{"id":1700,"date":"2020-07-15T18:01:35","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T18:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.valleeruiter.org\/a-propos\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T21:17:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T21:17:56","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.valleeruiter.org\/en\/about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Trail Map<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

History<\/h1>\n

The name Ruiter<\/em> in Potton Township comes from Colonel Hendrick Ruiter<\/em>, an American Loyalist, loyal to Great Britain, who fled New York State with his family and settled in the area around 1793 after obtaining a few thousand acres of land.<\/p>\n

Later, at the beginning of the last century, the Ruiter Valley and the Ruiter Brook were the scene of important forestry activities, notably for the famous Singer sewing machine company which owned factories in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.\u00a0 But from the middle of the 20th century, the place regained a certain calm.<\/p>\n

It is in the heart of this valley that the Ruiter Valley Land Trust was created in 1987.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Continue reading<\/p>\n<\/div>

Inspired by the well-established Land Trusts<\/em> in the United States and Great Britain, it was the first conservation Land Trust in Quebec.\u00a0 And it played a role as a source of inspiration: other Land Trusts based on the same model were later created in Quebec.<\/p>\n

It all started with a dream.\u00a0 In the 1960s, Robert Shepherd, a psychiatrist practicing in Montreal and a nature lover, had found a place of escape and healing in the Ruiter Valley. He bought an old property and brought his children there on weekends.\u00a0 With mostly farms and forest and little construction, nature was almost intact, which enchanted him.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

Over time, he acquired several other pieces of land and one day set up a help center for people with mental illness of various sorts Robert Shepherd and his wife, Stansje Plantenga, found in this valley the unique happiness of nature and contact with wildlife and its habitat.<\/p>\n

“I was born in Amsterdam, but have lived in Montreal for more than half my life.\u00a0 It was fate that introduced me to the Ruiter Valley in Potton Township, and I literally fell in love with the valley,”<\/em> recalls Stansje.<\/p>\n

Five years before his death, Robert Shepherd and his wife started thinking of ways to protect this nature in its integrity for the benefit of future generations.<\/p>\n

After much research and work, in the mid-1980s, Robert and Stansje decided to donate most of their land to create this Land Trust to ensure the protection and integrity of the territory they cherished. Inspired by this project, which was a bold move at the time, others joined them.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Contributing to the creation of the Ruiter Valley Land Trust was the best thing I’ve ever done \u00bb
\n\u2014 Robert Shepherd<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Portrait<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Robert’s Dream<\/h2>\n<\/div>
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Read the story<\/p>\n<\/div>

In the 1960s, the wilderness of the Ruiter Valley drew Robert Shepherd, a Montr\u00e9al psychiatrist who loved to camp, canoe and rough it in the woods. This father of three had bought an old farm in Mansonville on the eastern slope of the valley. Robert later bought other properties in the valley and constructed log buildings to house a living community for healing schizophrenics.<\/p>\n

In 1987, Stansje and Robert gave 162 hectares of land to the land trust in the hope that the area would one day be covered with old-growth forests. The Ruiter Valley Land Trust was born. A few years later, on a clear, sunny day, Robert took his family for a drive in the Jeep pick-up truck. He drove as far as he could up the dirt road in the mountain. The view was magnificent. There lay the Ruiter Valley, surrounded by the Sutton Mountains. \u201cHelping to set up the Land Trust is the best thing I have ever done\u201d, said Robert. \u201cWhen the time comes to head off on the long paddle, I’ll be proud of the Land Trust, and comforted to think the peregrine falcon will still have large tracts of forest to call its own\u201d<\/em>. The Land trust was then three-years old.<\/p>\n

When Robert drove that truck up the mountain, his body was riddled with cancer. What drove him to undertake something so difficult at such a time? Certainly his love and his sense of responsibility for the wilderness and his determination to leave it as a legacy for posterity. He died a week later. The Ruiter Valley Land Trust lives on.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Mission<\/h1>\n

The Ruiter Valley Land Trust is an organization dedicated to the conservation of important natural areas in the Potton region.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>