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Pioneer’s: Logging On the Ottawa River

Logging in the Ottawa valley was one of the key parts of Canadian settlement. The following is a brief illustration of how this was so.

Shown here is a picture of a logging camp owned by J.R. Booth one of Canada’s oldest and greatest entrepreneurs. Logging camps like this were one of the greatest drawers of settlers after the fur trade began to diminish. Many of the settlers who worked in camps like this would bring their families with them and create homesteads along the Ottawa River, like those found in Buchanan Township and Chalk River. These settlements began in the early 19th-century.

Pictured here is a group of lumbermen hauling logs by horse and sleigh. These logs would be brought out of the bush and brought to a long-distance transport location. This long-distance transport would take the form of the Ottawa River in the early parts of the 19th century later the new railway would become the transport mode of choice.

Pictured here is a group of log riders pushing the logs into the water so that they can be brought downstream quickly. This was a dangerous job in which losing a limb was not unheard of. Log riders like those shown would help guide the logs from where they entered the water to Ottawa and Quebec where they would be squared and shipped to those who needed them.

In the rougher areas of the Ottawa River chutes like that pictured above would be built as a gentler easier navigatable path for logs so as not to lose or damage them.

J.R. Booth pictured here with a train carrying lumber, likely from one of his camps. Booth a Canadian lumber king and railroad baron. He controlled logging rights for large tracts of forest land in central Ontario and built the Canada Atlantic Railway to extract his logs and to export lumber and grain to the United States and Europe. In 1892, his lumber mill was the largest operation of its kind in the world.

Trains like these would come to replace logging routes like the Ottawa Valley by the early 20th century, but even as they replaced the river, they still brought settlers to the valley as people still needed to build them. Some of these settlers would join those from the earlier settlement as different sections of the railway were complete.

Crews like those above would be hired in key areas to keep the waters clear of problem logs that got stuck on the shore, or in rocks. These crews would often be from the local area, so as to boost the local work effort.

Pictured here is a survey map of the Ottawa River showing key sections of the river for settlement and logging.

Shown above is one of the many mills that would trim and square the logs for lumber and prepare them for the final stretch of their journey. Many mills like the one above would become key landmarks and historic sites, leading to streets and sections of the towns that sprang up around them being named after the mills.

Above is a picture of a raft made of squared timber and lumber resting outside the parliament buildings in Ottawa. These squared rafts are how the logs would make the last leg before being shipped to market.

Above logs being loaded on ships as they go to market in a place like Britain and else were in Europe. Early in the 19th-century Canadian lumber became Britain’s key source as they could no longer get lumber from Europe due to Napoleon and his European tariffs.