Île Perrot () is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

west of the

island of Montreal 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 ...

in the

Canadian province Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North ...

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 ...

. Part of the

Hochelaga Archipelago The Hochelaga Archipelago (), also known as the Montreal Islands, is a group of islands at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa rivers in the southwestern part of the province of Quebec, Canada. Population On 1 July 2021, the Ho ...

, the island lies between

Lake Saint-Louis Lake Saint-Louis is a lake in southwestern Quebec, Canada, at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. The Saint Lawrence Seaway passes through the lake. Lake St. Louis is a widening of the St. Lawrence River in the Hochelaga Arch ...

and

Lac des Deux-Montagnes Lake of Two Mountains (French: ''Lac des Deux Montagnes'') is part of the river delta widening of the Ottawa River in Quebec, Canada, at its confluence with the St. Lawrence River. Lake of Two Mountains has four outflows: Rivière des Mille Île ...

. The island was granted by the Intendant Talon of New France to its founder

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 ...

then Governor of Montreal on 28 October 1672. Nearly 38,000 people live in one of Île Perrot's four municipalities: * Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot *

Pincourt Pincourt () is a municipality on the island of Île Perrot, off the western tip of the island of Montreal, Quebec. The population as of the Canada 2011 Census was 14,305. The town shares the island with the three other municipalities of Notre-D ...

* Terrasse Vaudreuil * L'Île-Perrot It is part of the

Vaudreuil-Soulanges Regional County Municipality Vaudreuil-Soulanges () is a regional county municipality in Quebec, Canada. It is located on a triangular peninsula in the western Montérégie region of Quebec, formed by the confluence of the Ottawa River to the north, and the St. Lawrence River ...

of the

Montérégie Montérégie () is an administrative region in the southwest part of Quebec. It includes the cities of Boucherville, Brossard, Châteauguay, Longueuil, Saint-Hyacinthe, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and Vaudreuil-Dorion. The ...

region. This is the only off-island suburban area of Montreal to use Montreal's own 514 area code, with all others being allocated to 450. The island is connected to

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 ...

, on the

West Island The West Island () is the unofficial name given to the cities, towns and boroughs at the western end of the Island of Montreal, in Quebec, Canada. It is generally considered to consist of the Lakeshore municipalities of Dorval, Pointe-Cla ...

of Montreal, via the

Galipeault Bridge The Galipeault Bridge is a bridge on the western tip of the Island of Montreal, spanning the Ottawa River between Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and L'Île-Perrot, Quebec, L'Île-Perrot, Quebec, Canada. It carries four ...

. Île Perrot holds the only working

windmill A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called windmill sail, sails or blades, specifically to mill (grinding), mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and ...

in Quebec, dating from the time Île-Perrot was a

seigneury ''Seigneur'' is an originally feudal title in France before the Revolution, in New France and British North America until 1854, and in the Channel Islands to this day. A seigneur refers to the person or collective who owned a ''seigneurie'' (o ...

in the French colony of

New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spai ...

. The windmill and associated miller's house were designated a

National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada (french: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment An environment minister (sometimes minister of the environment or secretary of t ...

in 1969, and a

Historic Monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...

under provincial heritage legislation in 1977. In the windmill's honour, what now constitutes the commercial artery of the island was named boulevard Don-Quichotte.

Geology and soils

The island is underlain by

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

-age

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tect ...

. Angular blocks of this hard rock are visible on the surface over much of the island. The soil is a stony sandy loam

podzol In soil science, podzols are the typical soils of coniferous or boreal forests and also the typical soils of eucalypt forests and heathlands in southern Australia. In Western Europe, podzols develop on heathland, which is often a construct of hum ...

which has developed on acidic, nutrient-poor

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 ...

. Over parts of the island, this till is covered with

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

which is nutrient-rich and much less stony, but poorly drained and classified as

gleysol A gleysol is a wetland soil (hydric soil) that, unless drained, is saturated with groundwater for long enough to develop a characteristic colour pattern. The pattern is essentially made up of reddish, brownish, or yellowish colours at surfaces o ...

Vegetation

Part of the island remains in forest, although housing developments have made significant inroads over recent years.

Deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

trees such as

American beech ''Fagus grandifolia'', the American beech or North American beech, is a species of beech tree native to the eastern United States and extreme southeast of Canada. Description ''Fagus grandifolia'' is a large deciduous tree growing to tall, w ...

sugar maple ''Acer saccharum'', the sugar maple, is a species of flowering plant in the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It is native to the hardwood forests of eastern Canada and eastern United States. Sugar maple is best known for being the prima ...

red maple ''Acer rubrum'', the red maple, also known as swamp maple, water maple, or soft maple, is one of the most common and widespread deciduous trees of eastern and central North America. The U.S. Forest Service recognizes it as the most abundant nativ ...

northern red oak ''Quercus rubra'', the northern red oak, is an oak tree in the red oak group (''Quercus'' section ''Lobatae''). It is a native of North America, in the eastern and central United States and southeast and south-central Canada. It has been introdu ...

, white ash, bitternut hickory and

American basswood ''Tilia americana'' is a species of tree in the family Malvaceae, native to eastern North America, from southeast Manitoba east to New Brunswick, southwest to northeast Oklahoma, southeast to South Carolina, and west along the Niobrara River to ...

are dominant. The vegetation is more luxuriant than one would expect from the nature of the soils, and includes a great diversity of wildflowers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ile Perrot Perrot Landforms of Montérégie River islands of Quebec

Geology and soils

Vegetation

See also

References