Lumber Barons of the Ottawa Valley
In the early days of the booming 19th century timber trade on the Ottawa River and its tributaries, when white pine was in ample supply, even a modest family logging operation could be profitable. "Timbering" became part of the seasonal economic cycle of Ottawa Valley settlers, and a welcome financial supplement to subsistence-based farming.

But the frontier economy of the Ottawa River watershed, with its unlimited natural resources, loose regulation, and cheap labour pool, also created a climate in which energetic entrepreneurs could quickly increase their control of the trade. All along the waterway, a string of financial empires arose, controlled by men who took advantage of the juxtaposition of abundant forests and fast-moving water.

In Bytown (now the city of Ottawa), former New Yorker H. F. Bronson was the first to use the power of the mighty ChaudiÒre Falls to operate a sawmill. In 1854, Vermont native Ezra B. Eddy launched one of the largest match companies in the world. James MacLaren founded a chain of lumber mills along the LiÒvre and Gatineau Rivers, and Peter Aylen maintained large timber operations on the Gatineau, Bonnechere, and Madawaska Rivers. In the 1830's and 1840's, Aylmer, Quebec founder John Egan operated sawmills on the upper Ottawa River, giving rise to the villages of Quyon and Eganville. At Fort-Coulonge, George Bryson built a covered bridge across the Coulonge River to gain access to his timber limits, and at Renfrew, Christopher Bell built a sawmill and a timber slide on the Bonnechere River. One of the most successful businessmen of the upper Ottawa was Daniel McLachlin, who built a massive sawmill at the confluence of the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers, and expanded the community of Arnprior. Other famous lumber barons of the era included:

Philemon Wright, Forestry Founder: When Massachusetts farmer Philemon Wright established an agricultural settlement beside the Chaudière Falls on the north bank of the Ottawa River in 1800, he had no intention of founding a timber empire. But in the winter of 1805, with cash supplies running low, and the promise of a contract with a Quebec timber merchant, he sent his labourers into the Gatineau Hills to cut trees. On June 11 of 1806, Wright assembled the first raft of logs ever to be floated down the Ottawa River; 2 months later, he and his crew reached their destination of Quebec City. By 1823, 300 rafts of timber were making the same 1300 kilometre journey, and by 1850, 10,000 men were living and working in the logging shanties of the Ottawa Valley. Wright's Town, across the Ottawa River from Bytown, became the modern-day city of Hull.

John R. Booth, Canada's Lumber King: In an era dominated by American and British-born businessmen, Waterloo, Ontario native John Rudolphus Booth was a homegrown success story. In the 1860's, his fledgling sawmill business beside Chaudière Falls on the Ottawa River surged when he was awarded the lumber contract for the construction of Canada's new Parliament Buildings. By the time of his death at the age of 98, Booth had presided over an empire that included over 10,000 square kilometres of timber limits, sawmills and pulp and paper operations in downtown Ottawa, railway lines extending east from the Parry Sound and Lake Timiskaming districts, a steamship company, a hydroelectric utility and a cement company. In 1892, Booth's Ottawa mill produced 140 million board feet (about 25,000 cubic feet) of lumber, more than any other mill in the world.

Downriver Drive
While winter was the time for cutting and squaring timber in the forests of the Ottawa Valley (the trees fell more easily when their sap wasn't running, and were dragged or "skidded" more easily on ice or snow), spring was the season of the downriver "drive."

As soon as the ice went out on the tributaries of the Ottawa River, drivers began their dangerous, daredevil work. At the landings, where the logs had been piled against a key log, they released the piles into the water with a mighty crash. If the logs jammed, as they often did, the drivers went quickly into action, leaping nimbly from "stick to stick," to find the key-piece and break the jam. Sometimes, the current of the swollen water was simply too strong; restraining booms would collapse, sending both timber and profits plunging into oblivion.

When the logs reached the main stem of the Ottawa River, they were trapped by booms and assembled into cribs and rafts. Cribs were composed of 20 pieces of timber locked between 2 big logs, while rafts were formed from a number of cribs tied together. Hardwoods, such as oak, were rafted with pine to keep them from sinking.

The squared timber rafts of the Ottawa River bore little resemblance to the Huck Finn-style craft of our childhood imaginations. Some were hundreds of metres across, and featured living and sleeping quarters to accommodate the raftsmen that steered the timber down the river. A "caboose" or "cambuse", a fire for cooking and warmth, was built in sand on the floor of the raft, and small cabins contained beds made of half-cylinders of bark.

Sliding Around the Rapids: Early raftsmen, en route from the Ottawa Valley to the city of Quebec, faced frequent interruptions from un-navigable rapids and deadly waterfalls. At each obstruction, rafts had to be laboriously taken apart and re-assembled. In 1829, at the present site of Hull, Ruggles Wright built the river's first "timber slide," a wooden chute that accommodated an entire crib and provided it with safe passage around the crashing cauldron of Chaudière Falls. Other timber barons soon followed, constructing slides wherever the rushing water presented an insurmountable obstacle. Colonel By, one of Ottawa's most famous founders, built a slide on the Bytown side of the river, between Victoria and Chaudière Island. On the upper Ottawa, slides at Calumet and Fort-Coulonge tamed the torrents of the water, but often set in motion a danger of a different kind, as impatient drivers battled to be the first to send their cribs down the chute. Savvy slide-owners, such as George Bryson at La Grande Chute near Fort-Coulonge, reaped profits not only from their own expedited cargoes, but from the tolls charged to competing timber operators.

