THE CANADIAN ATLAS ONLINE NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR – GRADE 6-9
www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas
Canada’s Capital and Its Surrounding Waterways
Lesson Overview
Students will examine historical and geographical factors associated with the waterways surrounding Canada’s Capital (Ottawa, St. Lawrence, Rideau, Gatineau Rivers and the Rideau Canal) and their influence on the location of the Capital Region. Students will become familiar with economic development generated by these waterways and develop an appreciation of the roles of waterways in the evolution of life in the Capital Region.
Grade Level
Grades 6-9
Time Required
Two classes
Curriculum Connection (Province/Territory and course)
Atlantic Provinces Curriculum for Social Studies: Council of Atlantic Ministers of Education and Training (CAMET): Newfoundland and Labrador
Additional Resources
· Student Activity #1: Brainstorming (attached)
· Student Activity #2: The Capital Region Waterways Map (attached)
· Student Activity #3: The First TransCanada Highway (attached)
· Student Activity #4: The Timber Days (attached)
· Student Activity #5: Building the Rideau Canal (attached)
· Summary Assessment (attached)
· Fact Sheets (attached)
o Settlement and Industrial Development
o The Ottawa River
o A Capital in the Making
o The Waterways
· Computers, LCD projector and internet access
Websites
Canadian Atlas Online
http://canadiangeographic.ca/atlas
(Explore by Themes: People: Evolving Cities: Ottawa)
Canadian Encyclopedia
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006008
Parks Canada – Rideau Canal National Historic Site
http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/on/rideau/index_e.asp
Bytown Museum
http://www.bytownmuseum.com/en/ottawahistory.html
Ottawa-Gatineau Watershed Atlas
http://ottawariverkeeper.ca/river/watershed_atlas/
Main Objective
Students can identify historical, geographical and economic impacts that surrounding waterways have had upon location of Canada’s Capital and how they continue to influence the Capital Region today.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
· access information from printed and online sources;
· understand through map study where the Ottawa, St. Lawrence, Rideau, Gatineau Rivers, and the Rideau Canal are located;
· understand the role of waterways in determining the location of Canada’s Capital;
· understand the historical significance of the construction of the Rideau Canal;
· understand the economic significance of waterways on the Capital Region;
· understand how waterways today play an important role in the Capital Region.
The Lesson
Introduction
/ Review the websites.Ask: How have the waterways surrounding Canada’s Capital helped with its growth and development?
Instruct students to complete Student Activity #1: Brainstorming. Decide what background information students should be given.
After completion, discuss:
· How did the waterways influence the location of Canada’s Capital?
· In what ways did waterways promote economic development of the region? Consider the fur trade, timber trade and other industries.
· What uses do citizens and visitors of the Capital region make of the waterways today?
· What challenges do you think these waterways will face in the future?
Inform students that they will visit stations around the classroom to learn about the role of waterways in the development of Canada’s Capital. Set up four distinct areas of the class for Activities 2, 3, 4 and 5. Divide students into small groups and assign them to a station. Give each group approximately 20 minutes at each station to complete the task. (Some of the stations will need to be close to computers.)
(Option: Assign only one of the Activities and have the group report their findings back to the class.)
Lesson Development
/ Monitor and assist students at their stations as they complete Activities 2-5.Conclusion
/ Invite students to share their writing from Activity#3 and Activity#4.Instruct students to assemble the activities into a booklet for assessment.
Distribute the Summary Assessment.
Lesson Extension
Visit the Ottawa-Gatineau Watershed Atlas at http://ottawariverkeeper.ca/river/watershed_atlas/ to obtain information and research problems facing the waterways today such as water pollution. Students can plan in groups how to deal with some of these challenges.
Assessment
See the Summary Assessment (attached).
Further Reading
National Capital Commission
www.canadascapital.gc.ca
Link to Canadian National Geographic Standards:
Essential Element #3: Physical Systems
· River systems of Canada and the world
Essential Element #4: Human Systems
· Transportation and communications networks in Canada and the world
Geographic Skill #2: Acquiring Geographic Information
· Use a variety of research skills to locate and collect geographic data.
