The Speares

Bytown



The Ottawa Valley started out as salt water, part of an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean called the Champlain Sea. This was just after the last glaciation, around 13,000 years ago. As the ice retreated, an enormous weight was taken off the land which then started to rebound. The ocean was "pushed" by the rising land further along the St. Lawrence valley until now the St. Lawrence River is fresh or at least brackish all the way to one of the world's largest and deepest estuaries at Île d'Orléans in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Meanwhile, the ancient Lakes Algonquin, Iroquois and Erie formed in the depression caused by the ice, and quickly (in a geologic sense) filled up with cubic miles of meltwater. Over the next few millennia these ancient lakes started rebounding too, and Lake Algonquin split up into Lakes Chippewa and Stanley, which also rose and split up into Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron. Lake Iroquois rose too, and until the great ice plug to the east melted, it was a good hundred feet above the current level of lake Ontario, which it became. In fact, all of the ancient great lakes were much higher than their modern counterparts, and the drainage patterns were not what we would expect. For instance, the French River, which currently drains Lake Nippigon into Georgian Bay, at one time flowed "backwards", draining the proto Lake Huron through Nippigon and then out through the Ottawa Valley. Over time everything sorted itself out, the Great Lakes became those that we know today and the drainage patterns became what we would consider normal. But the old drainage patterns remained as valleys and rivers, maybe flowing the wrong way, but still making for a more or less easy canoe route all the way from the Beothuk in present day Newfoundland to the Anishinaabeg in present day Saskatchewan.

Right smack in the middle of this trade route between east and west, the Algonquins had a meeting place, on the Kitche Zibi (sometimes Gitche-zibi; Algonquin was not a written language), in the Ottawa Valley. The site of the meeting place was chosen because it was there that Kitche Zibi, the Great River, met Pasapkedjinawong, the River that Passes Between the Rocks, and Te-nagàdino-zìbi, the River that Stops One's Journey. At this confluence trade goods could flow into the meeting place from any direction, and then go on their way in any other direction. The place was so important to trade that the Algonquin word for trade, adawe, was corrupted by Étienne Brûlé, a French exchange student whom we'll talk about again, into "Ottawa" when he explored here in the early part of the 17th century. Maps of the time started referring to things as "Ottawa", including the Great River itself. Shortly after Étienne blazed the trail, Samuel de Champlain carried on. He followed the Algonquin trade route up the Ottawa to the Mattawa, then through Lake Nippising and down the French River to Georgian Bay, and then south to explore (and claim) the land of the Wendat. Champlain made great friends of the Wendat, going so far as to help them mount raids on the hated Haudenosaunee from a base at Cahiagué, near the Portage de dix Lieuel (the Nine Mile Portage - for some reason it was a mile longer in French) on Ouentironk, Beautiful Water (Lake Simcoe). So largely thanks to the efforts of Samuel de Champlain early in the 17th century, the French were the primary European influence in the Ottawa Valley. That is, until the Treaty of Paris in 1763 saw the British move in.

The Algonquin meeting place was the confluence of the Ottawa, Gatineau and Rideau rivers to the British. This confluence was just as important to them for trade as it was to the original people, but British trade was mainly timber now that silk, and not beaver, hats were in style. The confluence of the Gatineau flowing from the north, the Rideau from the south, the east-west Ottawa River and its many tributaries in the northern wilds made floating timber into this central collection point easy, and then the timber could continue floating downstream to arrive two months later at market in Québec City. So in 1800, Philemon Wright, along with five other families and some labourers arrived and founded Wrightsville on the site of present-day Gatineau, Québec, and commenced the Ottawa Valley timber trade.

At around that time, relations north and south of the border were souring somewhat. To get to Kingston

from Montréal, a ship would have to sail through some sketchy bits of the St. Lawrence that were within shooting distance, so to speak, of the Americans. To counter this threat, Colonel By, a British military engineer, was tasked with completing the northern bit of the Rideau Canal, connecting the Ottawa River at Wrightsville to Kingston, the whole route being very far from any hostilities. When news of this got out, hundreds of land speculators showed up and created Bytown just across the river from Wrightsville, around the mouth of the Rideau. Colonel By created military barracks on present-day Parliament Hill, and also laid out the streets. Two distinct communities were inevitable due to the Rideau Canal running right through town. The community to the west of the canal became "Upper Town" and to the east of the canal became "Lower Town". Much like Upper and Lower Canada, Upper Town was predominantly English Protestants and Lower Town was mostly French Catholics, who dominated the timber industry which was still headquartered across the river in Lower Canada.

