Riding Ontario’s Highlands

In Ontario’s early days, a river driver had to be quick-witted and agile, as even a moment’s inattention could cost him his life. He drove logs down rivers such as the Bonnechere, Madawaska and Mississippi – all tributaries of the Ottawa River. The logs, upon arrival on the Ottawa, were built into timber rafts – some hundreds of metres across – and guided downriver by raftsmen to Quebec City via the St. Lawrence. There, the rafts would be dismantled and the logs exported to the U.K. or the USA. This industry would be all but finished by 1900, and life in Ontario’s Highlands changed forever.

I may have met descendants of these river drivers, and maybe not. But, riding Ontario’s Highlands – all four loops; more than 2,000 km – I did cross the rivers on which those men worked, travelled the same roads built by their kin and followed the Ottawa River, where timber rafts were once afloat. I rode through 500-year-old white pine forests, much of them long since thinned out by 18th-century lumberjacks, in Algonquin Park. I saw log houses, occupied as they were in the 19th century (sans satellite dish and Chevy pickup back then). And, when I took a careful look, I discovered remnants of abandoned buildings, old stone fences, dismantled railway lines and repurposed railway stations that showed me where Ontario’s early settlers used to live, work and travel.

Early on in my ride, I got a sense that the stories of my tour would include tales about