A New Village Established and Its Topography
St. Léon established 1877-1878
Odile Marten's book Pionniers de la Montagne Pembina: Saint-léon Manitoba 1877-2000 describes Saint-Leon (this is a loose translation of pages H-2 to H-6).
The village of Saint-Leon at the heart and top of Pembina Mountains has a singular history. It is the oldest in the region; it was always modest in population and yet it was the mother parish of no less than seven parishes. It had two births and awakening that can be described as a rebirth. the very promising beginning that lasted less than ten years (1887-1885) took the name of the old Saint-Léon located south of Lac Rond. Two misfortunes led to its disappearance. a great fire that destroyed the mills of the industrial spring and the mass removal of the villagers to Somerset and its railway station, which the people of Saint-Léon had so much lust for their village reported the disappearance of the latter. These calamities would have been enough to erase any trace of collectivity.
A new village was formed by the church and the school, located to the northwest of Lac Rond. This site is very picturesque. The new village is hung on the south side of a hill, has a grove and it is sighted in two lakes.
The surrounding countryside has retained much of its secular aspect. Many ponds and small lakes still shine, still nurturing muskrats, beavers, and rushes. Several species of birds: seabirds, ducks, swans, pelicans, make it their habitat.
The woods that covered much of the land in 1878, providing lots, heating, and commercial products sold to the less wealthy regions to the south, have declined considerably, but each farm retains enough groves to supply colors, shade, shelter and even alternative heating to all the dwellings. The cultivated land has replaced the grasslands or haystacks of the first inhabitants.
Before the designation of Saint-Léon given in 1878 to the mission of the Pembina Mountains, the first colonists of French Canadiens had named their environment La Prairie Ronde, perhaps because of Lac Rond adjacent to the village of Saint-Léon, or because of the winding outline of the terrain, its depressions, and its ripple.
The name "pembina" is a derivation of two Indian names meaning summer berry or summer fruit, a little red fruit called pembina in the region. It is a very juicy fruit, with which you can make a very good jelly or jam.
According to a geographical map made by Lord Selkirk in 1819, the <indigenous peoples> also gave the name of Pembina River to the river whose course crosses southern Manitoba.
Topography
The Pembina Mountains is a chain of hills, a plateau or an undulating plain with indented edges with a steep slope to the east. With the escape of the ice caps, the enormous Lake Agassiz was formed with the deposits of clay, fossils, vegetation, and silt that formed our rocky outcrops and fertile valleys. Dinosaurs roamed this land.
Really, there is no mountain, but a somewhat hilly area or marshes fill the depressions of land with meandering small streams whose shape and movement vary greatly.
. the Pembina Mountains could also be described as the escarpment of the central part of southern Manitoba, whose eastern slope has a fairly steep slope, i.e. an ascent of about 650 feet in 16 miles. At 1675 feet above sea level, the village of Saint-Leon has the highest elevation compared to the neighboring villages.
The natural richness of this territory was its surface, its vegetation. The surveyors had cut the townships around Saint-Leon in 1872. Their maps showed the places of meadows, lakes, woodlands, the trails of the Indians and voyageurs, elements well appreciated by early settlers. The most common tree species were: aspen, birch, willow, ash, oak, Giguere's maple, and liard cottonwoods.
This forest kept the moisture from rain and snow for a long time and then distributed by flow to lakes, marshes, and streams, and later to the land.
The flora of the Pembina Mountains was beautiful and varied. Flowers abounded according to the seasons: lilies, anemones, pansies, crocuses, and many others.
Shrubs such as cherry, plum, pear, pembinas, hawthorn, red harts bloomed everywhere in the spring, and many of these shrubs provided delicacy. Strawberries, raspberries, cassocks, cranberries, and pears or saskatoons were also abundant.
Many animals inhabited the forest: deer, wild cow, deer, moose, black and brown bear, grizzly bear, wolf, beaver, muskrat, bison, wolverine, ferret (stinky beasts), partridge, prairie hen, hare, rabbit, goose, and duck.
Some of the birds that lived in the area were the swan, the hawk, the lark, the robin, the hawk, the swallow, and the prairie hen.
The soil of a rather grey color, sometimes black, the soil of the agricultural land of the mountain is generally very productive. without having the wealth of minerals on the banks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, the sole of the Pembina Mountains acquires its high reputation by the regularity of the rains and its natural flow.
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