And then, in 1832, the Canal project finished. Suddenly, a lot of migrant workers were unemployed, largely Irish Catholics. At the time, the only person lower on the social ladder than an Irishman was an unemployed Irishman. Being Catholics, the Irish tended to settle in Lower Town where the Catholic churches were. The locals were not fully on board with this.

There was really only the one industry in the area for an unemployed person to find work, and that was timber. While it was still dominated by the French, there was at least one Irish operator. Peter Aylen, a man aiming not just to control the timber industry around Bytown, but the very town itself, organized the Irish into a group called "The Shiners" and set them about driving out the French. Shiners have been accused of assault, arson, rape, murder and various atrocities such as abducting children and making them walk home naked in the snow. But it was very hard to prosecute a Shiner. The special constables brought in to keep the peace were likely to be on Aylen's payroll. A Shiner could do literally anything he wished in Bytown and then simply cross the river into Lower Canada where he would be immune. If a Shiner were caught then they would have to face trial in Perth, which was fifty miles away. There was little chance of making that trip without being ambushed by a Shiner gang, and officers were not being paid enough to take the risk. But the Shiners didn't have it all their own way.

Joseph Montferrand was a big bull of a French lumberman. He came to fame at the age of sixteen when he went to see the heavyweight championship in Montréal in 1818. After the champion had been crowned, the promoters jokingly asked the crowd if anyone wanted to go a round. Joseph knocked the champion out with one punch. So it was quite in character when the Shiners attempted to ambush Joseph at the bridge at Chaudière Falls, and he fought off all 150 of them. He continued to be a folk hero to the French lumbermen in their troubles with the Irish and his exploits eventually became the legend of Big Joe Mufferaw, but that is perhaps a story for another day. We need to talk more about the Shiners and Peter Aylen.

Peter was after timber, certainly. In 1836 he was instrumental in the formation of the Ottawa Lumber Association, whose stated goal was to suppress the violence that Peter himself was causing. One of the association's first acts was to improve the movement of timber on the Madawaska river, the river upon which Aylen operated. "Improving the movement of timber" meant protecting Aylen and therefore Irish timber from Big Joe and the French.

But Peter wasn't simply interested in timber. He wanted the town itself. The local agricultural society, the very pinnacle of high society, had a one dollar membership fee. So Peter bought enough of them to get himself and his cronies elected onto the board. This angered the well-to-do more than any amount of terrorism across the canal in Lower Town could have done. So they organized the Bytown Rifles, a volunteer militia group that quickly devolved into a vigilante group whose aim was to bring the war back to the Shiners.

With disorganized, but nonetheless armed, resistance in the streets, Peter decided to try politics. The election for the Nepean Township Council was being held in John Stanley's Tavern in Bytown. Peter and 60 of his Shiners descended on it and beat everyone up before declaring Peter and two of his goons to be the new councillors. This is when Peter learned a hard truth: you can do pretty much as you please to the French; you can do almost as much to the English; but you must never interfere with an election. The outcry was swift and loud; a proper municipal police force came into being, and a jail and courthouse were built right in Bytown. As a result, three of the Shiners involved in the insurrection did some hard time. Peter himself ended up selling off his interests in Upper Canada and living out his days in Lower Canada, immune from prosecution across the river. But he had to become a model citizen: money he had; but French friends he did not. Still, in spite of the enmity he caused between the French and everyone else, his story ends on a peaceful note.

Meanwhile, relations between the French and the British were anything but peaceful across the rest of Lower Canada. Louis-Joseph Papineau and his Patriotes had been protesting the powers of both the Catholic Church, but more to the point, the British

Governor and his appointed advisors since the 1820s. Their protests, especially the plea for responsible (elected and accountable) government, were rejected outright by London so the Patriotes decided on a more aggressive strategy. This led to two armed rebellions taking 325 lives, most of them rebels. Papineau fled, first to the States, and then to Paris.

