Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, a municipality unlike any other

On the Agenda By Cedric Lowe Local Journalism Initiative Along the shores of lake Memphremagog and surrounded by the municipality of Austin lies the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-lac. This abbey, founded in 1912 by Dom Paul Vannier, has the very rare distinction in Quebec of also being its own municipality. Sébastien Gariépy, a media representative from the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Habitation, confirmed that the abbey’s current municipal status is quite unusual in that Quebec only has three religious municipalites: Notre-Dame-des-Anges within Quebec City, Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague-du-Cap-Tourmente north-east of Quebec City, and Saint-Benoît-du-Lac in the Townships.

Municipal obligations Gariépy said that the municipality of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac “Has for the most part the same obligations as the other municipalities, with a few exceptions. For example, there is no municipal council in this municipality, which is administered by the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac. Another example, it is not required to adopt an urbanism plan for its territory.”

He also said that Saint-Benoît-du-Lac is also not required to hold municipal elections. When asked about municipal taxes, Gariépy explained that municipal taxes are collected from taxpayers who own property in a municipality and that municipalities do not collect taxes from their own properties. As Saint-Benoît-du-Lac is the only property owner within its municipality, it is exempt from paying municipal taxes as there are no taxes that can be collected.

They are, however, required to cover their own municipal services. Gariépy stated that it is currently no longer possible for new religious municipalities to be created, “The Act respecting municipal territorial organization does not provide for this scenario.” The Record reached out to Saint-Benoît-du-Lac for an interview, but due to the large number of media requests they receive they could not provide an interview in time.

Historical background At the start of the 20th century, the area that is now Bolton-Est, Austin, and what is now Saint-Benoît-du-Lac used to be a single municipality under the name of Bolton-Est, which itself used to be part of a much larger Bolton township. According to research by Maurice Langlois and Austin’s comité du patrimoine in 2013, this larger Bolton township was beset by many disagreements from stakeholders across its territory regarding the collection and distribution of taxes as well as frustration about the poor quality of municipal services. This led to several requests to the provincial government to break up the municipality into smaller municipalities that could better serve their local communities.

The Benedictine monks were involved with the separation discussions, and they advocated for the splitting of the Bolton-Est municipality into the current Bolton-Est municipality and Austin during the 1930s. Langlois notes in his research that Father Paul Brun was among those who signed the petition to form Austin, and part of the reason was “the deplorable condition of the roads and bridges; the road between Austin and Bolton Centre had been closed for a month and a half while people were forced to make a lengthy detour by way of Millington to go to the post office and station in Bolton Centre.”

The first proposal to split Bolton-Est in 1930 was refused, and a second, successful, proposal was brought forward in 1938. The monks had proposed in the second request that the new eastern municipality be called Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, but the request was rejected for the current name of Austin. The monks once again brought up splitting municipal territory in February 1939; this time breaking their holdings away from Austin.

March 16, 1939 saw the municipality of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac formally separated from Austin in provincial law in Chapter 149 of the laws of 1939. The monks would no longer have to pay municipal taxes, and Austin did not have to provide municipal services nor road maintenance to the new religious municipality. Legal framework A series of four private laws form the legal framework for both the monastic order at Saint-Benoît-du-Lac and the municipality of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac.

At the request of the Benedictine monks, the provincial government passed a law on April 1, 1927, Chapter 111 of the laws of 1927, that created a corporation administered by the monks to make it easier for them to manage their property and a legal entity through which they could gain exemptions and legal rights. Chapter 149 of the laws of 1939 established that the area that contained the monks’ property, which at the time was just a 2.27 km2 farm and its buildings, as well as some of the roads that went through the property would be formally separated from the municipality of Austin and legal authority over these areas was granted to a new municipality called Saint-Benoît-de-Lac while ownership of the monks’ property and assets within this new municipality would be transferred to the monks’ corporation.

It also established that the new municipality would not be required to have a municipal council and that the legal body of the municipality would share the same leadership as the corporation. This effectively made the corporation and municipality interchangeable with each other in matters of governance while allowing the monks to have a legal entity for their assets and monastic duties separate from the municipal system. From 1939 to 1941 the monks replaced the old farmhouse they lived in with a brand new abbey.

Chapter 68 of the laws of 1943 was adopted since the monks’ new property, now with increased property value, prompted a revision of their legal status. This law allowed the monks to build monasteries, agricultural developments, any buildings necessary to their charitable and social works, and burial facilities. It also allowed the corporation to sell any products made from the monks’ manual labour and religious works (art, religious objects, etc) whose proceeds contribute towards the goals of the corporation.

Further amendments were passed on Feb. 22, 1955 in Chapter 134 of the laws of 1955 granting additional powers to the Saint-Benoît-du-Lac municipality. It could now pass bylaws regarding construction and necessary construction equipment on its territory, and the municipality could act on behalf of the corporation and vice versa. It also amended the 1939 clause about the exemption from having a council in that the municipality could now be run in the same way that the corporation was, i.e. with the leader of the abbey running both at the same time.

The corporation could also now obtain any licenses and permits it needed for its operations and could hold immovable property for purposes of revenue. Provincial law was amended one last time on Nov. 10, 2009 in the Loi modifiant la charte de L’Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac which had the goal of redefining the charter of the corporation and cleaning up the language of the previous amendments to be in line with modern standards. The principal change to the charter was to allow the corporation to create sub-entities as needed and outline a framework for merging and dissolving these entities.

Sources and further reading: MRC Memphrémagog page: https://www.mrcmemphremagog.com/nos-municipalites/saint-benoit-du-lac Abbey website: https://www.abbaye.ca/ Presentation about the abbey’s history: https://municipalite.austin.qc.ca/english/history-and-heritage/historical-publications/ The Creation of the Municipality, by Maurice Langlois and the Austin comité du patrimoine: https://municipalite.austin.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/brochure_creation_austin_en.pdf Chapter 111 of the laws of 1927: https://www.bibliotheque.assnat.qc.ca/DepotNumerique_v2/AffichageFichier.aspx?idf=123749 Chapter 149 of the laws of 1939: https://www.bibliotheque.assnat.qc.ca/DepotNumerique_v2/AffichageFichier.aspx?idf=119605 Chapter 68 of the laws of 1943: https://tinyurl.com/Chapitre-68 Chapter 134 of the laws of 1955: https://www.bibliotheque.assnat.qc.ca/DepotNumerique_v2/AffichageFichier.aspx?idf=116403 Subscribe to read more like the On the Agenda column, published in full every Friday L’article Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, a municipality unlike any other est apparu en premier sur Sherbrooke Record .

Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, a municipality unlike any other

Key facts

Why this matters locally

Local impact

Timeline

Source and credit