Haunted Montreal Blog #112 – Sault-au-Récollet

Welcome to the one hundred and twelfth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

With over 600 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

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Just in time for the holidays, Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce that we have completely revamped and updated our haunted online shop!

Give the gift of a Haunted Montreal t-shirt or mug with our logo, or Headless Mary, or Simon McTavish on his coffin toboggan, or our spooky Haunted Mountain imagery. Maybe you’d like to stay warm in these cold winter months with a Haunted Montreal hoodie, and a tuque with our logo on it. We’ll be adding other products, such as posters, in the days to come.

To enter the shop, please visit shop.hauntedmontreal.com or click on the image below

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

This month we explore the historical neighborhood of Sault-au-Récollet, one of the most haunted areas on Montreal’s northern shores.

Haunted Research

A series of disturbing recent events, such as an attempted animal sacrifice in a cemetery and body dumping in a local nature park has triggered Haunted Montreal to investigate Sault-au-Récollet. 

Located on the eastern edge of the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Sault-au-Récollet is one of Montreal’s many haunted neighborhoods. Situated on the Back River (La Rivière des Prairies in French), it is one of the city’s oldest colonial settlements. 

Historically, Sault-au-Récollet is the site of one of Montreal’s oldest churches, several creepy cemeteries and a colonial fort used to try to evangelize Indigenous Peoples. Today, the area reeks of paranormal activity and also has twisted legends dating back to the New France era.

The area where Sault-au-Récollet exists today was once a place bustling with Indigenous activity. A portage trail snaked along the shore to bypass the rapids and the land was also used for hunting, fishing, encampments and trade. 

For thousands of years before the arrival of European colonists it was a place of significance to the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) First Nation, on whose traditional territory the land exists.

Other Indigenous Peoples also used the area while travelling around the island of Tiohtià:ke or trading in furs and other goods in the vicinity.   

Consequently, this important site was visited very early in the colonial period by zealous French explorers and Catholic missionaries. Both Recollet and Jesuit priests had the goal of penetrating deep into the Indigenous territories to try and convert everyone to Catholicism.

In 1615, Recollet priests Denys Jamet and Joseph Le Caron held the first Catholic mass on the island of Tiohtià:ke in modern-day Sault-au-Récollet.

Samuel de Champlain, also known as “The Father of New France” because he established Quebec City in 1608, was present for the ceremony. 

This preliminary mass would foreshadow future horrors carried out by the Catholic Church against Indigenous Peoples at the site and well-beyond.

Another notable event occurred at the site on June 25, 1625. After returning from an evangelization mission in Huron territory,  Recollet missionary Nicolas Viel and his companion Ahuntsic attempted to shoot the dangerous waterway. However, due to the churning waters on the last set of rapids, their canoe capsized and they both drowned in the river. 

Following this incident, officials from the Catholic Church named the area Sault-au-Récollet (Recollet Rapids in English). Distorting all facts, Catholic authorities declared Nicolas Viel to be a martyr who had been deliberately murdered by Huron people opposed to his evangelical mission.

They also claimed that Ahuntsic was a Huron who had converted to Catholicism under Father Viel’s guidance. 

This false information would lead to statues, memorials and paintings being created to glorify devotees Father Viel and Ahuntsic – at the expense of Indigenous Peoples.

However, hundreds of years later the lies would be debunked by respected historians and denounced by various organizations. There is speculation that Ahuntsic was actually a Frenchman and the historical evidence demonstrates that their deaths on the river were an accident and not a deliberate attack by Indigenous Peoples.

The fake story also led to a racist legend from the New France era known as La légende du sauvage mouillé (“The Legend of the wet savage” in English).

In a nutshell, the legend tells of an Indigenous sorcerer who, on moonless nights, appears by the river, drenched from head to toe. He sits motionless by a campfire that gives off no warmth or smoke. His clothes are soaked, but the water mysteriously vanishes before dripping on the ground. This eerie figure is said to be the spirit of the sorcerer who murdered Father Viel and Ahuntsic in 1625. 

The tale claims that the sorcerer and his henchmen attacked Father Viel and Ahuntsic in their canoe, before dismembering them and throwing their body parts into the rapids. In the process, the sorcerer lost his footing and drowned. As punishment for his heinous crime, the sorcerer’s soul was cursed, doomed to wander the riverbanks, eternally soaked and shivering.

