Reflections

Throughout history, the Dumoine watershed has inspired stories, legends, artists, songwriters, poets, authors, and romances.

The classic 1956 Wade Hemsworth song “Log Driver’s Waltz”, which was made famous in 1979 by the National Film Board’s animated film of the same name and the McGarrigle sisters’ version of the song, speaks to a romantic vision of the log driver.

Many canoeists have fallen under the spell of the Dumoine – not to mention their paddling partner – on a canoe trip.

We are continually finding new material inspired by the river.

This is just a small sample of the reflections people have made, in different ways and different formats, over the decades.

Anishinaabe Legends

The story of the trickster Wisakedjak (aka Nanabush) chasing a giant beaver out of Lac Dumoine all the way to Calumet Island, and churning up the Dumoine and Coulonge rivers in the process, is a well-recorded and much-loved legend.

Myths and Folklore of the Timiskaming Algonquin and the Timagami Ojibwa

Frank G. Speck, Canada Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Memoir 71, No 9 Anthropological Series (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1915): 1-3.

Algonquin History in the Ottawa River Watershed

Prepared by James Morrison, Legal and Historical Research, Winnipeg, Manitoba for Sicani Research & Advisory Services Ottawa, Ontario, Revised 2005.

Kipawa, Portrait of a People

Kermot A. Moore, Highway Book Shop, 1982

Logger and Surveyors Carved Names

At the end of the second portage, as you leave Lac Laforge, a logger has carved his name into the rock: JP PAQUETTE, PAPINEAU, JUN 26 1887. Two other loggers have carved messages into the rock below Devil’s Chute on the Fildegrand River. There must be others still waiting to be discovered.

In 1912, as he was heading upriver, the surveyor Paul Malouin left behind a careful carving, on the east shore, 100 hundred feet after launching at the end of Triple Play portage: P.A.M 1912.

In 1906, the surveyor P. Girard measured and sketched the entire wagon road from Rapides-des-Joachims to Rowanton, as well as the branch to Saint-Patrick Lake (now known as Lac Saint-Patrice), leaving us sketches of all the stopping places along the road and the Grande Chute timber slide.

In 1848-49, JJ Rooney surveyed the Dumoine’s west branch, as well as the entire main river to Lac Dumoine, and left us an interesting journal. His guides were two Dumoine Algonquins: Paul Wabininguan (a.k.a. Ponens) and Cecil Fildegrand. The west branch was later named Fildegrand. Friends of Dumoine has named the campsite at Grande Chute bridge Ponens.

Between 1850-1876, the Hamilton Brothers logging company had its Dumoine timber limits surveyed several times. This has left us with century-old poetic or tribute names for several rapids, including Long Rapids, Little Steel, Big Steel, The Horserace, Richards, Tuckers, High Falls, Red Pine, and Ryan’s Chute.

Artists, Musicians and Writers

In the 1980s, Bill Mason painted “Light on Dumoine Rock” just below the second rapids leaving Lac Benoît.

Hap Wilson’s 1986 classic guidebook, The Dumoine, is a masterpiece of illustrations, which are as accurate today as they were when he created them thirty years ago.

The song “Chapeau Boys” tells the story of some logger lads going in to work on the Noire River. They got off The Empress steamer in Swisha, and walked 16 miles into Retty’s Farm (a stopping place later called Bouchers), where one of them fell in love with Retty’s daughter.

Tom Connors also fell in love with a “Swisha Miss” and wrote a song about it.

Two Alligator boats – or warping tugs – feature in the book Alligators of the North, by Harry B. Barrett and Clarence F. Coons. Nature Heritage Books: Toronto, 2010. Many artists and photographers have painted them where they were pulled up and abandoned on the shore of Lac Laforge.

Angela St. john painted this lovely interpretation Grande Chute and donated it to FOD

Bill Mason painting of Grande Chute 1982

“In 2021 Friends of Dumoine gave old crosscut saw blades found in the Dumoine Valley to 8 different artists and asked them to paint a scene that would have occurred on the Dumoine a century ago. These will all be on display in the new Grande Chute museum opening September 7,2025.

This beautiful example of Pointer Boats running Dumoine Rapids by Catherine Orfald is one example. Come and see the entire collection and much more this fall or next summer.”

– Nicolas Cadieux, Museum Curator

Kathy Haycock painted this lovely interpretation Grande Chute and donated it to FOD

Every August for the past decade, CPAWS has hosted an art camp called Dumoine River Art for Wilderness (DRAW). Qualifying artists pay their way by donating a piece of art for auction. More than 100 pieces now adorn homes everywhere.

Rod and Gun, Canadian Edition, May 1904, featured a story called “Shooting the Chute” by Martin Hunter, about running the Grande Chute Timber Slide in a canoe – fact or fiction?

Tote Road Oral History: stories of teamsters driving loads of supplies into the Lac Dumoine Depot appear often in memoirs. Vern Price tells a great one in Logging on the Schyan.

In the 1950s, Max Beattie, an Ottawa Valley songwriter, spent a summer as a forest ranger on Lac Dumoine. Surely it must have inspired one of his songs?

Gordon Lightfoot paddled the Dumoine in the 1980s. He paddled many great Canadian wild rivers. Might the Dumoine have been the inspiration for one of his songs?

1999 Silver Quarter: The Canadian mint released a coin featuring a De Havilland Beaver airplane on skis. The artist used the Bradley Air Beaver CF ODA, the plane that transported hundreds of paddlers into the Dumoine, as his inspiration.

James Raffan wrote a song as an ode to his friend Ron Bowes, who was a Bradley Air pilot.

Wally Schaber wrote a book called Last of the Wild Rivers, telling stories and outlining the great history of the Dumoine watershed.

The entire Ottawa River, including Rapides-des-Joachims, was almost a shipping route for steamboats. Read about it in Ray Love’s book, The Georgian Bay Ship Canal, Canada’s Abandoned National Dream.

Registered Timber Marks of Eastern Canada, 1870-1984 by D. Aldred. Published in 1985, this book represents a beautiful collection of the art of the timber stamps that found their way onto company logs. You may be lucky enough to find a stamped EB Eddy, W Edwards or JR Booth log on your canoe trip.

Marc Audet, a local singer/songwriter, is fascinated by the Dumoine’s history and has composed several songs about it.