Low Down Articles
Echoes from the Past
Article 22 of 111
This article first appeared in the "Echoes from the Past" column of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Early Settlement (continued from part 2)
1805. "This year we continued also, much in the same course, to clear off lands, and arranging the new roads, making provisions for new settlers, sowing wheat. I employed about the same number of men as the year before, and laid down more land for grazing pastures etc. I also made a trip to Massachusetts, and procured some valuable stock and grass seed and collected arrears of debts due to me."
Now comes Philemon's account of a voyage to Quebec City which changed his mode of living and that of the settlers, and which was to set a pattern for years to come. The timber trade was to provide a better income than farming alone. It was only late in life that Philemon hankered to return to pure farming.
1806. "I now thought proper to post and make up my accounts, and see what I had expended, how much the inhabitants owed me, as I had then expended $20,000 dollars. I had just returned from Montreal, having been laid down with flour; the expenses of this journey had consumed the whole value of it, as it was conveyed upon sleighs drawn by oxen, and the roads bad. As I had now been six years in the township of Hull, and expended my capital, it was time for me to look out for an export market to cover my imports: no export market had been found, as not a stick of timber had been sent from that place down those dangerous Rapids. I then agreed to try to get some timber ready and try it, and accordingly I then set out to examine the Rapids quite down to the Isle of Montreal. The inhabitants who had been settled there nearly two hundred years, told me it was not possible for me to get to Quebec by the route on the north side of the Isle of Montreal, as such a thing never had been done, and never could be done. I said I would not believe it until I had tried it. I prepared my rafts for the spring, and came from Hull down my new-discovered channel for the Quebec market. From Hull we came down all the Rapids of the Long Sault, to the island Montreal and the River Saint Lawrence. It was a new thing, but a costly one to me. Being a total stranger to navigating the Rapids, we were thirty-five days getting down, as our rafts would oftentimes run aground, and cause us a great deal of labour to get them off again, and I had no person that was acquainted with the channel; but having, from experience learnt the manner of coming down, we can oftentimes come down them in twenty-four hours. However, after much fatigue and expense, we arrived at Quebec with the first timber from that township (Hull) that ever came to Quebec. It can be brought a halfpenny cheaper to Quebec than it can to Montreal. This was in the year 1807."
The closely typed copy of Philemon Wright's account runs to twelve and a half pages makes fascinating reading, but we must reluctantly draw the story to its conclusion at this point. A fuller history of the timber trade may be found in Courtney Bond's "Hurling down the Pine", copies of which are available from the Historical society of the Gatineau.