The area known as "L'Outaouais" stretches along both sides of the Ottawa River between the cities of Ottawa and Montréal. North of this 300 km (186 mi.)-wide stretch of land there are the low hills where the tumbling tributaries of the Ottawa River such as the Rouge, Lièvre and Gatineau have their source.
The Ottawa River always has been of major importance. Samuel de Champlain had already realised on his first expedition in 1603 that the Huron and Algonquin used it to get from the Great Lakes to the St Lawrence to barter their furs. From then on it was the crucial transport link in the Canadian fur trade.
Its history is one of strife, punitive expeditions and bloody massacres, as well as treaties.
In the 18th c. Canadian "voyageurs", such as the fur company men, took over from the Indians, traveling in fleets of canoes, hundreds of men at a time every year, to the Great Lakes in spring, even getting as far as James Bay, and returning laden with furs in the autumn.
As the fur trade began to decline in importance in the early 19th c. the American Philemon Wright started up a new industry by commercially exploiting the forest timber, an industry that is still of considerable importance in the Québec economy today, albeit beset with problems. Wright set himself up near what is now Hull in a beautiful country estate. He had no income to start with that would cover the vast expense that his plans involved, but finally he saw his chance. Deprived of its timber sources in Scandinavia by the Napoleonic Wars, England was desperately looking to its American colonies to meet its demand for wood. The densely forested Outaouais had plenty, and it could easily be floated down in rafts to the next port, Québec, so in the winter of 1805/1806 Wright had his men felling the pines and the other trees.
The first consignment of timber was finally dispatched on June 11th 1806 down the Ottawa River from Gatineau to the St Lawrence. After this success the lumberjacks of Québec in their thousands fell upon the timber on the banks of the Ottawa River and its tributaries. In 1860 the Bishop of Ottawa estimated that there were more than 20,000 "Hommes des Bois" in his diocese alone.
In Gatineau Park, just outside Hull and Ottawa, the Outaouais has one of the province's most beautiful parks, as well as the Papineau - Labelle nature reserve.
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