Groupe L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet is a group of volunteers whose mission is to develop the culture and heritage of the Municipality of L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet.
In practice, this mission primarily means protecting and promoting the legacy of Jean Cadieux, the semi-mythical coureur des bois who died on the island.
Briefly, the story of Cadieux goes like this.
In the early 1700s, the fur trader was traversing the Ottawa River to trade furs with the help of Algonquin allies, which included his wife.
After discovering that the Iroquois were going to ambush the . . .
party at the falls of the ’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, Cadieux and an Algonquin volunteered to divert the attention of the Iroquois so his group could escape with the furs they were transporting.
With the help of the intervention of Saint Anne, the catholic patron saint of travelers (or the Virgin Mary, depending on who is telling the story), the group of coureur des bois and Algonquins escaped the island.
However, Cadieux was fatally injured fighting the Iroquois and proceeded to dig his own grave, make a cross to mark its location and write his story in his own blood on a piece of birch bark. His companions eventually returned to find the location of where he was buried.
The legend of Cadieux was passed on orally along the Ottawa River until it was finally written down in the mid 1800s by Jean-Charles Taché.
As part of protecting his legacy, both Guylaine, her father Philippe La Salle and Michel Lamothe created the Groupe L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet to revitalize and maintain the monument at Parc Cadieux, which is situated just outside the village on the island.
This marker was moved away from its original location where Cadieux was supposedly buried after a dispute with the Municipality of Bryson.
According to La Salle, people in Bryson wanted the monument for themselves, so a group of four men from the island, including La Salle’s uncle, brought the monument to the village where they could keep an eye on it.
Along with the monument and the sign explaining the legend of Cadieux, the site also has a birch tree growing to symbolize the piece of bark he wrote his story on before he died.
“I grew up with Jean Cadieux in this house,” said Guylaine La Salle, one of the founders of the Groupe L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, in the home of Philippe. “As soon as you hear the name La Salle, you know that person is from the island. It’s the same with Cadieux, you know it’s from the island.”
Preserving the story of Cadieux is only part of the groups mission to tell the whole history of the island; which ranges from it’s time as an Indigenous gathering place, through colonial times when it was a hub for the fur trade and then a hub of the lumber industry and into the twentieth century where the island had to contend with economic upheavals caused by the closure of the New Calumet Mine and the local lumber mills.
As a part of these efforts, the group focuses on the history of the area as a transit way for both fur and lumber along the Ottawa River.
“In the days of the fur trade, the Ottawa River was the Trans Canada Highway and this was the longest portage between Montreal and Lake Superior,” wrote Lamothe the group’s history advisor.
This highway became crucial during the Napoleonic wars, where the Ottawa Valley became one of the British Empire’s main sources of lumber.
While fighting Napoleon, the British cut off their source of lumber in the Baltic Sea in Europe, so they turned to Canada, because the Ottawa Valley had a lot of these big pines, according to Lamothe.
The loggers blew a channel through the island and built lumber slides and rafts to transport the white pines the British needed for their warships.
The lumber slides were a central feature of the island for much of the 19th century. The last lumber raft to pass the island was in 1908, according to Lamothe.
Attached under display at Parc Cadieux is an old, welded piece of metal from a lumber slide on the island. The remnants of both the slide and the rapids they traversed are lost due to time and the hydro dams now built along the river.
After the lumber slides closed down the island became dependent on the local mills and the New Calumet Mine for employment. However, once they closed down, many islanders had to leave to find work, according to La Salle.
“[My generation] had to go somewhere else to continue with school,” said La Salle. “And then we were not coming back because there was no work for us because everything was shut down.”
Now back on the island permanently, La Salle hopes that projects that the Groupe L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet does will help bring back the island, particularly by helping the tourism industry.
The group needs to fundraise frequently in order to keep up with all its ongoing projects. One current project involves restoring the island’s original cemetery on a hill above the village. Currently the project has identified over 2000 people who are buried in the cemetery, according to La Salle.
Another project involves creating a commemorative sign and park at the foundations of Chapelle Benoît and the nearby school on the part of the island the locals call La Barry.
There was only one marriage performed at the church, and volunteers managed to track down the couple, who shared their memories of the wedding.
La Salle says that people stop her all the time with ideas for new projects, but they need resources and people in order to have a chance of completing them all.
As a part of their fundraising efforts, the Groupe L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet is planning a fishing tournament on August 6 and every June the group holds a treasure hunt on the island where kids search the island for treasure.
“We have so many projects, we need people to do research,” said La Salle. “We are like a big family on the island, so everybody’s always chipping in,” concluded La Salle