Champlain Explores the Ottawa
Explorer, cartographer, fur trading entrepreneur and empire builder: French sailor Samuel de Champlain (1570-1635) had already sailed the St. Lawrence, probed the mouths of the Saguenay and the Richelieu, founded colonies in Acadia and Quebec, and forged a military and trading alliance with the Huron, Algonquin and Montagnais nations when he turned his attention to "Kitche-sippi," the Great River, that led deep into the interior.

In June of 1611, Champlain met a party of 200 Huron and Algonquin at the Lachine Rapids to lay the foundations for a northward voyage of exploration. Champlain's objectives were commercial, while the aboriginals were anxious not only to trade, but also to exploit French firepower in their ongoing war against the Iroquois. Champlain himself was forced to return to business in France, but he appointed the young Nicholas de Vignau as his envoy. When the summit's native delegates headed back up the Ottawa River, Vignau went with them, with instructions to learn as much as he could about First Nations languages, customs and territory.

First Expedition: Fooled or Foiled?
In 1612, Vignau returned to France with the startling news that not only had he wintered with the Algonquin, but also that he had journeyed far past the Ottawa, all the way to a salt water sea. He claimed to have crossed a great lake and descended a river flowing northward to the shore of an ocean. There, said Vignau, the party had encountered the wreck of an English ship, whose crew had escaped to land and been killed by aboriginals.

Champlain demanded that Vignau make his statement before legal notaries; the young man complied, and some historical accounts maintain that he even produced a souvenir of the doomed ship. For Champlain and his financial backers, perpetually seeking a shortcut to the Orient, the pieces began to fall tantalizingly into place: Vignau, they reasoned, must have happened upon the wreck of an English ship that was rumoured to have reached the legendary northern sea.

Near-Death Experience: On the strength of Vignau's claims, Champlain returned to New France in 1613 and embarked on a voyage of exploration, re-tracing the young man's route up the Ottawa River. It was an arduous journey; the French party had been unable to obtain the full assistance of the Algonquin. The small, ill-equipped group struggled through the rapids and portages of the lower Ottawa; at Long Sault Falls, as Champlain attempted to line his canoe through the swift waters, he nearly lost his life. Only a lucky foothold in the rocky bank saved him, steadying him long enough to free the rope from his wrist and let the canoe and its contents disappear into the fury of the river below.

River Roadblock: As the party struggled and persisted, they gained the grudging respect of the Algonquin. With the assistance of additional native guides, the group followed a chain of lakes around the Ottawa's wilder waters to the Morrison Island domain of Tessouat, a powerful Algonquin chief. Champlain appealed to Tessouat for guides to take him on to the land of the Nipissing, and beyond, to Vignau's sea. Tessouat flatly refused; the Nipissing, he said, were dangerous enemies, and travel through their territory was impossible.

The Algonquin's fears, countered Champlain, must be unfounded. After all, they had made the trip with Vignau the year before. At this, Tessouat and his people laughed and jeered. Nonsense! No such trip, they said, had taken place. Any journey that Vignau had made beyond their land, said the Chief, was "in his dreams." As the Algonquin's laughter turned to anger and outrage, Vignau recanted his story. He had concocted the tale, he confessed, in order to obtain passage back to New France. Faced with the young scout's admission, a humiliated Champlain was forced to turn back down the river.

Vignau's Veracity: Champlain is said to have denounced Vignau as an "impudent liar," but is it possible that Vignau was telling the truth? Did he happen upon Henry Hudson's shipwreck on the shores of Hudson Bay? It was not unknown for the Algonquin to travel great distances in search of trade; furthermore, as toll-keepers of the Ottawa River, and middlemen in the fledgling fur trade, they had a vested interest in discouraging prolonged European contact with other First Nations tribes. While Vignau's desperate "confession" is a matter of historical record, his guilt remains a matter of speculation and conjecture.

Second Expedition: Opening a Trade Route
Though his first trip on the Ottawa River was cut short, Champlain had gathered enough information to convince him that a second expedition on the waterway was worthwhile. In July of 1615, he agreed to accompany his Algonquin and Huron allies on yet another campaign against the Iroquois. Once again, Champlain had ulterior motives; the military expedition would give the French explorer a chance to chart new lands and forge new trading partnerships.

Champlain's second ascent of the Ottawa contrasted sharply with his first inept struggle with the river's raging waters. He was accompanied not only by 10 aboriginal guides, but also by his capable scout, Étienne Brûlé, a veteran of wilderness survival. The party moved quickly past Tessouat's enclave, skirting the waterfalls and rapids of the upper Ottawa and reaching the confluence of the river with the Mattawa, near present-day Pembroke.

