According to a popular legend, a 17th-century French fur trader named Jean Cadieux was wounded in battle on Calumet Island. Shot by an arrow, he spent his final years there.

The legend has it that years after he passed away, he was found holding a piece of birch bark on which was inscribed a set of song lyrics. The song, the Complainte de Cadieux, was popularized by generations of voyageurs and is still taught in schools today.

Cadieux’s is but one of many stories across the island’s interesting history. Long a gathering place for Indigenous people, it was known as having the longest portage along the Ottawa River, which many early fur traders passed through.

On Friday morning, in a park named in Cadieux’s memory, elementary school students from across the Pontiac were immersed in the island’s rich history by way of an educational treasure hunt.

The event, put on by the Groupe L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet and the Centre de services scolaire des Hauts-Bois-de-l’Outaouais (CSSHBO), helped students from three schools discover sites of historic and cultural importance on the island.

Kids made their way to 10 different locations around the island, learning lessons about the different eras of its history and collecting a “treasure” at each location, trying to get all 10 treasures by the end of the morning.

Guylaine La Salle, a founding member of the group and a seventh-generation Calumet Island resident, said they wanted to organize this event to help kids discover the island’s history.

“We have so many hidden treasures here on the island,” she said in French. “We just want to share them.”

This was the second treasure hunt the group has organized this year. The first, a community treasure hunt that happens annually in June, is one of the group’s two main fundraisers.

Francoise Corriveau, a teacher at the island’s École des Petits Ponts, has attended the community treasure hunts and said every time she takes part she discovers something new.

“I grew up here, but we found things that I didn’t even know existed,” she said in French.

When La Salle approached her about the possibility of having a treasure hunt for kids, she was eager to help the kids have the same experience.

“I thought it was important to show that to our students at the school,” she said.

La Salle said she has 31 locations on the island she has used for the treasure hunts. Some places the kids visited on Friday included the village cemetery, the municipal dock, and the Sainte-Anne Church, which was completed in 1871 and features a remarkably well-preserved interior.

La Salle said she is in the process of trying to get funding to fix the church, which has suffered water damage over the years and whose last repairs were done in 1996.

She said she would like to see the island become a tourism destination, but it’s hard to get the government to invest in the community.

“The bureaucracy is our biggest enemy,” she said of the Ministry of Transport, whom she has been lobbying for six years to erect a green sign along Highway 148 advertising the Parc Cadieux.

“It’s been six years, it’s still not done.”

The treasure hunt’s final stop was at Parc Cadieux, where local history enthusiast Michel Lamothe dressed as Cadieux himself and dramatically recounted the tale of the voyageur’s final days.

“Every year around Halloween, I visit this monument from my tomb, which is in another location,” he told the kids as they listened with intent to his battle story.

“There were arrows flying everywhere,” he said of the Iroquois who intercepted his fur-trading troupe along the portage and started shooting at them.

His team got away, but Cadieux was wounded and couldn’t go with them. “I was weak, I was hurt, so I stayed,” he said, adding that he eventually died there.

Lamothe said the treasure hunt is a great opportunity to teach the kids about the history in an immersive way, even though the legend of Jean Cadieux might be a tad fantastical.

“Some people have seen his contract signed with an X,” he said of Cadieux, who some historians believe was illiterate and could not have written the lyrics to the famous song.

La Salle said every treasure hunt she does includes a stop at Parc Cadieux, and believes the voyageur’s story is essential to understanding the island’s history. Going forward, she hopes to add more locations, but will always include Parc Cadieux.

Corriveau said she enjoyed the event and that in the future she hopes to get more local schools involved in the event, including those in Fort Coulonge and Chapeau.