THE CANADIAN ATLAS ONLINE NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR – GRADE 6-9
www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas
Brainstorming
Student Activity #2:
The Capital Region Waterways Map
Review the information found in the Waterways Factsheet (attached) and label the following places on the maps below:
· Great Lakes
· St. Lawrence River
· Canadian Shield
· St. Lawrence Lowlands
· Montreal
· Kingston
· Ottawa
· Rideau River
· Gatineau
· Gatineau River
Student Activity # 3:
The First TransCanada Highway
Review the Ottawa River Fact Sheet (attached) and answer these questions:
1. How can the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence Rivers be considered “ highways”?
2. Name some early explorers who made use of the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence River.
3. How were the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence Rivers important to the fur trade?
[i]
4. What elements of the natural environment reflected in this painting depict the powerful influence that the Ottawa River had on First Nations people of the region?
5. What effect did natural obstacles like the mighty Chaudières Falls have on transportation on the Ottawa River?
Philemon Wright was a lumberman from Massachusetts. He came to Canada in 1800 as the leader of a small group who settled on the Ottawa River at the present site of Gatineau (Hull). These settlers wanted to be farmers, but a lack of money forced many, including Wright, into the timber trade. In 1806, he floated the first square timber raft from Ottawa to Québec. Wright’s mills provided much employment in the area in the early 1800s.
View of the mill and tavern of Philemon Wright on Ottawa River, painting by H. Du Vernet, 1823 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-608)[1]
6. What elements of the natural environment would have made Wright choose this location to settle?
7. What hardships would Wright have had to overcome in building his settlement at Hull?
8. Imagine that you were one of Philemon Wright’s settlers. Write a journal entry for your days at the settlement.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006008 first accessed May 8th, 2011
Student Activity #4:
The Timber Days
Fur trading was the first major industry in the Ottawa Valley. It was followed by the export of lumber – first, square timber; then, sawn lumber; then, pulpwood (for paper making). Square timber was rafted down the Ottawa River to Québec City starting in the early nineteenth century.
Review the following website:
Bytown Museum
http://www.bytownmuseum.com/en/ottawahistory.html
Imagine that you lived during time of the timber trade. Write a letter that you received from someone who was involved in the trade. Describe the hard work that went into bringing timber down the Ottawa River. How might they have spent their time when not looking out for the dangers involved?
Student Activity # 5:
Building the Rideau Canal
The Rideau Canal is 202 km long linking the Ottawa River with Lake Ontario. Construction started in 1826 under direction of Lieutenant-Colonel John By. Review these websites and answer the questions that follow.
Parks Canada – Rideau Canal National Historic Site
http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/on/rideau/index_e.asp
Bytown Museum
http://www.bytownmuseum.com/en/ottawahistory.html
2
Answer the following questions:
1. Why was it considered necessary to construct the Rideau Canal?
2. What difficulties did the workers have to overcome in constructing the canal?
3. How does this photo show that Colonel John By had the skills necessary to build the canal?
4. How did humans and technology of the time work together to construct the canal?
5. Why did commercial traffic later bypass the use of the canal?
6. How does the Rideau Canal have “a new lease on life” in the present?
7. Create an original piece of artwork that depicts the significance of the Rideau Canal to the Capital Region in the past, present or for the future.
2 http://www.bytownmuseum.com/en/engr-2.html first accessed May 8th, 2011
Summary Assessment
Answer:
- Why is the Ottawa River referred to as “the first TransCanada Highway”? ______
- Why was it considered necessary to build the Rideau Canal? ______
______
- What challenges did the canal builders have to overcome? ______
- How did the surrounding waterways impact the economic development of the capital region (Hint: Hydroelectric Power and the connection to the Forest Product Industry) ? ______
- What are some issues that residents along these waterways are concerned about at present or could be in the future?
______
- Describe the importance of the surrounding waterways to the Capital region. ______
Fact Sheet: Settlement and Industrial Development
Philemon Wright and Wright’s Town
The Ottawa area was not settled by Europeans until 1800 — relatively late, considering that nearby Montréal was settled more than one hundred and fifty years earlier.
In 1800, Philemon Wright and a group of colonists from Massachusetts settled on the north side of the river below the Chaudières Falls. They built houses, a mill and other buildings, and called their settlement “Wright’s Town,” which is now the city of Gatineau (Hull sector).