By the time Champlain returned to the Ottawa River, almost a year later, he and Brûlé (with Brûlé often serving as an advance scout) had crossed Lake Nipissing, canoed the French River to Georgian Bay, followed the shore of Lake Huron to the land of Huronia, paddled the Severn River to Lake Simcoe, followed the Trent River to eastern Lake Ontario, crossed the Lake to engage the Iroquois in battle near Oneida Lake, fought an indecisive battle with the Iroquois in which he was wounded, returned to Huronia, and been forced to spend the winter in the interior.

Not until the spring thaw of 1615, almost a year later, did Champlain's native allies finally agree to escort him back to Montreal; the French explorer had seen far more than he had bargained for, including 2 great inland seas and a land of bountiful woods and fertile fields inhabited by the cultures of the Huron, the Petun, the Ottawa, and the Neutral. In what was to be his last great voyage of exploration, Champlain had inaugurated, on the Europeans' behalf, the route that French fur traders would follow for the next 200 years.

Jean Nicollet and the Chinese Robe
Much of Samuel de Champlain's historical reputation is founded on the skill and courage of the versatile, rugged scouts that carried out his strategy of cultural penetration. In 1618, under Champlain's direction, Jean Nicollet wintered on the Ottawa River, at the headquarters of the Algonquin Kichesippirini ("Big River People"). His next assignment took him further inland, to the land of the Nipissing, where he spent 9 years as a French envoy, maintaining his own household and taking part in tribal councils.

In 1634, still acting under orders from an aging Champlain, Nicollet undertook yet another French quest to discover a sea-going passage to the Orient. Following the now-familiar inland Ottawa River route, he explored the frontiers of Lake Michigan and travelled as far west as the Wisconsin River. So certain of making the Asian connection was Nicollet that he was often sighted wearing a brightly coloured, flower-strewn robe of Chinese damask. The flowing gown filled like a sail in the breeze, billowing brilliantly over the sides of his birch bark canoe.

Following his cross-country exploits, Jean Nicollet settled into family and public life in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, where he remained highly respected for his knowledge of aboriginal languages and customs. Tragically, he drowned at the age of 44 while crossing a swollen stream - the veteran woodsman, navigator, and survivor of countless adventures had never learned how to swim!

The Algonquin on the Ottawa
Names can be misleading: the Ottawa River bears the name of a First Nations tribe that traded on the waterway, but lived far to the west, first in the Georgian Bay region of Lake Huron and then in the regions of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The Ottawa, or "Outaouais", as they were known to the French, were close trade and military allies of the Ottawa Valley's original natives, the Algonquin.

Privileged Position: When Champlain and the French fur traders arrived in the area in the early 1600's, the Algonquin inhabited the secluded tributaries of the lower Ottawa River, and the upper reaches of the river proper. Their wilderness home was remote, but not completely isolated; although they avoided settlement in the St. Lawrence valley for fear of Iroquois attacks, they enjoyed a brisk interior-network trading relationship with the Tadoussac-based Montagnais to the east (from whom they received European goods) and the Huron, Nipissing, and Ottawa to the west. Along with their neighbours, the Ottawa and the Nipissing, they hunted, fished, foraged, and became one of the northernmost North American tribes to plant corn. Until 1650, the Algonquin wintered near Huron villages to the west, trading pelts for cornmeal and fish nets, and joining them in campaigns against the Iroquois. They controlled movement on the Ottawa River through a toll system at Morrison Island, and acted as commercial middlemen between the French and other aboriginals. Tessouat, the great Morrison Island chief of the Kichesippirini, enjoyed immense power and prestige among both French and native allies.

Diminished and Dispersed: The relative stability and prosperity of the Ottawa River Algonquin began to wane in the years after Champlain's voyages of discovery. As the French penetrated further into the interior, the role of middleman gradually shifted, first to the Huron, and then to the Ottawa. Smallpox epidemics throughout the region reduced the aboriginal population to half, and in 1640, as fur resources to the south began to dwindle, the Iroquois once again pushed northward. Now engaged in a genuine life-and-death struggle, the Algonquin sought refuge in the French St. Lawrence River settlements of Montreal and Trois-Rivières. A final all-out offensive by the Iroquois in 1650 resulted in complete abandonment of the Ottawa Valley by the Algonquin; eventually, even the legendary Morrison Island chief, Tessouat, converted to Christianity.

Rise of the Ottawa: The dispersal of the Algonquin from the Ottawa River left a territorial vacuum that was soon filled by the western-dwelling Ottawa. Previously linked to French trade indirectly (through the Huron), the Ottawa began to deal face to face with the Europeans. Even as the people themselves retreated westward, toward Green Bay and Michilimackinac, they expanded their commercial network eastward, eventually emerging as the dominant traders on the Ottawa River. The river became known as the "rivière des outaouais," and the entire Upper Great Lakes region became known as "Ottawa Country."