The legend claims that, on certain nights, the “wet savage” can still be seen, his spectral form appearing near the rapids, always shivering in the mist. Supposedly, he remains harmless to those who encounter him. 

Some versions of this deranged legend can be found in Les Soirées Canadiennes (1863) and Créatures fantastiques du Québec (2007).

The “murderers” of Father Viel and Ahuntsic are described as Huron sometimes and other times as “Iroquois” (a French term for the Haudenosaunee confederation, which includes the Mohawk First Nation).

In 1696, Sulpician authorities ordered the construction of Fort Lorette on the Sault-au-Récollet site. 

The purpose of the structure was to serve as a new residential school to indoctrinate Indigenous Peoples. The older institution, Fort de la Montagne, was seen as being too close to the colony of Ville-Marie. It was located on the slopes of the mountain

The Sulpicians claimed that the move was due to the location’s easy access to alcohol. In reality, there was a lot of resistance to the first fortified school due to its indoctrination efforts against Indigenous Peoples.

Fort Lorette was quadrilateral with stone bastions at the corners. It was approximately 160 x 500 feet in size.

The chapel was located at the east corner and served as a bastion. There was also a residence for the missionaries, a convent, housing for Indigenous Peoples and a building to store gunpowder, munitions and weapons. Approximately 400 people lived on site, mostly Indigenous Peoples being indoctrinated. 

In a cruel twist, the trail that led from Ville-Marie to Fort Lorette was named the Chemin des sauvages (“Trail of the Savages” in English”) to denote the transfer of Indigenous Peoples from the Fort de la Montagne.

To make matters worse, a cemetery was created outside the walls of Fort Lorette for all of the Indigenous Peoples who would die while attending the institution.

In 1721, Fort Lorette was discontinued as a residential school when the mission was relocated to present-day Kanesatake.

This was the second time that Indigenous Peoples were displaced by the Sulpician Order in an effort to drive them farther away from the colony of Ville-Marie.

The Sulpicians decided to build a church to the east of Fort Lorette. Called the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the house of worship was the brainchild of a priest named Father Guillaume Chambon. Construction occurred from 1749-51. Monseigneur de Pontbriand, the Bishop of Quebec, consecrated the church in 1752.

The construction of the Church of the Visitation would soon trigger another weird New France legend. Entitled “The White Horse of Sault-au-Récollet”, the tale is one of the great classics of Quebec folklore. 

The legend describes a sacrilegious man who refused to go to church and scoffed daily at the Catholic religion. Seeing him blaspheme constantly, his neighbors in Sault-au-Récollet expected that God would punish him with some sort of misfortune. Indeed, one day the man suddenly disappeared, as did his large white horse. It is worth noting that the animal was his most prized possession.

The white horse eventually reappeared in the neighborhood, but it was very wild, violent and fear-inducing. It ripped up fields, knocked over fence-posts and chased terrified residents through the streets and fields.

Some neighbors suspected that the man and his beast had been merged into one body as punishment for his sins.

At the time, the parish priest of Sault-au-Récollet was desperately trying to build a new church. Unbeknownst to anyone, he had a bridle made with a cross-shaped bit and managed to put it on the beast. Suddenly, the horse became as gentle as a sheep. It was possible to harness the animal and make it pull the heavy stones needed to build the church.

The priest had warned the workers not to remove the animal’s bridle and not to give it any water. However, one of them took pity on the thirsty and weakened beast when there was only one stone left to install above the church door. The sympathetic worker removed the bridle to allow it to drink from a nearby creek. 

Suddenly, the animal became ferocious again, broke its harness and ran away in terror westwards along the Rivière des Prairies. The white horse ran nearly four leagues before throwing itself into the tumultuous waters. Since then the whirlpools off the coast of Roxboro have been called the White Horse Rapids.

According to the legend, the last stone above the church door was never installed properly and could trigger the collapse of the structure one day.

Today, the legend is marked with a park and even a statue of the horse within a roundabout at the northern end of Sources Boulevard, where the White Horse Rapid are located.

Furthermore, after the British Conquest of 1760, authorities soon realized that Fort Lorette was of little strategic advantage. As such, in 1812 the fort was demolished.

Concerning the cemeteries in the area, originally there was one Indigenous cemetery at Fort Lorette followed by a Catholic cemetery at the Church of the Visitation.

