Dowker Island is an uninhabited island in Lake Saint Louis, a widening of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connectin ...

south of

Montreal Island The Island of Montreal (french: Île de Montréal) is a large island in southwestern Quebec, Canada, that is the site of a number of municipalities including most of the city of Montreal and is the most populous island in Canada. It is the main ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. It is in the municipality of Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot which intends to preserve its natural state. The island is about a kilometre in length and breadth. Its surface geology is undifferentiated

till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

deposits. It is low-lying, mostly in a

100-year flood A 100-year flood is a flood event that has a 1 in 100 chance (1% probability) of being equaled or exceeded in any given year. The 100-year flood is also referred to as the 1% flood, since its annual exceedance probability is 1%.Holmes, R.R., Jr. ...

area, and contains a

muskrat The muskrat (''Ondatra zibethicus'') is a medium-sized semiaquatic rodent native to North America and an introduced species in parts of Europe, Asia, and South America. The muskrat is found in wetlands over a wide range of climates and habitat ...

habitat.

History

Then known as one of the îles Sainte-Geneviève (now Dowker, Madore, and Daoust), the island was granted to governor of Montreal

François-Marie Perrot François-Marie Perrot (; 1644 – 1691) was born in Paris and Seigneur de Sainte-Geneviève. Biography He was appointed governor of Montreal by a royal commission in 1670 and arrived in New France that year. Records do show his tenure as 1 ...

Jean Talon Jean Talon, Count d'Orsainville (; January 8, 1626 – November 23, 1694) was a French colonial administrator who served as the first Intendant of New France. Talon was appointed by King Louis XIV and his minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to ...

, in 1672, along with the île Perrot. It was acquired in 1897 by Leslie Rose Dowker (unknown-1945), who shortly afterward became Mayor of Sainte-Anne-du-Bout-de-l'Île, now known as

Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue () is an on-island suburb located at the western tip of the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is the second oldest community in Montreal's West Island, having been founded as a parish in 1703. The old ...

. It is the site of a ruined stone house as well as a former

navigational aid Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...

light. In older documents, as late as the 1966 topographic map of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, it is named Lynch Island.

References

{{reflist Hochelaga Archipelago Landforms of Montreal Uninhabited islands of Canada Islands of the Saint Lawrence River