Spruceholme (204 Principale Street) is the splendid former home of George Bryson Jr. and his wife Helen Craig. Built in 1875, this large stone mansion is said to have been the winter retreat of the Bryson family, who hosted many distinguished guests, including Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Prime Minister of Canada.
Hot ashes thrown into dry grass in the early afternoon of August 10, 1921, are said to have ignited the fire which started beside Holt’s livery stables, located on the south side of Main Street, just east of Bancroft.
Summering in the Gatineau has been a pastime for more than a century although, sadly, there is no known record of the first cottage that was built in the valley.
For the greater part of the nineteenth century, Ottawa was claimed to be the lumber capital of Ontario, and perhaps also of Canada.
Ezra Butler Eddy, un nom depuis longtemps associé à celui de la ville de Hull, fut l’un des industriels les plus prospères et influents de cette cité. Né dans l’État du Vermont, E. B. Eddy s’installe à Hull à l’âge de vingt-quatre ans, emportant avec lui sa modeste fabrique d’allumettes.
The Canadian fur trade was not only one of the first businesses built on this country’s natural resources, but one that involved both European “discoverers” and Indigenous peoples. Sixteenth-century fishermen off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks and in the Gulf of St.
Irish Protestants have made their mark in Quebec both in religion and in economic life. The earliest settlers in the Shawville area were Irish Protestants from County Tipperary who came to Quebec after the Napoleonic Wars. Many Protestants wanted to leave their homeland and find another life away from the constant religious conflict.
The original logging camps would start a cut by sending out bush rangers – like Cézar Paul for J. R. Booth on the Coulonge – who would determine the cut. Many former loggers give vivid accounts of their experiences in the bush.
The steamer lands us at the little village of Portage du Fort, at the foot of the series of rapids down which, from over the falls of the Calumet, the Ottawa thunders. The road, up hill and down gully, which replaces the portage path of ancient days, even now suggests the difficulties which caused this carrying-place to be called “Portage du Fort.”
