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Acknowledgements
The research and writing of this book was made possible by a sabbatical leave from my regular teaching duties at Nipissing University and I gratefully acknowledge the support of Nipissing University for this project.
I owe a special debt to Odwa Atari, whose workshop for faculty on the use of mapping software provided me with a sufficient start to be able to develop my own maps for this project. Both he and Chin in the geomatics lab were always willing to help when I ran into trouble. Unless otherwise noted, the maps in this book are based on the CanVec digital topographical dataset provided by the Government of Canada, Department of Natural Resources Canada — a much-appreciated service.
Research has changed dramatically in the last decade. This project required few trips to the archives and many of the people who made it possible are unknown to me: they are the staff of various libraries and archives who have made resources available online at internet.org, the David Rumsey Map Collection, Library and Archives Canada, the Toronto Public Library, the National Gallery of Canada, and others. I am particularly grateful to those who answered my emails and met my various requests for images in a friendly and timely manner. While much of the visual material included in this study is in the public domain, some is provided with the permission of the copyright holder. I am grateful to all those who have provided me with permission to use their material. I am particularly happy to be able to include the watercolour art of Hope Rathnam, whose family has been visiting the French River for six generations.
I would like to acknowledge the efforts of my editor, Jennifer McKnight, copyeditor, Britanie Wilson, the design staff, and others at Dundurn who have worked hard to make this project a success. I am especially grateful to Barry Penhale and Jane Gibson at Natural Heritage Books who believed in this book from its inception, and for their support and encouragement throughout the process.
Finally, I would like to thank the many colleagues, friends, community members, and family members who have supported me in various ways. In particular, I am greatly saddened that my friend and colleague, Anne Clendinning, who was always so encouraging of my writing, is not here to see the final product. A special thank-you goes to Martha Gould and to my sister Denise Touchette.
Introduction
Lake Nipissing, with its miles of beautiful sandy beaches and its many bays, has often been described as a “beautiful sheet of water.” The seventh largest lake in Ontario after the Great Lakes,[1] it lies at the centre of an area that is both scenic and historic (Map 1). It drains through the French River into Georgian Bay, although once, before the last ice age, it flowed to the east. North Bay, a city of 54,000, lies nestled along the shore of Lake Nipissing, reaching the escarpment to the north and the shores of Trout Lake. Short portages link Trout Lake to Turtle Lake, Pine Lake, Lake Talon, and finally, the Mattawa River, which flows into the Ottawa River at Mattawa — “the meeting of the waters.” The entire waterway between Mattawa and Georgian Bay is known as the Nipissing Passageway and, with its many waterfalls, is one of the most scenic sections of the historic fur trade route from Lachine, near Montreal, to the Great Lakes and beyond. The founder of New France, Samuel de Champlain, explored this route in 1615. Missionaries, fur traders, explorers, and voyageurs alike have travelled it as well. It is, therefore, familiar to anyone who has ever taught a Canadian history survey course, including this author. The Nipissing area disappears from most Canadian history textbooks after 1825, when the Montreal fur trade gave way to trade out of Hudson Bay. The area itself as a destination, or as a place of importance in its own right, seldom, if ever, reappears.
Since moving to North Bay to teach history at Nipissing University twenty-six years ago, I have had the opportunity to experience this area on a more personal level. With its rocky shorelines, towering white pines, and mixed hardwood forests, the natural environment of this area has much to offer nature lovers and outdoor enthusiasts. Like many others, I have my favourite spots that I return to over and over again. On the Amable du Fond River, a tributary of the Mattawa, an extreme narrowing of its rocky banks at Eau Claire Gorge constricts the water into a turbulent bubbling mass of white water, best viewed from the cliffs above. Just west of North Bay, Duchesnay Creek cascades over a series of rapid drops over large boulders at Duchesnay Falls; both change with the seasons and the level of the water, and yet are always fascinating, the sound of the rushing water hypnotic. Red trilliums and other spring flowers are abundant along the trails leading from the Falls. The hiking routes at Samuel de Champlain Park are a great place to enjoy views of countless native flowers, the pine forest above, and the Mattawa River far below. A paddle across Pimisi Bay rewards you with a view of the historic Talon Chutes, where the drop from the tall cliffs to the bay into the water below is thirty metres; unlike the more adventuresome, I have never had the urge to jump into the water below.[2] The French River, with its maze of islands, provides endless scenic views. A hike to Récollets Falls, now reachable from Highway 69, provides just a small taste of what spending time on the rocky shores of the French might be like. In winter, after a snowfall, or when the ice freezes on the trees, a breathtaking wonderland emerges.
Map 1. This relief map of the Nipissing Passageway study area shows the gradual decline in elevation from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay. The irregular pattern of the drainage system, which runs along fault lines, can also be seen. To the east of Lake Nipissing, the Mattawa River, surrounded by high hills, flows along a major fault line into the Ottawa River at Mattawa. This geography was a major factor in the history of the area.
As a historian, however, it is not just the scenic landscape that has captured my attention, but also the remnants of a former time that linger — in buildings, cemeteries, sometimes just as a plaque. While conducting oral histories for a research project on family and community history in the area extending from Mattawa to North Bay, I had the occasion to travel through some of the smaller rural communities, places like Grand Desert, which are now hardly more than a name on a map. Several rural churches in this area have closed, but remain standing. A few, seemingly in the middle of a field, are still in service. Old schools are sometimes abandoned, sometimes converted for other uses. Travels into the country to enjoy the fall colours in the Nipissing and Restoule area south of Lake Nipissing resulted in similar discoveries. The old general store at Commanda, now a museum, still stands as a testament to a past era that is all but forgotten. At French River, a private home retains a sign from its days as a CPR station. For years there was one little white clapboard cabin in between the larger houses along Memorial Drive in North Bay. Now it is gone. There are two small log cabins with large chimneys, dwarfed by the highrise condominium complexes that surround them on Lakeshore Drive. At the corner of Banner Avenue, a crude totem pole once stood beside a souvenir shop, along with another at Jessup Creek, across the street from the modernized Sunset Inn, near a sign that marks the entrance to what might have been a campground. Around Sunset Point along Lakeshore Drive (what used to be Callander Road) there are still numerous cabins, most of them part of motel complexes. A better understanding of the history of the area has allowed me to make sense of these built landscapes.
I first heard about the Dionne quintuplets as a child. When I started teaching at Nipissing University, I made a point of showing my Canadian social history class Pierre Berton’s film on the Dionnes because it was a national story that had occurred locally. Early on, I drove from Callander to Corbeil to see what remained of Quintland, where the Dionne quintuplets were displayed to the public; other than Nipissing Manor, which I recognized as the Big House (built to house the Dionne quintuplets and their family when they were reunited), it didn’t seem that much else remained. It was not until it was pointed out to me much later that I made out the former Dionne nursery, a former souvenir shop, and part of the fence that kept visitors out between viewings. When I started interviewing locals who remembered the 1930s, I heard over and over again how the Dionne quintuplets and the tourists they generated had transformed the area during the Great Depression. One person I talked to, however, indicated that tourism had been an important