La gare de Rivière-Bleue / The Rivière-Bleue Train Station

From 1908 to 1914, Rivière-Bleue bustled with railway construction that drove the young community’s economic and demographic growth, brought industrial infrastructure, and linked the region with the outside world. By 1914, the Rivière-Bleue train station had become a major regional hub for cargo and passenger traffic and a local gathering place where residents eagerly awaited arriving trains and crowded the platform to watch the activity of railway workers and travelers. Train travel gradually declined during the 1950s as automobiles gained favor, and railway companies and government authorities increasingly neglected the network and abandoned some lines. The station closed to railway activity during the 1970s, but in 1982, after five years of effort, the crafts club Le Riverain acquired it to preserve it and use it as a local crafts workshop, in a project led chiefly by Bibiane Landry Gagnon.

Quebec · Canada