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Riviere Chaude Farm
Pont-Rouge, Quebec, Canada
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Brief History of Farm
by Derek Hill
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While he was surveying land for a suitable railway corridor between Quebec City and Montreal in the early 1870’s, a young civil engineer came across an idyllic location along the Jacques-Cartier River in Pont-Rouge.
Alexander Sewell, my great-grandfather, was so enamoured by what he saw that he soon acquired the land that bordered this quaint elbow of the river. Within a few years, he started to build a small farm and house, which he called Sewell Place.
Alexander died at the young age of 52 and the farm was left to his daughters Janie and Constance Sewell who maintained the farm with hired help. Janie married my grandfather Shuldum Hill and they moved to live in Ottawa but she died shortly my father was born .My father, Graham Hill, then spent much of his youth visiting the farm and staying with his Aunt Constance who had remained in Pont Rouge. He too developed a desire to make this location his home and future. After completing his studies in agriculture, my father bought the land from his aunt and proceeded to expand the farm by building a new barn, adding egg production to the dairy operation and buying more land to grow crops.
Next to carry on with the family farm was my older brother Gary who completed his agricultural studies at McGill’s MacDonald College in the late 1960’s. He wasted little time in putting his innovative ideas to work and the farm soon expanded with more buildings, new machinery and still more land to sustain the growing herd. Despite a fire, which completely destroyed the main barn in 1972 and killed some 50 promising dairy cattle, Gary and my father plunged right back in and rebuilt a modern free-stall barn with a high-tech milking parlour. All his improvements were just starting to gather momentum when Gary met a tragic death in 1975, falling victim to a tractor accident in which his lose clothing became tangled in a rotating power take-off shaft.
It was at that saddened moment that I was forced to do a lot of personal soul-searching in trying to decide whether I would leave my cushy job in Quebec City and return to take over the family farm. The draw of the land and all it could offer won out and I was soon back in Pont-Rouge, making my summer home my permanent home where my wife and I raised three children while adapting to our new life.
A few years later, my sister Barbara decided to return to the family farm and assist me in taking the farm further down the road of improvements. Today we operate the farm in partnership with her tending to the milking, breeding and accounting while I focus my attention on feeding, machinery maintenance, automation and crop production. We are both supported by Yves Germain who has been our loyal and competent employee for more than 20 years. All of our children have contributed as well over the years and my youngest son, Jason, will be attending MacDonald College starting next fall in the hopes of someday being able to take over the operation and thus continuing family farm into yet another generation.
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Sewell Place
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Farm's first barn
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Dad(left) and farmhand quenching a thirst
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Dairy barn built in 1942
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Fire destroyed entire barn in March 1972
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