At the beginning of the 19th century, the voyage between Quebec and Saint John passed the Temiscouata Portage and via the Saint John River valley. After the War of 1812, it was decided to develop a new maritime route which was to be located away from the border. The Matapedia River valley was selected, and the route would be named Kempt Road, for General Sir James Kempt, then Governor-General of British North America. Construction started in 1830, under the supervision of William MacDonald, Frederic Fournier and Major Wolfe, but the route remained difficult and government decided to abandon it in 1857. A new path between Causapscal and the Restigouche was adopted in 1862, and in 1868 the Intercolonial Railway project that was to transform the British North American Colonies into Canada selected the Matapedia River road to be its route. On 1 July 1876, the Sainte-Flavie-Campbellton section was opened. The municipality was formed in 1907 when it separated from the Township Municipality of Ristigouche. On 17 April 1983, the 480ha Ristigouche Ecological Reserve was formed by the Quebec government. In March 2013, the municipality was served notice of pursuit by the resource extractor Gastem for $1.5 million because the municipality sought to protect its drinking water source from fracking, by imposing an exclusion zone of 2 km around water wells. As of August 2014, Quebec Municipal Affairs minister Pierre Moreau declined to support mayor Francois Boulay, and so in September several artists and athletes resolved to draw attention to his cause. Gastem is managed by :fr:Raymond Savoie, who was for 10 years a cabinet minister in the provincial government of Liberal Robert Bourassa. Gastem ceded its exploration permits to :fr:Pétrolia, now a subsidiary of the French multinational oil producer :fr:Maurel et Prom, and the legal process might not be decided until 2016 or 2017. The municipality had amassed $146,000 in its charitable legal defence fund as of March 2015. Gastem offered an amicable resolution at that time for that cost. The totality of exploration permits in Quebec consists of 72,000 square kilometres as of March 2015, of which Petrolia holds 20%, and the law does not force the province to consult the municipalities. In October 2014, the Couillard government sent the mayor a letter, which reads in part:
