in Cornwall and the area call for dismantling its reputation as "smugglers' alley". This history of independence is partly the result of isolation and self-reliance. Governments have typically neglected the area, treating it as little more than a transit corridor. This began very early, even in the 1830s, and prior to this the Loyalist settlers had themselves been forced to be more or less completely self-reliant. "The original 516 settlers arrived in Royal Township #2 with minimal supplies and faced years of hard work and possible starvation. Upon their departure from military camps in Montreal, Pointe Claire, Saint Anne, and Lachine in the fall of 1784, loyalists were given a tent, one month’s worth of food rations, clothes, and agricultural provisions by regiment commanders. They were promised one cow for every two families, an ax, and other necessary tools in the near future. For the next three years, bateaux crews delivered rations to the township, after which residents were left to fend for themselves." In a foreshadowing of what was to come over a century later, in 1834, after the building of the first canal, "Old Mille Roches" had been cut off from the mainland. A delegation of townspeople eventually forced the government to provide compensation, after significant pressure, but this was insufficient to fully redress the damage that had been done. By the 1850s, the town had recovered and the entire region was developing, but an ominous precedent had been set. Inundation and obliteration By the 1910s, Mille Roches was a prosperous, well-to-do town with a diverse economy and a growing population, linked into a broad social and commercial network of villages and towns throughout Eastern Ontario. Starting in the 1920s, plans began for damming the St. Lawrence to build a massive hydro-electric power plant and an artificial body of water that was navigable for ocean-going ships. This would bury much of the local landscape under an artificial lake. As negotiations between governments continued for two decades and more, local land values plummeted as a result of the project's apparent inevitability. By "Inundation Day", on July 1, 1958, which was also the Dominion Day ( Canada Day ) holiday, many landowners complained that market value compensation was insufficient, since the Seaway plan had already depressed property values in the region. These complaints were never addressed, a sad parallel to the poor treatment the locals had been given more than