History
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St-Timotée Hérouxville parrish church
The proximity of Hérouxville with the Saint-Maurice River had a major impact on its economic development from 1850 to the end of the nineteenth century. The first steamboat arrived in batteries to 1853–54. Completed in 1880, the railway from Trois-Rivières reached Grandes-Piles (Saint-Jacques-des-Piles), causing a rush in forestry industry up to the Haute-Mauricie (Upper-Mauricie) area. The construction of the railway to Lake Saint-Jean, then the Transcontinental Railway, and the harnessing of Shawinigan Falls and Grand-Mère (Grand Mother) Falls by hydroelectric dams changed the region. Then batteries were no longer the same economic utility as the site of transhipment between steamship of the Saint-Maurice River and trains.
The name "Saint-Timothé" was assigned to this Catholic mission, as Tite, Thècle and Timothé were disciples of St. Paul in the first century. The origin of the name "Hérouxville" was a nod of respect to Father Joseph-Euchariste Héroux (1863-1943), founder of this Catholic parish. He exercised his priestly work from 1897 to 1899 in the mission of Saint-Timothé. He opened the civil registers. Through his work, he contributed to the canonical constitution of the parish of Saint-Timothée, on September 15, 1903.
Founded in 1898, the post office in the village was named "Saint-Timothé d'Hérouxville", to pay tribute to Father Héroux. The civil erection of the municipality, as of 13 April 1904, was formalized by publication in the official gazette of Quebec, confirming the name of "Municipality of the Parish of Saint-Timothé". Historically, in popular usage, the terms "Saint-Timothé" and "Hérouxville" were often juxtaposed to designate the town, the village, the station, the post office, the municipality, the school board, etc. This double appellation proved confusing in the public mind. The spelling "Timothée" varied according to the authors or sources: Thimothée, Thimothé, Timothé, etc. In addition, two areas of Montérégie (QC) use the toponym Saint-Timothée, creating occasional errors for deliveries.
The village was founded in 1897 by Father Joseph Euchariste Héroux and became the Catholic parish of Saint Timothy as of September 15, 1903. The church was built in 1904 according to the plans designed by architect Charles Lafond. While the civil foundation was recognized April 13, 1904.
Agriculture has played an important role in the history of Hérouxville, including providing supplies for missions and projects of the St-Maurice Valley.
To avoid the toponymic confusions, the municipality adopted in 1983 the designation "Saint-Timothé de Hérouxville". The "Commission de toponymie du Québec" (Geographical Names Board of Québec) formalized the toponym "Hérouxville" on January 9, 1986.
Code of conduct[edit]
Hérouxville received international attention in January 2007 when its town council passed measures concerning practices which the residents deemed unsuitable for life in Hérouxville for potential new immigrants, despite the fact that the town has no immigrant population. Hérouxville has a population of about 1,300 residents who are entirely White, francophone, and nominally Catholic.
The mayor and the municipal council approved a code of behavior for immigrants, which occurred in the context of a debate on "reasonable accommodation" for other cultures in Quebec. The code forbade carrying a weapon to school (even if symbolic), covering one's face, and indicated that accommodation of prayer in school will not be permitted. It also stated that stoning women or burning them alive is prohibited, as is female genital cutting. It attests that "Our people eat to nourish the body, not the soul" and that health-care professionals "do not have to ask permission to perform blood transfusions."
The code was widely criticized as being premised on racist and insulting cultural stereotypes. The Montreal Gazette noted that "while the values espoused might be universal, the code has sparked an international controversy because the intention appears to be to scare off newcomers with a code that presumes the worst of them."
Quebec Premier Jean Charest called Hérouxville's measures "exaggerated" after town councillor André Drouin appeared on a popular Quebec television show called Tout le monde en parle and said the reasonable accommodation situation had reached a state of emergency in Quebec. The town later revised the standards after a delegation of Muslim women from the Canadian Islamic Congress came to meet townspeople.
La Presse columnist Alain Dubuc wrote that:
Although Hérouxville's reaction was xenophobic, immigrants may not be the main target of this revolt ... There is something else at work here, and it's the revolt against the big city, its ideas, its lifestyle, its influence. What happened in Hérouxville is the ultimate expression of the fracture between the metropolis and the regions ... Hérouxville was angered by the tolerance of Montrealers, by their passivity towards the changes brought out by immigration, by their multi-ethnic culture, their rejection of religion, their 'gay village' and their arrogant elites. For small towns such as Hérouxville, the real threat to their identity has little to do with veil-clad Muslim women, it is the urban world that is gradually drifting away from the traditional model.[quote needs citation]
In a 2011 documentary, former councillor André Drouin claimed that the creation of the code was a "joke" designed to "provoke" the population in order to make things change.
