Local History

The Canadian fur trade was not only one of the first businesses built on this country’s natural resources, but one that involved both European “discoverers” and Indigenous peoples. Sixteenth-century fishermen off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks and in the Gulf of St.

Told by Harry Richardson:“After the logs were cut, I would work on the river drives. I’d be down home perhaps a month from the time the logs were out before the rivers opened up. When the ice went off, we got the word to go, because you had to drive the logs when the water was high and the water ran off quick up there.

The Equity, Pontiac’s only bilingual weekly, has been “the voice of the Pontiac” since 1883. Smith and Cowan started the paper in Bryson. After a number of moves, its present location is the 1850s Shawville Academy building. Its mandate is to report regional news for the people of Pontiac County.

The word “bootlegging” apparently came into general use in the American Midwest in the 1880s. It denoted the practice of concealing flasks of illicit liquor in boot tops when going to trade with Indians.

THE GATINEAU

For over 150 years, a general store was operated by the Thomson family at the corner of Victoria and Galipeau Streets, the main east-west and north-south crossroads in the very centre of the village of Thurso. History passed by its doorstep and the news of its inhabitants could be heard within its doors.