Tributes
Tribute to Logging on the Gatineau River
The Post, June 19, 1991 and July 31, 1991
Last week the Canadian Pacific Forest Products (CPFP) Company announced that logging on the Gatineau River would cease at the end of the 1991 River Drive. Thus a proud tradition of almost 200 years of hardworking draveurs, or log drivers, and of fortunes won and lost on the mighty river, is coming to an end.
The Gatineau, so familiar today as a quiet river usually filled with logs, has its headwaters at Lake Capimitchigama about 150 miles north of Ottawa. It is a far cry from the 1650s when Nicholas Gatineau dit Duplessis explored the river and gave it his name. Its raging rapids, unfortunately, claiming his life somewhere near present-day Chelsea.
The turbulent waters of the river slowed northward exploration for a couple of centuries, or at least until 1806 when lumbering came into its own as an industry. In fact, Philemon Wright took his first raft of squared timber to Quebec City from the mouth of the Gatineau River that same year.
The lumbering industry was certainly the backbone of the economy, as was the Gatineau River as an avenue to transport logs to market. And logs they were, too. Unlike the puny pulp logs floating past today, the logs of yesteryear were massive red or white pine, measuring at least 40 to 50 feet in length, and three to five feet in diameter. Even when these logs were squared they were still about 24 inches on a side.
Interest in the Gatineau Valley grew to the point where the seven or so companies vying for logging rights saw it to their advantage to sign the "Gatineau Privilege" to prevent trouble among the logging companies. From 1832 to 1843, the "Privilege" was in fact a monopoly of the Valley's resources, in which each partner was allowed to take a specific number of logs each year. Depots were also established throughout the Valley to serve as gathering places for loggers heading into the shanties, and acted as distribution centres for the tons of supplies needed during the winter cutting operations.
During the decade that the "Privilege" was in force, the partners opened up the Gatineau Valley by building rough roads the 93 miles from Hull to the present day site of Maniwaki.
Agriculture was introduced into the Gatineau Valley, and most of the present villages were established at about 12-mile intervals as stopping places for the men tracking to the bush with supplies for the shanties. Hull, Chelsea, Wakefield, Low, and Kazabazua, are prime examples of the "stopping places" along the river route.
The shanties were situated in such a way that men would not have to walk more than three miles to work, and the horses would not have more than four miles to haul logs to a lake or river.
In 1843 the monopoly ended with the passing of the Crown Timber Act that authorized licences for timber cutting on lands not already granted to other lumber companies. This relaxation of the rules governing the timber trade encouraged many more companies to try their luck. Thus, after 1850, hundreds of men were working the Gatineau and expanding woodlands operations up the Gens-de-Terre River, one of the great tributaries of the Gatineau River.
The fortunes of the lumbering industry on the Gatineau were intimately tied to the British economy and colonial preference, which was terminated in 1860. Free trade was certainly a problem then, too. With the demand for squared timber drying up, the logging companies switched to the production of sawed lumber for the rapidly growing market in the United States.
Perhaps it was just as well that the demand for giant trees to mast the British navy was over, as the stands of huge pine were mostly gone. However the smaller pine suitable for sawed lumber was abundant. Hence, the river was still in demand as the avenue to transport logs to the mills in Hull and to the shores of the Ottawa River. But this era of prosperity was to last only about 60 years, until the market for milled lumber went into decline.
But the fast-developing world demand for pulp and paper and the emergence of the Canadian paper industry combined to give the mighty Gatineau yet another reprieve as the avenue for logs to the mills.
In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the lumber mills of the Ottawa closed down and the lumber barons were forced to sell their timber rights to the newly established pulp-and-paper companies, which had an insatiable demand for pulpwood.
"... In 1921, CIP bought out Gilmour & Hughson Ltd.'s right to the Gatineau territory to provision their newly built pulp mill on the Ottawa River. The draveurs, their colourful songs and rowdy life-style intact, continued to ensure that a steady stream of logs flowed down the Gatineau," - Michel Beaudry in a recent article in Equinox magazine.
The growing demand for power was the next geo-economic factor to influence the logging industry on the Gatineau River. Instead of a fast freeflowing stream, some of the mighty rapids of the Gatineau were to be harnessed for power, causing a very marked change in techniques for moving the logs down the river.
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"The might of man in his eternal conflict with nature for the advancement of civilization, is perhaps most forcibly demonstrated in the harnessing of the turbulent Gatineau River, with its cascades, eddies and falls, which is in progress at Chelsea where the great power plant of the Canadian International Paper Company is most rapidly and surely springing into being."
So wrote an unnamed journalist in a 1926 The Ottawa Citizen article about the glories of dam building on the Gatineau, and in particular the wonders of the CIP. The CIP newsprint plant at Gatineau, under construction at the same time as the power dams, was headlined as "One of the largest projects being carried out in the world to-day."
The dam at Chelsea and its companion just down stream at Farmers' Rapids, were part of a scheme that required two more dams further north to provide both power and a storage reservoir that would ensure a constant flow of water to run the great turbines. (Much of the power from the Chelsea dams was destined for sale to the Ontario Hydro Electric Company for furnishing industrial development in Ontario).
The northern dams, named Mercier and the Paugan Falls near Low, were responsible for the creation of enormous reservoirs, especially the Mercier. It was once called the Bitibe Lake Dam, and created a lake with a water surface of 64,000 acres and fed by a watershed of 6,200 square miles - more than adequate to furnish the then 7,000-8,000 cubic feet per second needed to power the generators at Chelsea. The flow is now about 12,000-13,000 cubic feet per minute to power the larger turbines installed in later years.
