George Flint in 1881. At the time of the industrial revolution, rural and working classes made up the majority of Mégantic's population. In 1907, the town had 2600 people and the daily wage for a labourer was around C$1 to C$1.50. The working class lived in the northern district of the city, while those in liberal professions, as well as store clerks and employees of financial institutions lived in the central part of the city (downtown). The first bank branch in the town was the People's Bank of Halifax, which opened in December 1893. Its first manager was a Mr. Aitkens from Cookshire. The bank was acquired by Bank of Montreal in 1905 and a new building constructed that same year. The branch closed in 2001 and was sold to Banque Nationale; the 5193 Frontenac Street building later housed legal aid offices. Only a broken, charred shell remained after the 2013 Lac-Mégantic derailment burned much of the historic downtown but some legal records secured in the historic bank's vault survived the fire. The Eastern Townships Bank, established in Sherbrooke in 1859, opened a Mégantic office in 1904 and acquired its own building at Frontenac and Thibodeau in 1910. That bank was acquired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1912; the local branch with its distinctive architectural columns closed during the Great Depression in 1935. Media A weekly newspaper, L'Écho de Frontenac, is published in the town and one radio station, CJIT-FM 106.7, operates from a local studio. Tourism The region has increased its reliance on tourism, a mainstay since the passenger rail era, attracting people from across Quebec and the Northeastern United States. Lac-Mégantic profits from its proximity to two major provincial parks, Frontenac National Park on Lac Saint-François and Mont-Mégantic National Park near Notre-Dame-des-Bois. Mont-Mégantic Park is home of the ASTROlab astronomy museum and the Mont Mégantic Observatory, a mountaintop observatory and dark-sky preserve. The Lac-Mégantic lakeshore is host to the Complexe Baie des Sables beachfront park, the annual Traversée internationale du lac Mégantic swim meet in August and the Grand tour du lac Mégantic cycle tour each June. The most popular activities for tourists are hunting and fishing. Education Lac Mégantic is home to a junior college, Centre d’études collégiales de Lac-Mégantic, which is affiliated with the Cégep Beauce-Appalaches. The college offers both technical and pre-university training programs including an astrophysics program, which is the only one