Chichester’s Culbute locks have been out of operation for over a century, but one local group is making sure the legacy of the once-prosperous era they represent isn’t forgotten.

This weekend, a team of volunteers organized a festival on the 150th anniversary of the locks’ completion. Ottawa Valley country music, a lumberjack competition and boat tours of the locks all paid homage to the era of economic boom in which the locks were built.

But for some volunteers, the festival was more than just about the locks, it was about hanging on to a time and a place that once was.

“A lot of people who are from here aren’t really familiar with [the locks],” said Chantal Lair, a Chichester employee and volunteer behind the festival.

She said once the locks were closed in 1889, all of its builders and workers left the area, leaving the community with little in the way of local knowledge.

So she and other volunteers did as much research as they could to teach people about the locks through boat tours and in the Culbute Museum, a volunteer-run museum that is celebrating its 25th year.

“Celebrating the anniversary of the construction is a way of informing the locals that this place still exists,” she said of the vision behind the festival.

Short-lived, long abandoned

In 1873, the federal government began construction of the lock system, which consisted of two locks and three dams built between Allumette Island and Chichester, at the narrowest point on the northwestern side of the Island.

As steamboats were seen as the key to the Ottawa River’s economic expansion at the time, these new locks would ideally make it possible for those boats to get over the Calumet rapids, thereby shortening the passage between the upper and lower sections of the river.

Work was completed on the locks in 1876, but soon after low water levels began to cause problems. An account from the last lock-keeper said it was becoming more and more difficult to open and close the locks.

“It didn’t take them long to realize that this wasn’t working,” said Culbute Museum volunteer Donna Gagnon, who got the account from an ancestor of the last lock-keeper. “The water wasn’t high enough, they had to dredge all the time, and it didn’t take long for those locks to break down.”

An 1882 report from the chief engineer said a plan to fix the water levels had been submitted for approval, but before long the federal government withdrew funding for the project altogether as the locks were beginning to deteriorate and ship traffic was low.

Besides, the railroad had already come to Pembroke, rendering practically all forms of water-based navigation inefficient.

This was the final blow to the locks — the Culbute channel, once seen as the key to the river’s economic expansion, was no longer the boon it was thought to be.

In 1889, after only 13 years in operation, the locks were decommissioned for good, and the water was returned to its normal level. The channel soon became a place for logging companies to send logs downstream toward Ottawa.

Very little remains of the locks today thanks to a mysterious fire in the early 1900s, but there have been some efforts to revive the locks over the years. Former Chichester resident and lock proponent Gil Dupuis took the MRC’s mayors on a tour of the site in the early 90s as part of a pitch to revive them into a tourist destination, but the price tag was too high and the plan fell through.

Never forgotten

Lair said life just kind of went back to normal after the locks left, leaving farmers and other workers in Chichester to go about their days with little knowledge of the ambitious project.

“Once everything was closed down and burned, the locals just went on with their regular lives,” she said, adding that when the river opened back up for logging, people wouldn’t have been able to visit the locks due to the log traffic.

Gagnon, who co-founded the Culbute Museum in 2000 with the vision of beautifying and informing the village of Chichester, said her family was one of many in the area that never bothered to learn more about the locks while they had the chance.

But, she said, she hopes their efforts through the museum and festival can play a role in filling that gap for others.

“We never got to hear the stories. We should have asked more questions, but most of those people are gone. That’s why I think it’s important for people to speak to their grandparents and find out where they came from.”

Gagnon said before the festival that’s one of the reasons why she was looking forward to sharing the information, in the hopes that the next generation of Chichester residents will pick up the same passion.

“I’m sure they’re going to come in, and they’re going to find something that belongs to one of their ancestors,” she said of the visitors to the festival.

The festival itself was a hit, with hundreds of people descending upon the village for one Saturday of fun. The boat tours were packed and the museum was bustling with people the entire day, including many former Chichester residents who were back visiting for the day.

Donnie Gagnon, Donna’s husband and mayor of Chichester for 30 years, said he was happy to share the village’s culture and heritage with its guests. “We’re so proud,” he said of the volunteer efforts behind the festival.

Donna said even though the locks have been long abandoned, with all talks of reviving them now quieted, she’s not just doing this work because she loves the locks, which are, admittedly, a thing of the past.

For her, it’s about recognizing a former time of prosperity in Chichester that gave her everything she cherishes today – her husband, her friends and her village.

“We probably wouldn’t have what we have now,” she said. “This is God’s country to us.”

She said although she has seen the village decline over the years, the work helps her remember times in the past when things were better.

“This is where we came from – the logs, the logging. Without the logging, Chichester wouldn’t be here,” she said.

“Chichester doesn’t have a lot of stuff. But we have the Culbute channel. That’s what we have to fall back on is our history, not what the future is going to be.”