On the other side of the Ottawa River, in Upper Canada, things were not much better. William Lyon Mackenzie was a Scottish-born newspaper publisher, politician, and fierce critic of the Family Compact. The Compact was an old boys club which ran the colony through patronage and favours. He too tried for years to effect change leading to responsible government through peaceful means. Then, inspired by the violence in lower Canada, he convinced 1,000 radicals to march on the government and create a republic. The radicals lacked training, whereas the British militia did not. The rebels were dispersed in their first and second attempts at a coup, after which William fled to the States. He led various raids over the next year before the whole rebellion collapsed. Mackenzie's rebellion only claimed three lives directly, but as rebels were captured they were often executed.

Oddly, though, the rebellions in both of the Canadas were not total failures. Britain sent over Lord Durham, "Radical Jack", to see what all the fuss was about in the colonies. In his Report on the Affairs of British North America he recommended uniting the two Canadas into one colony, in order to more efficiently assimilate the French Canadians, a people without

history or culture. He also recommended responsible government. This notion was initially rejected by London, but when Lord Sydenham in Canada and Lord Falkland in Nova Scotia started an unofficial form of responsible government via assembly majority, London relented, and suddenly, elected, accountable party governments came into being ten years after the rebellions that started it all.

The first test of this new responsible form of government was immediate. Sir Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine was a lawyer and the leader of the French Canadian Moderate Reformers, supporters of Papineau up to a point. Together with his counterparts in Upper Canada he founded a united party of Upper and Lower Canada Reformers, thus making him, in a sense, the first prime minister of Canada (Upper and Lower). He would only speak French in the assembly, which forced the repeal of the Act of Union clause prohibiting the use of French. But his main claim to fame was the Rebellion Losses Bill and the related Amnesty Act. Together, these two bits of legislature sought to repay Lower Canadians whose property had been damaged in the rebellions, and also to grant amnesty to the perpetrators, such as Papineau. The problem was, the ruling elite and the rank-and-file loyalists (all Tories) viewed all this as a blatant attempt of the French to gain power and pay the rebels for their disloyalty. When the bill and the act passed with the reformer majority, the Tories demanded that Governor General Lord Elgin refuse assent. Amongst violent protests, Lord Elgin signed the new legislature into law. He was attacked by a mob for his troubles, and the parliament buildings in Montréal were burned. But the first test of Canada's responsible government was a pass.

Perhaps as a peace token to the Tories, Lord Elgin decided to move the capital of the colony of Canada from French Montréal. Toronto and Kingston were the obvious top contenders, but Elgin scheduled a visit to Bytown as well. As the Bytown Reformists were making plans for this occasion they were attacked by Tories, including the mayor, who were all opposed to the new form of government. Thirty people were wounded; one shot and killed. Tensions escalated and a couple of days later the two sides met with cannons, muskets and pistols. Only the intervention of the military prevented disaster. So Lord Elgin delayed his visit for a few years until tensions had settled and people became more in favour of reform.

By the mid 1850s, opinion had switched in Bytown, and they were actively campaigning for the honour of being the new capital. In an effort to shed their frontier image the town renamed itself "Ottawa", as "Bytown" conjured up images of Shiners, lumberjacks and beer halls. When Queen Victoria was asked to choose the new capital for the Province of Canada in 1857, she chose Ottawa because she found the area to be pretty in some watercolours she had seen. Those

watercolours were no doubt supplied by Sir John A. MacDonald, Prime Minister of Canada, and head of the Executive Branch looking into a favourable site for the new capital. They chose Ottawa because it was far away from the States, and roughly half way between the English population centers of Toronto and Kingston, and the French population centers of Montréal and Québec City. It straddled the border between the previous Upper and Lower Canadas, had easy water access to both Kingston and Montréal, and the Bytown and Prescott Railway linked it up to civilization by land. The population was small and any riots could be easily put down, which had not been the case in Montréal. Lastly, but not to be overlooked, the government already owned the land that would become Parliament Hill.

And that is how the Algonquin meeting place on the Gitche Zibi became the capital of Canada.

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