In 1829, Ruggles Wright designed and erected the first timber slide at the Chaudière, by cutting a canal on the Hull shore from above the falls to a point on the river below the falls. The canal, which created “Wright Island,” allowed floated timber to bypass the falls undamaged.
Farmers depended on the grist mill from the earliest days in the 17th century. During the French Regime, the seigneur was obligated to build a mill for the use of the habitant. Early English-speakers had to depend upon local entrepreneurs to provide them with a facility to grind their grain.
The extraordinary brick houses of Shawville, built for bank managers, wealthy merchants, and professionals in the late 19th century, symbolize the entrepreneurial success of many in this town. The excellent clay near Shawville supplied two brickyards, the first opening in 1865.
Norway Bay’s 19th century pier was southern Bristol’s ferry link across the Ottawa River to Sand Point, Ontario, providing a connection to the transcontinental railway until 1963. Many settlers moving to western Canada used this route.By the 1850s, summer cottages had begun to spring up along the shores of this inlet on the Ottawa River.
Home visits by country doctors began to disappear after the turn of the century when centralized health care developed. Dr. Powles’ house, made of local brick, became Shawville’s first hospital between 1916 and 1920.Marks on the floor of the upper tower room show where the operating table stood.
In the 18th century, Portage-du-Fort was well established as a fur-trading post. The unnavigable part of the Ottawa River here required a 12-kilometre portage.* This village became the commercial centre of the area with the coming of the steamboat. In 1914, a terrible fire destroyed 80% of the buildings in the village.
One of Wakefield’s most splendid Victorian landmarks is also a bed and breakfast. Now known as Les Trois Érables, the house was for many years referred to as the “Doctors” or the “Geggie” home, after two prominent local doctors who lived there in turn.
In 1914, Portage-du-Fort suffered a disastrous fire. Many of the buildings that survived the conflagration were built of solid stone. Perhaps the most imposing of them is the Reid House, built in 1899 by Patrick Ratchford, a stonemason from Portage-du-Fort, for businessman George Emmerson Reid.
The E. B. Eddy match factory was set up in 1851 on the site of Philemon Wright’s early settlement (circa 1800) called Wrightsville (Hull). Wright built a saw mill and a grist mill here, and was the first to construct a timber and lumber raft which would sail down the Ottawa River past Montreal to Quebec City.
Wakefield, set along a beautiful section of the Gatineau River, has become a getaway place for Ottawa M.P.s. This old house and work shed were built by Robert Earle, a prominent entrepreneur and builder in Wakefield, in the 1880s. Robert let his brother Arthur take over the house as the latter had a larger family.