What Do Trees Have to Do With It? An Introduction to Westmeath and “Logging and Settlement Beyond the Rapids”

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This post introduces Jim Clifford and Sam Huckerby’s recently published Canadian Historical Review article, “Logging and Settlement beyond the Rapids: Unmaking Algonquin Space in the Ottawa Valley, 1817–61.”

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Nearly three years ago, Jim Clifford and I began studying a particular township along the Ottawa River. We wrote an article about what we found, presented at a conference or two about it, and now I’m fortunate enough to be able to offer you a brief introduction to Westmeath (Figure 1), a place that occupied a significant portion of my thoughts and frustrations for longer than I had braces.1

: Westmeath Township. Source: Excerpt from Ormando Willis Gray, “Map of the Counties of Lanark and Renfrew, Canada West,” Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center, 1863
Figure 1: Westmeath Township. Source: Excerpt from Ormando Willis Gray, “Map of the Counties of Lanark and Renfrew, Canada West,” Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center, 1863.

This project started, as many do, with a question born from bafflement: What were 2,000 people doing in Westmeath Township in 1860? On the northernmost edge of viable farmland in the Ottawa River Valley, Westmeath wasn’t exactly easy to get to. Long portages and bumpy logging roads were some of the only ways to travel north past the Rocher Fendu Rapids before the railroad expanded. Getting to Westmeath Township would have been a headache, let alone getting farm produce out to sell. And yet, farm they did. In 1842 Westmeath had 1,600 acres cultivated, which grew to 4,600 by 1851, and 9,100 by 1861. Within two decades, settlers had transformed nearly 10,000 acres of unceded Algonquin territory into a neo-Europe.

From this one question spawned others. Why did only a few landowners have 100 acres cultivated? Considering this was an era of farming still done by hand or animal power, why did any farmer have as many as 100 acres cultivated? Why does my mapmaking software keep crashing? Does Westmeath really need that many potatoes? What do trees have to do with settler colonialism? Since we wrote 10,000 words about these questions, I politely point you towards the article to learn more, but to summarize: Westmeath was likely growing food for the timber camps, and timber ships helped people immigrate there. In other words, trees had quite a lot to do with it.

After months thinking about trees and potatoes, we decided to think about them even more. We had a new question: can you tell a township had timber connections based on its agricultural outputs? Historian Chad Gaffield argues you can, pointing to Clarendon Township in Quebec (Figure 2). Clarendon’s potato, hay, and oat production increased between the 1840s and 1850s to supply timber camps. Nineteenth-century contemporaries also noted that farms growing for timber camps grew hay and oats. From our work on Westmeath, we knew a few big farms grew lots of hay, oats, potatoes, and typically had connections to the timber industry. So, we thought we’d be able to see which townships in Ontario were growing for timber camps by mapping their oats production.

Crop outputs for Clarendon Township. From Table 2.18 in Chad Gaffield, History of the Outaouais and Census of the Canadas 1860-61,
Figure 2: Crop outputs for Clarendon Township. From Table 2.18 in Chad Gaffield, History of the Outaouais and Census of the Canadas 1860-61, Personal Census, Vol. 1.

Take a look at Figures 3, 4, and 5. Greens are where there’s more wheat than oats in production, and red is where there’s more oats than wheat. Broadly speaking, what these maps show is a bunch of townships that look to have very similar farming patterns. Westmeath doesn’t stand out as an oats producer in any of them, but we know a handful of farmers like Patrick O’Brien produced seven times the normal (when compared to the numerous small farms’ average production) of oats. How do we reconcile the fact that Westmeath was likely farming with timber camps in mind, yet they don’t stand out in the data for the produce timber camps wanted?

  • Figure 3: Oats vs. Wheat Production in Upper Canada, 1851.
    Figure 3: Oats vs. Wheat Production in Upper Canada, 1851.
  • Figure 4: Oats vs. Wheat Production, 1861.]
    Figure 4: Oats vs. Wheat Production, 1861.
  • Figure 5: Oats vs. Wheat Production, 1871.]
    Figure 5: Oats vs. Wheat Production, 1871.

It comes down to a matter of resolution in the data. To study Westmeath, we looked at the agricultural census manuscripts, meaning we compared individual farms and their outputs to one another. For the maps in Figures 3-5, we relied on the census subdivision data, meaning it’s a comparison of the total numbers reported for entire townships.2 Once you put all the farms together, the averages hide the outliers and obscure revealing details. In Westmeath, there were 154 farms in 1851, but just twenty-one of those were doing obvious, large-scale timber-oriented producing. The other 133 farms are smaller but more numerous, overshadowing the unique farms that would indicate timber connections.

It’s a numbers game, which is largely what I hope you take away from this introduction to Westmeath. That, and history is as much about trees and potatoes as politics and treaties. Timber operations changed the composition of forests, settlers sometimes helped feed lumbermen, and between the large and small farms, an equivalent of 7,575 football fields’ worth of land was transformed in Westmeath by 1861.

Feature Image: Satellite image of the Ottawa River Valley. Google Maps (n.d.) Retrieved May 5, 2024.

Notes

1 Jim Clifford and Sam Huckerby, “Logging and Settlement beyond the Rapids: Unmaking Algonquin Space in the Ottawa Valley, 1817–61,” The Canadian Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2025): 405–32.

2 This data was transcribed and made mappable by the HGIS Lab at the University of Saskatchewan in collaboration with Laval. See https://hgiscanada.usask.ca/about.

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Sam Huckerby

Sam is a recent graduate of the University of Saskatchewan (B.A. Double Honours in Studio Art and History) with a focus on environmental and transnational commodity history of the North Atlantic. Sam's future research at York University will focus on whalebone and utilize GIS. Sam's other public-facing history includes her 2022 StoryMap Piece by Piece: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/277ad26ec4684773b4a657bc18c5a9b9

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