Chris Cooper 

Brome Village is familiar to most readers of Tempo, if only because of their visits to the Brome fairgrounds. Fewer people realize that the village was known in the 1850s as Brome Corners, a clue to why the village was once an unavoidable transportation hub of the townships and why the village still hosts two century-old and vibrant Brome County institutions. 

This is where we get into the several past and present jurisdictions using the Brome name, including Brome Township, Brome County and Brome-Missisquoi. To unravel these relationships we need to take a quick look at history. 

Settlement of the Eastern Townships is generally considered to have begun in 1793, and over the subsequent 50 years picked up steam, with mills, farms and settlements springing up across the region. At that time Brome Village was in the county of Shefford. 

In 1855 as the population continued to grow and transportation infrastructure for horses and wagons became increasingly important, Brome County was formed, stretching from Farnham in the west to Lake Memphremagog in the east. At this time Brome Village, then known as Brome Corners, was the bustling epicenter of the region, sitting at the crossroads of the west-east road from St. Jean to Knowlton Landing and the north-south road from Waterloo to Abercorn, with a daily stagecoach service to and from St. Jean through Brome to Knowlton. This dominant position explains why the Brome County Community Hall (given to the community in 1857) and the Brome County Agricultural Society (formed in 1856 and moved to Brome Village in 1891) were both situated in what today is a quiet and peaceful village. 

The rapid growth of the region, railway building and the invention of the steam shovel for roadbuilding on valley wetlands, eventually led to the village being bypassed and maturing gradually into the much less busy village of today. 

The municipality of Brome Village came into existence in 1923, and the most recent shufflings of administrative boundaries led to the creation of new entities embedding the Brome name, the Town of Brome Lake, an alliance of villages surrounding the lake (1971), the MRC Brome-Missisquoi, formed to replace the County (1979), and the Federal Riding of Brome-Missisquoi formed in its present configuration in 2012. 

So next time you’re in Brome Village you might reflect on the fact that you’re in one of the earliest settlements in the region and at a crossroads that played a major role in the birth of our community.