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Carleton Place Heritage Project - Part 2

The Founder: Napoleon Lavallee (1802-1890)


          Napoleon “Paul” Lavallee was born to English parents in the province of Quebec on February 20th, 1802. He received minimal education as a child, put proved to be hardworking and clever. He left home at the age of fourteen, and proceeded into an extraordinary life of multiple careers, transcontinental travel, and financial success. In his early adulthood, Lavallee worked for the North West Fur Company - later bought up by the Hudson’s Bay Company, for whom he adventurously transported goods by dog train. During this time he displayed a remarkable aptitude for learning and memorization, reportedly astonishing both his employers and fellow travelers with his ready and rapidly acquired knowledge of North American geography and industry.[1]
          Eventually Lavallee moved to Toronto where he apprenticed as a cooper, but he was not ready to settle down just yet. In fact, he used this trade to travel across Canada and into the United States, working his way down the American Mississippi River to New Orleans, where he stayed for some time before heading north again. Lavallee finally settled for a while in Ogdensburg, New York, where he became respected and well liked. He developed a reputation as a raconteur, and told entertaining stories about his travels. While there, a friend recommended him to a Mr. Bellows, who was looking for a cooper for the small, burgeoning settlement of Carleton Place in Lanark County. Bellows was a successful merchant and Carleton Place’s first Postmaster, and in 1830 he invited Napoleon Lavallee to set up shop there.[2]

          Lavallee arrived in Carleton Place at the age of twenty eight, when Carleton Place had only just been renamed from its original moniker, Morphy’s Falls. Harnessing the power of the Canadian Mississippi River, local farms, gristmills and sawmills were flourishing into a profitable industry, and the village was now expanding beyond its origins as a lumber outpost.[3] Lavallee served the town as a cooper for over a decade, during which he leveraged his expertise to gain the regional position of Government Inspector of Pork. Then, in 1833 he married Sarah Paris, a local widow, and also adopted her son Hugh.[4]
          By 1846 Lavallee had saved enough money to leave the coopering business, and bought a two-storey hotel at the top of Bridge Street from local businessman James Bell. The building had been constructed in the 1830s, and was one of Carleton Place’s earliest stone structures.[5] The prestige of owning a stone building in the growing town would not have been lost on the new proprietor, who refurbished and renamed the business upon its acquisition, calling it the Carleton House Hotel. The hotel thrived under its new management, but with his limited education Lavallee was unable to administer to the bookkeeping. Instead, he hired his close friend Robert Bell (a relative of James Bell), to manage his financial operations, and this arrangement would continue for the rest of their lives. As the town grew and the hotel prospered, so did Lavallee, and soon he found a new way to expand his business interests yet again.

          Lanark County had been quickly gaining a reputation in the mid-19th century for its role in the lime industry. Limestone was plentiful in the nearby Beckwith area, and was useful both as a construction material and for the numerous chemical applications of lime - its cooked and pulverized derivative. Sometime in the 1850s, Lavallee decided to invest in this local industry, and constructed the first lime kiln in Carleton Place on his farm (the boundaries of which would someday be transformed into Napoleon Street and Lavallee Creek). The kiln proved to be a invaluable asset both to Lavallee and to the town in the long term. The business would continue to grow, providing jobs and income for the community well into the 1970s.[6]

          Early in 1852, financially secure and having laid down strong roots in his community, Lavallee felt an overwhelming urge to travel again. So, taking $200 (a considerable sum for the time), he, his wife Sarah, their son Hugh, and a friend of Hugh’s, all set off for California and South America. For this journey Napoleon and his family could afford to travel comfortably, and they did so, visiting towns and hotels across the continents. By 1853 they had made their way to Australia, where they stayed for a few years, and Hugh and his friend took jobs in a local mining operation. Sadly, one day, the mine caved in, and both young men were killed. Unable to bear the loss, Napoleon and Sarah returned home, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. Over the following years the couple would adopt more children from the local community, but they would never have any of their own.[7]

