Travel Guide Saint-Paul-De-L'Ile-Aux Noix

The town takes its name from the fact that its first inhabitant had to give the Sieur de Noyan, a municipality located on the other side of the Richelieu River, a "poached walnut" as an annual annuity... Opposite Saint-Paul is Île-aux-Noix, which owes its name to the walnut trees that once grew there in profusion. It was fortified by the French in 1759, during the Seven Years War against the English. The island was then abandoned and occupied by the Americans from 1775 to 1776, before becoming, for the English, an important defensive and strategic post of the first order since it controlled access to the valley at its southernmost point.