Cantley 1889 Articles
The following article first appeared in The Echo of Cantley Volume 35 no 4, October 2023. This article is made available for the enjoyment of others with the express permission of the Echo of Cantley.
Tenàgàdino Zibi, Gatineau River — Fascinating facts
By Margaret Phillips
The Gatineau River flows south 386 kilometres from the Baskatong Reservoir to the Ottawa River. Its watershed covers 40,254 square kilometres and is interconnected with over 50 streams and 19,000 lakes.
For millennia, the lands along the Gatineau River were hunting territories of the River Desert Algonquins, nomadic ancestors of today’s Anishinàbeg Algonquin people. They were gifted with the responsibility to be the caretakers and guardians of the river, honouring it as a source of food, water and essential to life itself. Although difficult to navigate its treacherous 23 sections of rapids and waterfalls, they canoed the river to access their hunting grounds, portaging and camping along its shores. They also canoed to reach its junction with the Ottawa River at today’s Lac Leamy archaeological site. Here, discoveries of artefacts thousands of years old are proving this was a significant meeting place for many North American First Nations peoples to exchange food, goods and knowledge.
In 1829 when Andrew Blackburn and his two sons arrived to settle in Cantley wilderness, they chose riverfront land on both sides of the river. In 1830 after Andrew’s wife Isabella Lennox arrived, she looked after their farm so Andrew could assist the Chamberlain brothers on the Gatineau River’s first timber drive. This began a new era for the river and for the people and wildlife who depended on it.
In 1832 “The Gatineau Privilege” was granted to lumber barons allowing them to cut annual quotas of pine on unceded Algonquin Territory of the Gatineau River watershed. Cut logs were floated downriver to mills along the Ottawa River. By 1841, the Blasdell brothers built a sawmill on a 20-acre island where the Chelsea dam is today. Eventually, Gilmour and Company took over the mill developing the island into the self-sufficient village of Gilmours’ Mills. By 1871, at least 250 workers and their families were living there.
By the 1890s with the decline of lumbering, Gilmours’ Mills became the “Chelsea Island” cottage resort. By 1900, the Gatineau River had become a popular tourist destination. On the Cantley shore, “High Falls” was a popular place for swimming and picnics and stunning river views from Mont Cascades and Lorne Mountain attracted hikers including Governor General Lord Lorne. Photographers, artists, and some members of Canada’s Group of Seven captured picturesque scenes of the river, its rapids and waterfalls.
Many Cantley farmers had an innate fear of the river perhaps because of tragic stories about livestock and people drowning off its rugged shores. Regardless, farms depended on the river and its streams as a water source for their families and livestock and for transportation. In winter, the river became an ice bridge to Chelsea and a roadway to bush lots not easily accessible in summer. Farmers harvested river ice to make ice blocks to refrigerate their “ice boxes”. In summer, at least 15 ferry scows crossed the lower Gatineau. Cantley’s Paddy Fleming ferry provided essential services transporting livestock, goods, mail and passengers to and from the train station and highway at Chelsea’s Kirk’s Ferry.
Everything changed in1925 with the construction of the Chelsea, Rapides-Farmer and Paugan Dams, the Mercier storage dam and Baskatong Reservoir. In 1927, the dams began flooding the river drastically changing its environment and the lives of people and wildlife. Entire farms, mines, train tracks, roads, islands and shorelines were permanently submerged under water. The river’s torrential waters were dramatically subdued into the wider, placid waterway it is today.
By mid-century, logging resumed. Tugboats pulled huge boom “sacks” full of logs downriver to pulp and paper mills along the Ottawa River. The Gatineau River’s final log drive was in 1991.
Today, the Gatineau River is home to approximately 472 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The 10 municipalities along its shores are on unceded Algonquin territory. Cantley’s border stretches along 21 kilometres of Gatineau River shoreline.
