We had followed the Mattawa River from Lake Nipissing to the Ottawa Valley where it flowed into the Ottawa River at Mattawa. The east flowing Mattawa River was a very important river for a very long time.  According to Barbara Huck, in her book on the fur trade routes of North America that  I was using as sort of tour guide to this area,

“The east flowing Mattawa River follows an ancient fault line in the Precambrian bedrock. Though strewn with rapids and falls, for more than 6,000 years it was the main highway from the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence. Appropriately Mattawa means “meeting of the waters.” The cataclysmic fracturing of the Earth’s crust that produced the valley with its soaring walls and visible thrust lines occurred about 600 million years ago. Even now there are tremors along the fault line, which may explain the ancient stories of spirits in the cliffs.

There was more cataclysm about 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last glaciation, as melting water from the receding ice sheets roared down the fault into the Ottawa Valley. The raging ancestral Mattawa carried great boulders with it, between Pine Lake and McCool Bay. These huge cobblestones pave an area that today is more than 15 metres above the river.”

 

All of these things that fascinate me now, were of no interest to me more than 50 years ago when I travelled this way with my buddies who had so long ago graduated from Grade 12 with me and ventured out to our road of discovery. What a pity! We are too late smart.

And as Barbara Huck added, “The modern Mattawa is tame by comparison, a 65.5-kilometre swath of spectacular scenery that echoes ancient native traditions, and the stories of the fur trade.”

The area was beautiful. And the history interesting. And we were not in a rush. Life was good; until it wasn’t. Stay tuned.