a stone water mill, one of a series of six on their seigneury. The rivière des Commissaires, which flowed 1.5 km to the north, was diverted by hand to power it, hence the French expression « amener l’eau au moulin ». Until 1854, the miller was only a tenant of the mill, where he lived with his family.

With the abolition of the seigneurial system in 1854, the mill became private property. It was used in turn as a flour mill, a match factory and a forge; its last owner, blacksmith Philippe Lefebvre, stopped making flour in 1940. In 1936, the Québec-Charlesbourg road, today’s boulevard Henri-Bourassa, linked chemin de la Canardière to the village of Charlesbourg.

Charlesbourg urbanized in the second half of the 20th century. The parish of Saint-Jérôme was established in 1956; its church, opened in 1960, was completed in 1967. The town of Charlesbourg bought the mill in 1982 and restored it in 1990–1992; it now houses a children’s history museum. The neighbourhood’s name was adopted shortly after its first council was elected on February 19, 2008.