Paddling the Chats – with care

By Katharine Fletcher

“I call this area the Kingdom of the Chats,” said local his torian Armand Ducharme. “There’s so much history here.”

Standing at the ferry docks at Quyon, Que., Ducharme was spending a morning with a group of paddler-explorers keen on hearing about this richly historical section of the Ottawa River. It’s between the ferry dock and the 1932 Chats Falls Dam and Generating Station which silenced forever the 10.7-metre-high surging whitewater.

So let me take you on a historical tour before you paddle what’s locally known as “the Chats” in the Pontiac region of the Outaouais.

The name “chats” is from the French for “cat,” but Ducharme noted that although racoons are raton laveur in French, they are colloquially called chats sauvages (wild cats). So the name comes from the French explorers who travelled with First Nations’ guides, traders in their own right who negotiated the rapids and portages where jagged rocks gouged canoes. In his 1613 journal, Samuel de Champlain described the tobacco ceremony at the Chaudière, where his native guides asked the river gods for safe passage. Maybe Mishapashoo, the capricious spirit of the rapids would not tip their canoes, imperilling goods and lives.

Paddling northwest along the Quebec side of the Ottawa, you’ll see Quyon’s Tim Horton’s Camp des Voyageur’s children’s camp overlooking Pontiac Bay. What a different scene would have greeted us in the late 1700s.

In 1785, French settler Joseph Mondion built a supply depot and cleared a small farm overlooking the Bay, where he remained for 14 years. In 1814, Philemon Wright (founder of Wrightville, which became Hull, now Gatineau) built a timber slide so white pine and red pine logs could bypass the falls en route to ByTown (Ottawa). By 1821, the Hudson Bay Company operated Chats House at Mondion’s Point as a fur trading post.

By the 1840s, the lumber trade was in high gear, on rivers serving as transportaww tion to get the log booms to Ottawa, Montreal, and Britain. In 1840 imagine a sawmill at Pontiac Bay … and a few years later, one on the Quyon River, both built by lumber baron John Egan.

Eventually, Pontiac Bay became a community of 141 residents – but when you paddle past today, everything’s gone, lost to history but being recalled by tellers like Ducharme. People settled here, Ducharme explained, because the Chats’ four kilometres of rapids presented a barrier to westward travel. From 1832 to 1914 the steamships plying the waters from Ottawa to Pontiac Bay were unable to transport people and goods upriver, so a community grew alongside the portage. But, how could business get upriver past Pontiac Bay?

The Union Forwarding and Railway Company, which built the steamships Lady Colborne and George Buchanan, seized the opportunity. In 1847, the company constructed almost five-kilometres of horse railway to link Pontiac and Union bays, through rocky, forested and marshy land. Workers blasted rock, and dumped fill where wooden trestle bridges completed the job.

Envision that horse railway: a two-horse team hauled carriages with steamer passengers and goods along a cut through the forest. This makeshift conveyance enabled

trade to continue up and down river for about 40 years. You can find traces of it at Pontiac Bay, west of the Tim Horton Camp in a shallow bay with an outcrop of Precambrian Shield. Imagine the Ann Sisson or another steamboat at its base. Passengers disembarked here, climbed a steep flight of wooden stairs up the rock face, then boarded the horse railway’s tram carriage, alighting at the Union Bay village of Chats Lake (not a real lake, just a broad section of the Ottawa). Here, the Oregon conveyed goods to Portage-du-Fort.

River transportation dwindled after 1886 when the iron horse – The Pontiac and Pacific Junction Railway – opened along the north shore, bypassing Quyon, stopping just north of it, at Wyman.

Pontiac Village residents drifted away, moving to Quyon, where John Egan’s 1840s mill on the Quyon River offered jobs.

Under the heading of “What if?” history, there was a scheme link Montreal to Georgian Bay by canal. “Business folks thought a canal could link river traffic from Montreal to Ottawa and from there to the Great Lakes,” Ducharme said. In 1854, the partners were given $500,000 for the project, which commenced a year later. With 500 men working, and within an astonishing 15 metres of the culmination of the canal, money ran out, leaving behind the pile of gunpowderblasted rock we can see at the end reach of Pontiac Bay. The rock holds back a cut filled with ri ver water, and the canal cut is still visible around Chats Lake and Pontiac Bay.

Just imagine how this 4.5-kilometre, sixlock canal would have altered the face of the Ottawa River and brought settlements to its

Timber slide at Chats landing.

upper reaches. But it wasn’t to be. Instead, the St. Lawrence Seaway connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, bypassing the ancient “trans-Canada high- way” of the Ottawa River. Happily, there is move- ment afoot to create a park here, and a feasibility study for a proposed Parc du Sault-des-Chats de Pontiac has been done.

Many of us locals hope to see the park created, to preserve Canadian history – as well as preserve rich wildlife habitat.

This is an uninterpreted historical paddle needing an active imagination to transport you back in time. You can start from Quyon or Fitzroy Provincial Park on the Ontario side.

Starting from Quyon, you can put in just east of the ferry docks at the Quonset-hut Lions’ Hall. There’s ample parking and a chip stand. Paddle west, (watch out for the ferry cable) with your PFD firmly strapped on – winds and waves can be treacherous. Stay close to the north shore and keep in mind it’s mostly private property, so not many opportunities to get out. Alternatively, you could camp at Fitzroy, go for a paddle, and then return for a swim, hike, and over - night tenting or RVing. NOTE: Swimming at the mouth of the Quyon River is unsafe due to unpredictable, strong currents.

How long you paddle completely depends on what route you select. The Quyon-Chats Dam-Fitzroy loop is about 11 kilometres. As for other activities, at time of publication, no paddling events or hikes were sched - uled, but in the fall the Municipality of Pontiac might arrange a paddle or historical outing. Information at info@municipalitepontiac.ca or municipalitepontiac.ca.

It’s really dangerous to paddle close to Chats Falls Dam. Signs are posted saying go no further, so don’t – if sluice gates open, rushing water can capsize boats. Φ

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