Qualla: Ile aux Noix

Ile aux Noix: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0. More than 900 American soldiers lie buried in two mass graves on an island barely large enough for a fort. They died not from enemy fire but from smallpox, huddled on Ile aux Noix during the Continental Army's desperate retreat from Canada in the summer of 1776. That grim chapter is just one layer in a history that spans the French empire, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and a World War II internment camp -- all compressed onto a sliver of land in the Richelieu River, a few kilometers from where Quebec meets the United States.

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Image: Jean-Philippe Boulet | CC BY 3.0

Ile aux Noix: France's Last Stand on the Richelieu

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donnacona, CC BY-SA 3.0. The French built the first fort on Ile aux Noix in 1759, during the final agonizing years of New France. The colony's strategists understood what geography made obvious: the Richelieu River was the highway between Lake Champlain and Montreal, and whoever blocked this waterway con...

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Image: Donnacona | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ile aux Noix: The Island of the Dead

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit D-pictures, CC BY-SA 3.0. When American forces seized Ile aux Noix in 1775, generals Philip Schuyler and Richard Montgomery used it as a staging base for their invasion of Montreal and Quebec. The island served its strategic purpose well -- it was the perfect launching point for the campaign that would ta...

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Image: D-pictures | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ile aux Noix: Warships in a River

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0. The War of 1812 transformed Ile aux Noix from a frontier outpost into a naval base. The race for supremacy on Lake Champlain re-established the island's military importance, and it became the main support point for the British navy along this stretch of the border. The Royal Navy...

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Image: Jean-Philippe Boulet | CC BY 3.0

Ile aux Noix: Refugees Behind Barbed Wire

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0. The darkest chapter in the island's history came in 1940, when Ile aux Noix became an internment camp for European Jewish refugees who had been forcibly deported from Britain. Known first as Camp I and later as Camp No. 41, the camp held men who had fled Nazi persecution only to ...

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Image: Jean-Philippe Boulet | CC BY 3.0

Ile aux Noix: Three Centuries in One Place

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0. Ile aux Noix ceased to be a military post in 1870, and today Fort Lennox National Historic Site draws visitors who arrive by ferry to walk the star-shaped ramparts and stone barracks. The island sits in the municipality of Saint-Paul-de-l'Ile-aux-Noix, surrounded by the quiet far...

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Image: Jean-Philippe Boulet | CC BY 3.0