On a cold and windy October day in 2025 Marc Walsh walked within the ruins of the Calvin Presbyterian Church, measuring its walls. Walsh was putting together his plan for a miniature reproduction of the ruined church as it had appeared before the ravages of time.
The four stone walls of the church and the surrounding cemetery are all that remain of the Scottish settlement called the Village of Godmanchester or the Village of LaGuerre.
At the peak of its existence in 1830, the village was home to 82 inhabitants of French, Irish, and Scottish heritage. 16 families shared life in this small village near Saint-Anicet where several stores and a cobbler once thrived. A one-room schoolhouse opened from 1829 to 1846. Plans to expand the village were drawn up, but they were never completed.
The church was constructed between 1847 and completed in 1851, but the village itself had already begun to fail. Two major factors were responsible for the village’s decline: persistent flooding brought on by the construction of the first Beauharnois canal, and the demise of the Durham boats – wooden, flat-bottomed boats that travelled up the St. Lawrence River bringing freight. Durham boats were replaced by bigger steamships that were unable to navigate the smaller rivers, and within 30 years, the village was abandoned.
On that October day standing within the ruined walls of the church, Walsh realized something important: “I had no idea what the church had looked like inside!” He described what happened next as “a little miracle.” His friend, Robert Leduc, had drawn up plans of the interior of the Calvin Presbyterian Church from information he had pieced together from an interview with John Irving, who remembered the inside of the building from when he was young. From those plans, Walsh was able to create a complete model of the building, inside and out.
The finished model, along with two more – one of the schoolhouse, and another of a small period house – were unveiled on July 25. Over 50 people attended the ceremony that took place within the church walls. After speeches given by Luc Quenneville of the Saint-Anicet Historical Society and Gino Moretti, the mayor of Saint-Anicet, the unveiling took place and Walsh’s dream to preserve a view of the village’s history was fulfilled in the three miniatures.
The three models, along with another of the oldest one-room schoolhouse in Quebec, can be seen at the Chateauguay Valley Antique Association (CVAA) show on August 22 and 23 at the Huntingdon fairgrounds. After that they will be on display at the Société Historique de Saint-Anicet until early September.