Huntingdon is a small town in
Huntingdon County in the
Haut-Saint-Laurent Regional County Municipality and the
Montérégie region of the province of
Quebec,
Canada. The population as of the
Canada 2006 Census was 2,587. The town is located 75 kilometers (46 miles) southwest of
Montréal, and only a few miles from the border with
New York State.
History
The town was first settled by
British soldiers after the
War of 1812 and the fertile land in the area led to a successful farming economy. Once the fear of attack from the
Americans was gone, in the 1820s businessmen established lumber and grist mills on the banks of the
Chateauguay River.
During the first few decades of the 20th century, when transport from major urban centers to the outlying rural areas became economically feasible, the textile industry began expanding at a rapid rate in various towns throughout the province of Quebec. By the 1930s, Huntingdon was home to a small but thriving textile industry. After
World War II, entrepreneurs François Cleyn and Alec Tinker acquired the textile businesses in Huntingdon and built their company, Cleyn & Tinker Limited, into one of the most successful woolen mills in all of Canada. In Huntingdon, the business expanded to five interconnected operations around the town and the decades of the 1950s through to the early part of the 1970s saw the town prosper and the company acquire subsidiaries in
Sherbrooke,
Quebec and in
Castlecomer,
Kilkenny,
Ireland.