The Indigenous cemetery was closed after the residential school at Fort Lorette was relocated, whereas the Catholic parish cemetery at the church shut down in 1873 because it was too small to accommodate the increasing population as the area urbanized.

As such, Sault-au-Récollet Cemetery was established in 1873. The new graveyard is located a few blocks south of the Church of the Visitation. The burial ground is bordered by Henri-Bourassa Boulevard, Rue Taché, Avenue Camille-Paquet and the Sentier des Sauvages. The racist walking trail, a remnant of the original path, connects Rue Garnier with Henri-Bourassa Boulevard.

Recently, there has been some disturbing activity in the Sault-au-Récollet Cemetery. In November, 2024, a rooster that had been blinded in his left eye was found wandering among the crypts and tombstones. Rescued by the SPCA, the bird was named Freddy.

Workers also discovered a cage as well as candles and other ritualistic items in the graveyard, prompting speculation that Freddy had survived an attempted animal sacrifice.

A local resident believes that someone tried to sacrifice Freddy in a Voodoo ritual. He cited the fact that he had discovered decapitated rooster carcasses about 20 years ago in the nearby Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park. 

Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park has also seen some deranged activity lately. On October 30, 2024, a decomposing body with its hands and feet bound was discovered in the park, near the intersection of Gouin Boulevard East and Lille Street.

Police confirmed that it was the corpse of Kevin Mirshahi, a cryptocurrency influencer who had been abducted from a luxury condo in Old Montreal on June 21, 2024.

Why the criminals chose to dump his body in the Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park is unknown at this time.

Given its long history, Sault-au-Récollet received status as a heritage site by the City of Montreal in 1992. The Quebec government followed suit in 2018 by designating the neighborhood as a Historic Site after archaeological work at the remnants of Fort Lorette in 2017.  

Since the historical designation, there has been one notable change to the area. The offensive Chemin des sauvages was renamed in 2020 after consultation with the Mohawk community in Kanesatake.

The racist trail was renamed the Tetewaianón:ni Iakoiánaka’weh Trail, or “Messengers’ Trail” in Kanien’keha (the Mohawk language). 

The Tetewaianón:ni Iakoiánaka’weh Trail refers to the ancient pathways traveled by the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation on Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montreal. These trails, used for thousands of years, were carved by Onkwehón:we (First Nations) messengers. They ran these paths and used them for hunting, trading, and communication between towns, villages and more remote sites.

Sault-au-Récollet is without a doubt one of the most haunted neighborhoods on Montreal’s northern shores. While this blog only scratched the surface of the area’s deranged history and ongoing problems, it opens up new avenues of research. Where is the forgotten Indigenous cemetery located on the Fort Lorette Site? What other paranormal activity is associated with the church and local graveyards? How widespread is Voodoo in the neighborhood? Etc. Only time and more research will unveil the full mysteries and horrors underlying Sault-au-Récollet.

Company News

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Hear some of the spookiest tales from our tours and our blog told by a professional actor and storyteller. You provide the venue, we provide the stories and storyteller. Find out more and then contact info@hauntedmontreal.com

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

Haunted Montreal is also pleased to announce the publication of the book “Montréal hanté. La mémoire macabre d’une cité victorienne”, written by Pierre-Luc Baril. Directly inspired by the Haunted Montreal Blog, the book tells several ghost stories, including those of Simon McTavish, the mysterious Trafalgar Tower and the murder of Mary Gallagher.

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link.

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have updated our online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, hoodies (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery.

Purchases can be ordered through our online store: shop.hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! New stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will now be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on January 13^th: Update on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital

In February 2018, Haunted Montreal reported on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital and its many ghosts. Built in 1893 in the Scottish baronial style, the haunted hospital operated for well over a century before finally being shuttered and relocated in 2015. Today, McGill University is attempting to repurpose it. Dubbed the “New Vic”, the project proposes a new campus dedicated to inter-disciplinary work. However, the process has been rocked by a conflict with the Mohawk Mothers, who believe Indigenous children could be buried in the vicinity. There is also the question of what to do about all of the ghosts that remain in the old hospital.

Author:

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Translator (into French):

Claude Chevalot holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from McGill University. She is a writer, editor and translator. For more than 15 years, she has devoted herself almost exclusively to literary translation and to the translation of texts on current and contemporary art.