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Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 9.

In the Beginning

This poem by the late Arthur S. Bourinot of Ottawa, Ontario and Kingsmere, Quebec is being reprinted with the kind permission of Mrs. Bourinot. It was part of a collection of his works titled UNDER THE SUN published in 1939 by The MacMillan Company of Canada.

Nicolas Gatineau

Delve deep amongst the musty muniments
The archives of the Courts at Trois Rivières
The old Notarial files of Montreal
Sneeze with the long lying dust and tire your eyes
With scanning of old script, perchance you'll find
The name of Nicolas Gatineau, Sieur du Plessis,
Greffier of the Court, tabellion,
Once with the Hundred Associates, trader of furs,
The penner of dry documents, a scrivener
Of legal terms; and were that all, you'd say
"Why tempt the dusty sneeze, the tired eyes
To find perhaps a deed to one La Salle?"
But is that all? The record shows scant else
And yet the fact remains, the fact remains
A great and lovely river bears his name
And sings it to the sun and to the stars.

Tiring of musty tomes he roamed the woods,
Coursed with the Coureur de Bois the lakes and streams
To hoard himself small gold, a patrimony,
That he might turn again to his Belle France
And live his life in safe and quiet content.
Fate intervened and wrote a different tale
Marked "finis" to the life of Gatineau;
But it's not told in musty tome or deed
What mishap, what chance accident upset
His long-laid plans, but legend says
The great and lovely river took his life,
Not satisfied nor sated took his name
And bears it to this day, a good return,
Fair interest on the investment of a life,
More profit than he ever hoped to gain —
The increment of immortality.


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