Agriculture in Wright’s Town was marginal, but the settlement was surrounded by huge stands of white pine. The problem was how to get the timber to market. In 1806, Wright built a raft out of squared timber and floated it down the Ottawa River to Quebec City. He proved that logging in the Ottawa Valley was feasible and initiated the next big industry in the region — the timber trade.
The Timber Trade
Philemon Wright’s 1806 experiment to exploit the timber of the Ottawa Valley was very well timed. Napoleon’s blockage of European ports had cut off supplies of timber to Great Britain so there was a huge market for it. Once floating timber rafts on the river proved possible, the timber trade in the Ottawa Valley boomed.
Men wintered in the woods, cutting down the pine, squaring it into timbers, and hauling it to the river’s edge. In the spring, when the ice melted, they built large rafts, complete with living quarters, that they floated down the river. At first, they had to take their rafts apart at the falls and rapids. Eventually they built timber slides to circumvent these navigational obstacles.
By 1830, the Ottawa Valley was the major timber-producing area in Upper and Lower Canada and Wright’s Town was a thriving community.
The Rideau Canal and Bytown
Although the north side of the Ottawa River (Wright’s Town) hummed with activity in the 1810s and 1820s, the south side of the River was a virtual wilderness. Only a few isolated families had established homesteads there.
All that changed in 1826 when Lieutenant-Colonel John By of the Royal Engineers arrived to begin construction of the Rideau Canal. He came to what is now Ottawa with orders to build a navigable waterway between the Ottawa River and Kingston. The plan was to connect a natural series of lakes and rivers to provide a secure supply route in case British North America was attacked by the United States.
Colonel By wasted no time setting to work. He built barracks for his soldiers on a hill overlooking the entrance to the canal, laid out a settlement for workers to live, and built a bridge across the Chaudières Falls. He and his men then set out to survey the 202-kilometre route to Kingston.
The construction of the Rideau Canal was a huge engineering project and required many workers. In addition to the British military engineers, sappers and miners, there were Scottish stone masons, Irish labourers, Montreal contractors with French-Canadian workers from Montreal, native axemen and timber workers from the Ottawa Valley. From the beginning, Bytown (later called Ottawa) was marked by an official, governmental presence (represented by Colonel By) and a rich mix of cultures.
When the Rideau Canal was finished in 1832, many of those who had come for the construction stayed on. The community, then called Bytown, was firmly established and became a service centre for the timber trade.
Industrial Development
In the early 1850s, the region was transformed by the arrival of entrepreneurs who opened sawmills at the Chaudières Falls. By then the market for squared timber in Britain had waned, but the American market for sawn lumber was booming. So, instead of floating timbers to Quebec City for shipment to Britain, the logs were sawn into boards here.
The lumber industry changed the character of the region. Now the air was filled with sawdust and the noise of mills. Lumber was piled high and the river was filled with wood debris. Fortunes were made in the lumber industry, and lumber barons like Canadian J. R. Booth and Americans E. B. Eddy and Henry Bronson built huge mansions. The Ottawa Valley was on its way to becoming the lumber capital of Canada and possibly, the world.
In 1855, the name Bytown no longer suited the thriving municipality and it was incorporated as the City of Ottawa.
Fact Sheet: The Ottawa River — Route to the Interior
The First Trans-Canada Highway
The 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries saw intensive use of the Ottawa River as a water route to points west. Since there were no roads or railways, the only way to travel was by water, following Canada’s natural highways of rivers and lakes. The Ottawa River was a key link in the transportation route between the St. Lawrence Valley and the interior of the continent.
In the early 1600s, French explorers and missionaries journeyed up the Ottawa River. Notable travellers included the Jesuit Jean de Brébeuf, explorers Radisson and Des Groseillers and Cavalier de La Salle.
In the 1700s, explorers like La Vérendrye and Mackenzie continued the exploration of the continent via the Ottawa River. In 1791, Alexander Mackenzie found a water route to the Pacific Ocean, permitting travel by canoe from sea to sea.
The Fur Trade
It was not just simple curiosity that drove Europeans to canoe across the continent, it was business: the fur trade business. For more than two centuries, the fur trade was the mainstay of the economy, first of New France and later of British North America. During that entire period, the Ottawa River was an essential link in the fur trade route.