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One of the last links to Ottawa’s lumber-town past is set to fade away.
Domtar Corp. announced yesterday it will shut the doors of the former E.B. Eddy paper mill in Gatineau that is Domtar’s last functioning plant on the Ottawa River.
The closing of the processing plant will put more than 250 people out of work.
The closing of the plant also draws nearer the end of a papermaking and logging industry that once thrived in all its gritty, odorous glory in the shadow of Parliament Hill.
Photographer Malak Karsh’s image of a log tug at work below Parliament graced the back of the $1 bill until the bank note was phased out in favour of the $1 coin in the 1980s. A few years later, the annual log drive on the river was itself phased out in favour of trucks and highways.
“In some ways, the lumber industry in Ottawa died back in 1990 when the last spring log drive headed down the Ottawa River,” says Christina Tessier, director of the Bytown Museum.
But it was the rising Canadian dollar and increased competition in a shrinking market, not the end of the log drive, that caused yesterday’s Domtar announcement, which followed the 2006 closing of two neighbouring Domtar mills.
During the 19th century, logging drove the economies of Ottawa and Gatineau and was a key reason the region turned into the cities we know today.
“Without the lumber barons and lumberjacks of the 19th century, who knows what would have become of little Bytown following the completion of the Rideau Canal?” said Ms. Tessier.
Michel Plouffe, general manager of the City of Gatineau’s Economic Development Corp., yesterday called the closing of the Domtar facility sad news.
While he feels for the men and women who will be out of work come October, he believes the area’s economy is hot enough to absorb them in other jobs.
He said the real loss will be seeing the former E.B. Eddy and J.R. Booth operations permanently mothballed.
“It’s not only jobs, but it’s a whole industry that is dying,” said Mr. Plouffe. “This is very bad news for Gatineau and all over the region. Between 1850 and 1900, this was the biggest industry in Canada.”
Domtar is continuing to operate a power plant on the site, but has not said what will happen to the rest of the facilities, which are a stone’s throw from the new Canadian War Museum.
“I certainly hope that the remaining structures from the E.B. Eddy complex will be maintained as a link to our past,” said Ms. Tessier.
The National Capital Commission has talked about buying the land, but a Domtar spokesman said no official negotiations have taken place.
Canada’s lumber became important to Britain after the supply from its traditional source, the United States, became destabilized in the War of 1812. The British were also fighting the Napoleonic Wars in this period and needed lumber to build navy ships.
A small town called Wrightsville (later Hull, and now part of Gatineau) was founded in 1800 by the first lumberman of the Ottawa Valley, Philemon Wright. The British Loyalist floated the first raft of timber down the Ottawa River in June 1806.
By 1826, when Lt.-Col. John By arrived in the area, Wrightsville had blossomed to a population of 700 and included five mills, three schools, two hotels and a brewery.
Looking out across the river, Col. By observed dense bush, sparsely populated by a handful of pioneers. His mission was to carve a canal through the tree-heavy landscape to connect the Ottawa River to Lake Ontario, allowing troops to be transported between Montreal and Kingston—in case the U.S. should decide to break the truce established following the War of 1812. The canal would allow the troops to avoid navigating the St. Lawrence River along the American border.
The work camp he created lived on as Bytown when the canal was complete, and within a decade eclipsed the more established Wrightsville.
Ottawa’s lumber boom began in 1857 when John Rudolphus (J.R.) Booth established a shingle mill next to Chaudiere Falls.
Two years later, the J.R. Booth Lumber Company was awarded the contract to supply lumber to the Parliament Buildings.
The company expanded and began to produce pulp and paper. Mr. Booth’s newsprint was soon sold all across North America and Britain.
He built the largest sawmill in Canada to help handle his lumber production.
About this time, Ezra Butler (E.B.) Eddy set up a match factory in what now is Gatineau. Mr. Eddy made his matches from lumber scraps that had been discarded by lumber businesses.
By 1855, Mr. Eddy expanded his operations to begin milling lumber. In 1857, his company began making wooden washtubs and tables. By 1870, Mr. Eddy employed 2,300 workers and produced 270,000 matches, 72,000 washboards, 45,000 washtubs and 600,000 wooden pails every year.
At its peak in the late 1800s, the lumber industry employed more than 8,000 people in Ottawa and Gatineau.
The E.B. Eddy Company was one of the largest employers in Gatineau and Ottawa for more than a century, with the Chaudiere Falls operations as its heart.
Mr. Eddy died in 1906, but his company remained in operation until 1943, when it was purchased by Willard Garfield Weston, the man who would create the multibillion-dollar Loblaw supermarket chain.
Mr. Weston added the lumber facilities of the J.R. Booth Co. in 1946 (Mr. Booth had died in 1925), creating a single monster lumber and production company in the Ottawa Valley.
Mr. Weston’s company operated the facilities on Chaudiere Island until 1998, when they were sold to Domtar for $803 million.
Even with the Eddy-Booth empire gone, some papermakers continue to operate in the capital. Montreal company Kruger Inc. makes paper towels and tissue paper at the former Scott mill in Gatineau, northeast of the Domtar plant, on property now owned by the National Capital Commission.
Farther east in Gatineau, Bowater operates a large newsprint mill.