          By 1870, Napoleon Lavallee's businesses had outgrown the Carleton House Hotel. This was partly due to the influx of travelers borne on the Brockville and Ottawa Railway, which had come to Carleton Place in 1857, and also to the new Canadian Pacific Railway, which was brought through the town that year. Carleton Place itself had also just incorporated as a village, and was experiencing a boom. With nowhere to go but up, Lavallee sold the Carleton House Hotel to George Cornell, and completed negotiations (which he had begun in 1869) for the purchase of a site near the center of town and the new railway line. He purchased the property for $50 from Lanark lumbar and real estate baron Boyd Caldwell, who himself had acquired the land from the original claim of the Morphy family, after whom Carleton Place had once been named.[8] Now, Lavallee resolved to build a new edifice there, the Mississippi Hotel, named for the river from which the town had prospered. Lavallee would also construct the new hotel using some of the materials on which both he and the town had flourished - Beckwith limestone. The establishment was completed in 1872, and in a brand new style that would soon become all the rage across Canada.
          Lavallee had encountered the latest hotel trends and architectural styles during his journeys in the 1850s, long before they had become established in Canada. His multi-storey, French Second Empire style building featured some 28 guest rooms, with tall, ornamented windows, a veranda, wood panelling, and fine mouldings.[9] These features would have been found only in the most fashionable hotels when traveling across America and Australia, and his experiences with international commercial hospitality clearly informed his choice of amenities for the new venture. Combining his intuitive entrepreneurial nature, and his experience with both local and international industry, Lavallee created a building that would become a social hub and showpiece for the community. In fact, not only did the Mississippi Hotel thrive and influence other hotels in the community, it also became the primary venue for town council meetings until 1883, despite the fact that a brand new town hall had been completed on Edmund Street in the very same year as the hotel.[10]

          The Mississippi Hotel would grow and expand into an even greater success in the coming years, but by the time of its completion Napoleon Lavallee was already seventy years old. The ‘Little Napoleon,’ as he affectionately came to be known, was a popular figure in the community, and a fixture at bonfires and neighborhood roasts where he regaled both visitors and locals with stories of his travels and experiences. Old age finally caught up with Napoleon Lavallee in 1883, and he sold the Mississippi Hotel to Walter Clyde McIlquham for $9,400.[11] He retired the equivalent of a modern millionaire, and lived out his final days with Sarah and their adopted children until his death on March 7th, 1890.[12] The Almonte Gazette and Ottawa Citizen reported his death:

“Few men in this county are better known than was the late Napoleon Lavallee, who passed away from earth on Tuesday morning last at four o’clock, aged 88 … At the moment of his death no one was present in his chamber, death not being then expected, but that the old man passed away all alone, his light going slowly out … Many incidents of the busy life now no more might be mentioned, and the popularity of the deceased with commercial travelers, particularly with respect to his powers of entertainment in the line of narratives from his own affluent experience. The history of his life is a useful lesson of inspiration to all young men, in that he showed how, without an education, equipped only with the qualities of honesty, industry and perseverance, he commanded success in an ‘adverse world’ and secured a considerable fortune. Mr. Bell was present at his marriage sixty years ago , when Napoleon was in the full bloom of youth. He saw him yesterday as he lay in his coffin, and to him he seemed more attractive in death than on that day of joy so many years ago. Mrs. Lavallee is very feeble. She was just able to go to the room Tuesday to look upon the face of the dead.”[13]

          Napoleon left an indelible mark on his community, not least through the Mississippi Hotel, the culmination of his life’s work. Today the hotel stands at the corner of Bridge Street and Lake Avenue, overlooking the town and community from which it was born. It continues to serve Carleton Place to this day, and is now known, perhaps more appropriately, as the Grand Hotel.
            
              
Footnotes:
  1. William W. Cliff, “A Noted Man Gone,” 1890, found in Three Hour Sermon at Funerals Common in Good Old Days, by Howard Morton Brown, Carleton Place Canadian, April 18, 1957, Carleton Place Local History (blog), accessed February 15, 2022, url: https://carletonplacelocalhistory.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/three-hour-sermon-at-funerals-common-in-good-old-days-by-howard-morton-brown-carleton-place-canadian-18-april-1957/.
     
