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Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 11.

The Chamberlins Could Have Owned Ottawa

Mr. Philemon Wright, said Mr. Waters Chamberlin, owed my father a bill. As money was scarce in those days Mr. Wright wanted my father to take some land across the Ottawa which he owned. At that time, of course, there was no canal and the present site of Ottawa was a wilderness and hard to get at. No one on the Gatineau or in Hull ever thought that the land across the river would ever be good for anything except hunting on and as my father had all he could attend to on the Gatineau he refused the offer.

He often told me afterwards that he thought Mr. Wright was trying to put one over on him. They were both Yankees, he chuckled. Mr. Wright came from Woburn and my father from near Lowell. Anyway, we can say we had a chance to own most of Ottawa.

Oxen and Wooden Plougshares

I have often been asked, remarked Mr. Chamberlin, whether I ever drove behind oxen. I never did. Oxen went out very early, that is for driving. They were used till later for ploughing. I have heard stories about oxen drawing loads into Bytown, but after the eighteen thirties there were none in the Gatineau.

I can also tell you something about ploughs which will probably interest you. The first ploughs used in the Gatineau were pretty crude affairs. I remember well the first wooden mould board ploughs. They were made of birch which had a natural curve. and the points were strengthened by having strips of iron nailed on to them. As I say, they were crude but it was surprising how well they did what was required of them. Asked whether he remembered solid wooden wagon wheels made from planks, Mr. Chamberlin said, no, even though he had been born in 1829. He continued, when I was a boy my father made his own wheels. They had regular spokes just as they have now. In 1830 wagons were being manufactured in Bytown.

About Mile Hill (and remember this account was given in 1924)

First of all, Mr. Chamberlin related, for the benefit of those people who whirl up to Kirk's Ferry nowadays in a train or automobile in three quarters of an hour. I might say that it took a whole day to make the trip to Hull 80 or 90 years ago. I have, of recent years, seen automobiles tearing up the long hill to Chelsea at twenty to thirty miles per hour. But when I was a boy it was a matter of hours to climb Christie Wright's hill, as it was called. (Christie Wright was Christopher Columbus Wright, grandson of old Philemon Wright). The road was so bad then that it was almost impossible to get a load up the hill with a team.

The general practice was, in the case of barrels or puncheons, to unload them, tie chains around them and haul them up that way. They slipped over the ground better. The long hill was much steeper then than now. The whole road was, at first, really only a sort of trail through the thick bush. One had to wind around stumps and pick the best-spots. Nobody ever dreamed of getting home the same day they started when they went to Hull or Bytown.

(Do our readers remember when "105" was Highway 11 and Mile Hill before it was straightened out and became less than a mile. and we travelled at miles per hour and in winter the road wasn't ploughed and everybody used chains on their car wheels? By the way, Christie Wright lived at the top of the hill, hence the early name tor Mile Hill).

Spell-Bound

In case some of you may be slightly confused by the two spellings - Chamberlin and Chamberlain - which appear in some of these articles - it is understood that both spellings were used within the same family.

Meech, or Meach, Lake is another case of two spellings. Originally, it was Meech. Then, for some reason, it became Meach. Within the last couple of years it reverted to Meech.


Volume 11 table of content.

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