At the end of the 1860s, a group of citizens from Clarendon Centre, under the leadership of James Shaw, separated the municipality from the township of Clarendon. While they had originally planned on naming the new entity "Daggville," after the name of a pioneer family, they opted instead to name it "Shawville" after James Shaw promised to donate 0.8 ha of land to the new municipality. Shawville was officially established in 1874 and was populated by Irish Protestant immigrants. Shaw, who had settled in the area in 1843, was the first mayor, serving from 1856 to 1877. The municipality has a Methodist church that was built in Shawville in 1835, while the Catholic Parish of Saint-Alexandre-de-Clarendon opened its doors in 1840. This church would later be renamed as Sainte-Mélanie, and still later as Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur in 1917. In recent times, Shawville has been the site of several conflicts between local shopkeepers and the Office québécois de la langue française over the province's language laws.
Geography
The town is completely enclosed within the municipality of Clarendon. Shawville is situated approximately west of Gatineau and southeast of Fort-Coulonge.
Demographics
Population
Language
Shawville is an overwhelmingly anglophone and Protestant community. This is unusual in Quebec, a province that is overwhelmingly French-speaking and Roman Catholic. The population has been known to quite literally run the so-called "language police" "out of town" in defiance of the Charter of the French Language.
Language
Population
Pct
English
1,285
85.4%
French
180
12.0%
English and French
15
1.0%
Other languages
25
1.7%
Culture
The town is characterized by its red-brick buildings, and unlike nearly every other municipality in Quebec, it has no Catholic church. Shawville is home to an elementary school, a high school, a regional hospital, and the SRPC national head office. Its businesses are mostly small and family-run. The Shawville Fair, held the first weekend in September, is the town's major event. It has run every year since 1856 and includes typical county fair features such as livestock shows, auctions, truck pulls, demolition derbies, art/craft/hobby shows, diverse food stands and a midway. In recent years, it has drawn headline entertainers such as Terri Clark, Stompin' Tom Connors, Paul Brandt, April Wine, Dean Brody and Corb Lund, with total attendance reaching around 50,000. It will not run for the first time in its history in 2020, amid fears of Covid-19.
