Ottawa Valley - The River

The River

Further information: Ottawa River timber trade

The Ottawa River is 1,130 kilometres long with a watershed of 140 000 km squared. Its source is Lac Capimitchigama in Quebec. The Ottawa River was first navigated and settled by the Huron, Algonquin, Iroquois and Outaouais people. The Ottawa River bears the name of an aboriginal tribe that traded on the waterway; the "Outaouais" which is French for Ottawa. The Ottawa River provided the means for entrepreneurs to start up their logging business. The River watershed had unlimited resources, loose regulations, and cheap labour pools which allowed the entrepreneurs to quickly increase control over the timber trade. Many people involved in the logging industry took advantage of the waterway and built their empires because of the fast-moving waters and forests along the River. These loggers played a crucial role in the development of the valley community as they guided logs downriver this boost is what led to the development of major towns and cities such as Ottawa and Gatineau.
The Algonquin people called the Ottawa River "Kitchissippi", which means “Great River”. The Algonquin word Kichesippirini means "Big River People". The name Petawawa comes from the Algonquin language meaning “where one hears a noise like this.”

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Famous quotes containing the words the river and/or river:

    “We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “There are knives that glitter like altars
    In a dark church
    Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile
    To be healed.

    There’s a woden block where bones are broken,
    Scraped clean—a river dried to its bed”
    —Charles Simic (b. 1938)