History Articles

In 1805, England was in the midst of a war with Napoleon. A French blockade of the Scandinavian countries denied Britain access to its source of timber. Even after the British naval victory at Trafalgar, Napoleon continued to control continental Europe.

The rigours of travel in the nineteenth century, with poor or even nonexistent roads, dictated the very slow pace at which a traveller could complete the miles he or she needed to go.Distances of approximately three to five miles were all that these rugged souls could achieve either on foot or with horse and wagon before a stop was needed to rest the horse or the body.

Possibly one of the first enterprises of the MacLaren family on acquiring land from [pioneer] Joseph Irwin was the establishment of a general store. This stood facing the Gatineau River, downstream from the [MacLaren] mill complex.

Recent articles by Archie Pennie and Carol Martin in Up the Gatineau! Volumes 21 and 23 have mentioned a connection between Franchot Tone and the Gatineau Fish and Game Club.To many of us old-film buffs, the face of Franchot Tone is a familiar one, but who was grandfather Franchot and what attracted him to Buckingham?The writer’s files on Outaouais mining provide some answers to these questions.

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.