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The Ottawa River is running high and wild at the moment, waters along her shores murky and twirling with the full reach of spring.
She’s big, beautiful water, just the same; always is, always was, never asking of us a single thing.
June 11 is the 200th anniversary of a remarkable event in the river’s history. It will go unmarked, surely, like many milestones in our lumbering past, as though we suffered ancestral embarrassment.
Amazing, really. We were once all about wood and paper and matches, supplying all three to a good part of the world. Now it’s pretty much gone. Domtar, mid-river, is about all that’s left and it’s losing limbs at a dangerous rate.
Sorry for the modern lapse; back to the 1800s.
Philemon Wright was the first permanent white settler in this area. In 1800, he and about 60 other men, women and children travelled 600 kilometres in the dead of winter from Woburn, Massachusetts, to a spot on the north shore of the Ottawa River.
Hull, reached by sleigh, cleared by axe, was begun.
Within a few years, the settlement had mills to make flour and card wood, cut lumber and process hemp, make potash, tan leather and cook up a mess of booze. Wright would branch into mining and cement-making, become a justice of the peace, a road builder and hotelier.
By 1806, Wright was ready to break into the lumber market. Softwood lumber is a risky venture these days? We have no idea.
By early June, Wright has 700 square logs and 9,000 boards floating at the mouth of the Gatineau River. Each log is likely 15 to 24 inches square and weighs more than 1,000 pounds. Wright has to get the logs to Quebec City by July 31 or default his contract.
There is a little hitch: he has never done this before. There are many obstacles between Ottawa and Quebec, the greatest of which are sets of rapids. There are no trucks or trains or tugs.
The logs are assembled in cribs, or rectangles, 24 feet wide. There are 20 cribs in total, tied together in one large raft.
Manned by a crew of four, the rig begins floating down the Ottawa, pushed by the current, oars and probably a number of sails.
The Long Sault rapids are the first big obstacle. In time, the Wrights will learn to bypass the rapids in 24 hours but this first time, it takes 25 days and a good deal of the wood is lost.
Further along, Wright and company have to get past this little thing called the island of Montreal and the Lachine rapids. The locals warn him against an attempt through the rough water. So Wright goes the other way.
It works.
When they finally arrive, it is Aug. 11. The crew has been at sea, so to speak, for 61 days, probably sleeping on deck.
Wright has now forfeited on the contract. Not only that, but the price of lumber has taken a tumble. There is nothing to do but wait. Finally, on Nov. 26, Wright is able to sell his lumber, more than five months after he left.
It has been a rough journey, but the Ottawa Valley’s square timber industry is born and very soon it becomes the region’s most important economic engine.
“It’s viewed, generally, as the event that kicks off the Ottawa Valley’s dominance in the timber trade,” says Carleton University professor Bruce Elliott, who has written extensively about area history.
“The voyage down with the raft showed that it really could be done in a profitable way, but the profitability was always highly contingent on circumstance.”
Lumber had to arrive at Quebec as early as possible in the spring, he explained, in order to take advantage of the best market prices.
“It was always a highly, highly speculative business,” said Mr. Elliott.
One of the consequences of the square timber trade was the establishment of regular shipping traffic between the new and old worlds. The ships would bring lumber one way, people the other.
Big trees, in other words, were swapped for human cargo. Pine gave us people.
The Ottawa Valley had an amazing run. Some history books say 85 million pieces of pine were taken from the area between 1826, when Col. John By arrived, and 1894.
Much later, the Ottawa Improvement Company was said to handle 33 million logs a year along the 1,200-kilometre length of the river.
The size of the wood was jaw-dropping: pieces 25 inches square, well beyond 70 feet long, were not uncommon.
For 100 years or so, the square trade endured, then evolved. Crown and town thrived, witness the evocative early photos of the timber slide at Chaudiere Island, with the first Centre Block of Parliament Hill in the background.
It is remarkable how much has changed in our lifetime. Adults of any age in the capital will remember logs on the river; our dollar bill, even, had an iconic logging tug on the back. Now even it’s gone.
Today, try to buy a two-by-four in central Ottawa. Not a single lumber yard anywhere. And, of old Wright himself, only a porous memory.
Contact Kelly Egan at 726-5896 or by e-mail, kegan@thecitizen.canwest.com