Local History

As the occupation of settlers shifted from farming and working in the shanties to working in whatever industry opened up – often at a considerable distance – the pattern of settlement changed as well. New buildings went up near railways and good roads.

No topographical feature so dominated the landscape and the economy of this area as did the Chaudière Falls. Their presence on the river determined the locations of the cities of Ottawa, Hull and Aylmer, and made necessary the building of the Aylmer Road that bypassed them. The falls fueled the industrial explosion of the mid-1800s by providing the water power for the vast complex of lumber and grist mills that grew up at their foot. They generated the electricity that drove the railroads and factories in the area after 1885.

For the greater part of the nineteenth century, Ottawa was claimed to be the lumber capital of Ontario, and perhaps also of Canada.

Summering in the Gatineau has been a pastime for more than a century although, sadly, there is no known record of the first cottage that was built in the valley.

Hot ashes thrown into dry grass in the early afternoon of August 10, 1921, are said to have ignited the fire which started beside Holt’s livery stables, located on the south side of Main Street, just east of Bancroft.

In January 1819, Charles Symmes, aged 20 and living in Massachusetts, wrote to his uncle, Philemon Wright, asking for work. He was hired and arrived a few months later to work as a clerk and bookkeeper.

The steamer lands us at the little village of Portage du Fort, at the foot of the series of rapids down which, from over the falls of the Calumet, the Ottawa thunders.

The original logging camps would start a cut by sending out bush rangers – like Cézar Paul for J. R. Booth on the Coulonge – who would determine the cut. Many former loggers give vivid accounts of their experiences in the bush.

Irish Protestants have made their mark in Quebec both in religion and in economic life. The earliest settlers in the Shawville area were Irish Protestants from County Tipperary who came to Quebec after the Napoleonic Wars.