Heritage

The Pioneer Cemetery is designated as a local historic place for its value with regards to the village pioneers and the 17 victims of the Spanish Flu of 1918, buried in the back right-hand side of the old cemetery (the south-west end), under certain tombs of the second generation of parishioners of Saint-Antoine. The corpses of the village's first residents were buried between 1834 and 1926, behind the religious buildings that occupied the land, before the new cemetery (1926) was established near the stone church. In 1918, after the Great War, the Spanish Flu ravaged through Saint-Antoine like it did elsewhere in Canada and abroad. During the month of October of that year, 17 parishioners were taken by the disease. Since the wooden crosses used as headstones were damaged by inclement weather, we have lost track of the exact spot where our ancestors were buried. Only those made of stone indicate clearly where some of the settlers and victims of the Spanish Flu were laid to rest.