14 billion logs

Yesterday evening we stopped at the New Edinburgh Pub again, where the old photos are hung on the wall; this time we sat near a picture of the Rideau Falls with the mills in the background and, below the Falls, a boom of logs floating.

J.R. Booth's timber raft on the Ottawa River

"It’s estimated that over 14 billion logs floated down the Ottawa River over the course of the log drive era." (www.logsend.com) helped along by working men of a somewhat romantic reputation!  Do you know The Log Driver's Waltz?

For he goes birling down, a-down the white water;
That's where the log driver learns to step lightly.
It's birling down, a-down white water;
A log driver's waltz pleases girls completely.

Logs going over the Chaudière Falls

The Canadian lumber industry began to flourish at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Ottawa and Gatineau rivers continued to be used for this purpose right to the end of the 1980s. Philemon Wright of Wrightsville (now Hull, part of Gatineau) was the first of the local lumber barons and one of the richest men of his day and a couple of generations later John Booth was the "emperor of the woods" whose small saw mill at the Chaudière Falls eventually became the largest in Canada. E.B. Eddy owned the mills on the Quebec side. These timber empires are what made the national capital region rich.

When he died at the age of 95, Booth's estate was worth $44 million. He had come to Ottawa carrying $9 in his pocket.