Dramatic changes had to be made to the methods of moving timber down the Gatineau River after the dams were completed and the river "flooded." Aside from the enormous chutes needed for the logs to by-pass the four new dams on their way to the Gatineau mill, a whole new system was needed to tow the logs through the huge lakes created by the dams, and on nearly to the headwaters of the river.
From the early days of logging - from 1806 on - the rivermen, or draveurs, were romantic characters, more or less regarded as the elite of the woodsmen. These rugged men spent the long workday shepherding logs that they had cut during the winter, to the various creeks and small lakes of the Gatineau watershed, down to the river.
They often had to dam the creeks until the water was high enough to float the logs and rush them down to the Gatineau. Then the draveurs would spend the rest of the drive following the logs, clearing jams at the various falls and chutes on the fast-flowing water course. Their camp, complete with cooks and sleeping tents, would go before them by pointer boat to meet the weary men, miles down stream, at sunset.
It was a dangerous job, and many a man lost his life in the river's treacherous waters, to be buried in lonely, unmarked graves. Today there are several memorial crosses along the Gatineau shores as a reminder of the draveurs who gave their lives to the river.
In 1907, an organization was established in the form of the Gatineau Boom Company to float logs from all the companies to the southern destination. In later years, Gatineau Boom became a subsidiary company of Canadian Pacific Forest Products. More than 120 men were employed on the river by the company in its heyday.
In 1927, when the dams were completed and the waters of the Gatineau River began to rise to tame the rapids and create large lakes, the river drive became mechanized with the introduction of tugboats to move booms, or sacs of logs, across the newly created lakes, especially where the current was inadequate to allow the logs to float free.
Some years ago Captain Willie Pilon of Low told of his experience taking command of a brand-new 65-foot tug, the Pickanock, in April 1928. It was the biggest of river tugs to serve the Gatineau Boom Company on the upper Gatineau. Pilon worked for the company for 48 years.
But before the Pickanock was launched, and the waters flooded the land behind the Paugan Dam, Pilon walked with a surveyor along the shore for some eight miles, noting the high points of land that would serve as anchor points for the towing operation. They also had a wary eye cast for any obstructions that could cause navigational problems. Pilon also named various locations which would be used by the boatmen to indicate their position on the river.
The first buoy was placed at "Jack Lowell's," which just happened to be the name of the farmer who owned the adjacent land. "The Dry Point" was at the Ramsay's house. The "S" was at the Paugan Chute. At the Big Island there was the "Dugway," which was the channel that the rivermen dredged out to let them take a shortcut around the island. These names are still in use as navigation points on the Manitou some 64 years later.
Gathering logs that were dumped into the Gatineau many miles north, the tow would start at the Manitou, eight miles above the Paugan. The Captain said that they towed at an average of one mile per hour. But this is not surprising when you consider that the Pickanock usually towed 22,000 cords of wood strung out about a quarter of a mile behind the tug. It was not uncommon to get hung up on one of the ever-shifting mud banks on the river, but this did not prevent towing 24 hours a day, especially at the height of the season when there were lots of logs coming down from the north. Pilon recalled days when the jams were seven and eight miles long. "The faster we would tow them down the more logs there would be - seems they just kept coming," Pilon said.
Working long hours was not much of a problem for the Pickanock, as it had a crew of five, sleeping quarters and a small galley, or kitchen. Although the towman, who doubled as cook, picked up the grub from the CIP camp at Paugan, they were always able to keep it hot.
While the tugs are smaller today, little has changed in getting the spruce, balsam and jack pine down river to the plant where it is turned into newsprint. Perhaps one of the most accessible places to see the last of the rivermen at work is in the ten-mile stretch of the Gatineau that flows between Cascades and Tenaga, just above the Chelsea Dam. A great spot for seeing logs propelled down chutes over a dam is from the road crossing the Paugan Dam, near Low.
Tugs based at the Chelsea Camp and at the CIP Floatage at Cascades, join forces to gather the logs that have floated free from the bottom of the Paugan Dam, past the Village of Wakefield, to the gap at Cascades. At this point, the logs are again corralled into sacs, or booms, to be towed the 10 miles to the storage area above the Chelsea Dam. Incidentally, there are roughly 1,000 cords of wood in each sac, or, at about 150 logs per cord, there are over 15,000 individual logs in each boom.
Frequently the tugs will tow three sacs at one time, or some 45,000 logs, strung out behind the charming little forty-year-old workhorses - the tugs of the river.
The way these tugs pull the sacs is not exactly as it appears to observers from land. In fact, the tug is fastened to the shore directly ahead of it by up to 6,000 feet of steel cable, which is attached to rock bolts driven into the granite of the Canadian Shield at appropriate intervals. The tug reels in the cable on big drums in the forward part of the boat. Once reaching one tow point, the tug repeats the process until it reaches its destination.
There are only about 40 men and 20 tugs left in the business of moving the logs down stream from the north. However, there are about 200 jobs that are directly associated with logging operations.
At the end of the 1991 drive, logging on the Gatineau will become part of our history. The Canadian International Paper Company, after announcing last month that it will cease running pulp logs on the Gatineau River, said that it will instead use wood chips, delivered to the Gatineau plant by truck.
Thus the nearly 200-year romance of logging on the Gatineau River will soon be only a memory that has fallen victim to technology.