Local History

The Boarding House Farm

larger_boarding.house_.farm_.mh__0.jpgBy the 1890s, with the coming of the railways, the Laurentians were becoming less isolated, and in the summers, middle class people from Montreal started coming for vacations away from the city. This initiated a new form of economy -- the boarding house farm.

MILITARY CANALS OF THE OTTAWA RIVER

Three canals, the Carillon, Chute-à-Blondeau, and Grenville, were constructed on the north side of the Ottawa River between 1819 and 1833. Bypassing a formidable thirteen mile (21 km) stretch of rapids known as the Long Sault, they were conceived in the years following the War of 1812. At that time, the St. Lawrence was still considered vulnerable to attack from a potentially hostile United States. The canals would make the Ottawa River a navigable alternative to the St. Lawrence as a route to Kingston.

A Brief History of the Gaspé Peninsula, the "Birthplace of Canada"

The Mi’kmaq occupied this land centuries before the first Europeans arrived and were probably the first Indigenous people to have regular contact with Europeans.This may have occurred as early as the eleventh century with the early Viking settlements on the coast of North America.The Mi’kmaq were skilled hunter-gatherers, attuned to the shifting, seasonal resources of the area and were noted for their fishing skills and their distinctive birch bark canoes that were capable of crossing open water.