Cantley 1889 Articles
The following article first appeared in The Echo of Cantley Volume 35 no 1, Juillet 2023. This article is made available for the enjoyment of others with the express permission of the Echo of Cantley.
Discovering “High Falls” and High Times in Cantley
Margaret Phillips
In 2020, Louise Schwartz, editor of the Gatineau Valley Historical Society’s (GVHS) annual publication Up the Gatineau!, contacted Cantley1889 about some obscure early-1900s newspaper clippings she found referring to “High Falls” on the east side of the river. No one in GVHS, Cantley1889 or our Cantley elders had ever heard of this place. Intrigued, a few of us began the search to solve the fascinating mystery of Cantley’s High Falls. Its story was published in the 2021 Up the Gatineau!.
We began by investigating the shores of the Gatineau River’s Horseshoe Bay, across the bay from Cantley’s Parc Mary-Anne-Phillips. Here, in the early 1900s there was the well-known cottage resort of “Chelsea Island” between the Chelsea and Cantley shores. On its Chelsea mainland was a popular park, “Chelsea’s Grove,” and a train station nearby.
The river was dramatically different before 1927 when construction of the Paugan, Chelsea and Rapides-Farmer Dams was complete. The dams flooded the fast-flowing turbulent river creating today’s lake-like Horseshoe Bay. Before 1927, there was no bay. Fast-flowing rapids churned into the picturesque “Chelsea Falls”, a favourite scene of artists and photographers. Interestingly, some of their images were depicted from the rugged Cantley shoreline looking west towards Chelsea Island. This clue meant the river could be accessed from the Cantley shore despite its rugged terrain and Cantley’s rough main road. By 1910 automobiles were becoming more affordable. City drivers were keen to escape to rural countryside. Would adventurous day-trippers venture to explore the relatively unknown Cantley shore of the Gatineau River?
Cantley1889 volunteers were excited when we found an early logging map labelling the river’s waterfall/rapids here as “High Falls”, not “Chelsea Falls” as later maps indicated. We concluded that when “Chelsea Island” was developed, the original name of the waterfall was changed to “Chelsea Falls”. Cantley continued using the name “High Falls” for same the waterfall and for its nearby shoreline park area too.
Council meeting minutes and more newspaper clippings (1910 to 1921) prove that Chelsea wasn’t the only popular destination for Hull and Ottawa visitors. The June 4, 1910 Evening Citizen names “High Falls” on the east side of the river as a “clearing and grove...a very pretty ground” ...which was “very popular....owing to its beautiful situation...about 10 miles from Ottawa.”
On June 28, 1917, the Ottawa Evening Journal wrote about the annual “Sunday School Picnic” for Hull’s Zion Presbyterian Church “at High Falls”, “the most successful in the history of the Church”.
The July 1921 Cantley Council meeting granted a $3.00 license for Philorum Charron to sell ice cream that season “at or near High Falls”.
Less-innocent pleasure-seekers also enjoyed Cantley’s High Falls according to the Citizen’s, July 18,1921 report about “Numerous complaints” received against “the conduct of bathers...especially noticeable on week-ends” when “parties of automobiles from Ottawa have been in the habit of parking their cars on the Cantley side of the river and bathing without costumes.”
Most scandalous was the detailed report in the Evening Citizen, May 1910. Police took down “over 50 names ...And 17 birds....at a Cocking Main at High Falls”. A Cocking Main was a prestige cockfight involving specially bred cocks outfitted with paraphernalia such as spurs with sharp hooks. The birds were placed in an enclosed pit to fight to the death for entertainment and gambling. The report continues with “...The two officers...reached High Falls, a little resort about opposite Chelsea. Here they found the Cocking Main in full progress, two battles having been pulled off...”
While enjoying the river view from Parc Mary-Anne-Phillips, look to your left, just this side of the Chelsea Dam. Offshore beneath the water, imagine the picturesque scene a century ago - the waterfall, the pretty grove, the picnickers and swimmers and the high times at Cantley’s High Falls.