  2. Cliff, “A Noted Man Gone.”
     
  3. Alan Rayburn, Naming Canada: Stories About Canadian Place Names, Rev. & expanded ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001): 64; Carleton Place (and District) Chamber of Commerce, and Carleton Place & Beckwith Historical Society, Tour 1: Self-Guided Walking Tours of Carleton Place, 2020, 2, found in Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Booklets, Walking Tours, V2-Walking Guide 2020-Tour 1-WEB, accessed February 10, 2022.

  4. Cliff, “A Noted Man Gone.”
     
  5. Les Gallant, Carleton Place: Our Town…A Glance Back (Carleton Place: Timewise and Carleton Place & Beckwith Historical Society, 2013): 3, found in Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Timeline Booklet to 1950, Timewise, accessed February 10, 2022; Linda Seccaspina, “Carleton Place Then and Now - Bridge Street Series - Volume 14,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, Jan 11, 2018, accessed February 20, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/carleton-place-then-and-now-bridge-street-series-volume-14/.
     
  6. Mary Cook, “The Lime Kiln…99 Years of History,” Carleton Place Canadian, 1987, found in Heritage Carleton Place, accessed February 18, 2022, url: https://heritagecarletonplace.com/3/miscellaneous3.htm.
     
  7. Cliff, “A Noted Man Gone”; Linda Seccaspina, “Carleton Place Then and Now - Bridge Street Series - Volume 14,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, Jan 11, 2018, accessed February 20, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/carleton-place-then-and-now-bridge-street-series-volume-14/.
     
  8. “Deed of Land,” 1874, Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Mississippi Hotel [Set2], pp5Reports, no. 20195416, 1-6, accessed February 10, 2022; Howard Morton Brown, Lanark Legacy: Nineteenth Century Glimpses of an Ontario County (Perth, Ontario: Corp. of the County of Lanark, 1984), 230-244, 248; Linda Seccaspina, “Twenty Two Dollars a Week and Mississippi Hotel Clippings,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, March 25, 2022, accessed March 30, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/twenty-two-dollars-a-week-and-mississippi-hotel-clippings/.
     
  9. Carleton Place (and District) Chamber of Commerce, and Carleton Place & Beckwith Historical Society, Tour 1: Self-Guided Walking Tours of Carleton Place, 2020, 9, found in Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Booklets, Walking Tours, V2-Walking Guide 2020-Tour 1-WEB, accessed February 10, 2022; Linda Seccaspina, “Burnin’ Old Memories – The Mississippi Hotel Fire,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, August 14 2015, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/burnin-old-memories-the-mississippi-hotel-fire/.
     
  10. Howard Morton Brown, “Making Charcoal in Pits Once Town Attraction,” Carleton Place Canadian, February 28, 1963, found in Carleton Place Local History (blog), accessed February 15, 2022, url: https://carletonplacelocalhistory.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/sharing-memories-week-twenty-three/; Linda Seccaspina, “Remembering Lucky McIlquham of Carleton Place,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, April 13, 2017, accessed February 20, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/remembering-lucky-mcillquham-of-carleton-place/.
     
  11. Howard Morton Brown, “80 Buildings Once Erected Here Within A Year’s Time,” Carleton Place Canadian, August 25, 1960, found in Carleton Place Local History (blog) accessed February 20, 2022, url: https://carletonplacelocalhistory.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/80-buildings-once-erected-here-within-a-years-time-by-howard-morton-brown-carleton-place-canadian-25-august-1960/.
     
  12. Linda Seccaspina, “The Napoleon of Carleton Place,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, March 20, 2016, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/the-napoleon-of-carleton-place/.
     
  13. Seccaspina, “The Napoleon of Carleton Place.” Sarah Lavallee would follow her husband two years later, aged 82, on January 15th, 1892. Both of their ages were remarkable for the time. Life expectancy in 1890 was only about 45 years. (See, "Life Expectancy (from birth) in Canada, from 1800-2020," Statista, 2022, url: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041135/life-expectancy-canada-all-time/.)
          

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