History Articles

The life of settlers in the Gatineau and Pontiac cannot be imagined without the special dimension it gained from the life and lore of the shanties. At the height of the lumber industry – between 1870 and 1900 – there were dozens of camps run by large companies in both the Pontiac and upper Gatineau. “There were ten thousand men working on the Black and Coulonge rivers alone.

Roads
In 1846, a “group of inhabitants residing near the banks of the Gatineau river” sent a petition with 180 signatures to Quebec asking for assistance in the construction of a road going north from Hull for a distance of seventy-five miles (125 kilometres). The request specifically mentioned the need for a bridge over la Pêche River at Wakefield.

Hull was wracked by several major fires in the 1870s and 1880s. The worst by far, however, was the “Great Fire” of 1900. The following description of that devastating event, printed in the book, Hull 1800-1875, is by an actual eyewitness:

The railway changed much of the valley’s history, as did the paddle-steamers on the Ottawa River. Bridges and dams came next. Until bridges spanned the rivers, the only way to cross was by scow, and only in summer. Just as the steam-operated vessels which plied the Ottawa River between the mid-1830s and the mid-1940s could only operate in summer, so the ferries crossing larger and smaller rivers in the region were also entirely dependent on the season.

In this age of cement and steel, the massive Marchand covered bridge in Fort Coulonge seems a throwback to an earlier time, a time when building a covered bridge, even one of this magnitude, was a common occurrence.

The Gatineau River has always been an important transportation route. It was well known to the various Indian Nations of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence valleys and it was used extensively as a highway for seasonal travel. It was only in the early 1800s that permanent settlement occurred in the Gatineau Valley. Beginning with the American Philemon Wright’s settlement of Hull in 1800, colonization gradually extended north.

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.

Poltimore is a picturesque village situated in a valley between the Gatineau and Lièvre Rivers, 32 km north of Gatineau, Quebec and 8 km north of St. Pierre de Wakefield on Route 307. A winding, undulating stretch of road rolls briefly to it before proceeding north to its terminal, Val des Bois.

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.