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Places
Opening to the public in June, Parc national d’Opémican near Temiscaming, Que. preserves a unique chapter of Ottawa River history
Its name is an Algonquin word that loosely translates to “along the path followed by the tribes” — a reference, perhaps, to the Ottawa River. For nearly a century, it was a major staging area for logging operations in the Upper Ottawa Valley. This summer, it will be a hub for a different kind of activity when Quebec’s newest provincial park opens on June 21.
Parc national d’Opémican, which protects 252 square kilometres of forested land between the Ontario-Quebec border and Lac Kipawa, about 400 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, is the realization of a nearly 40-year dream for people in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region who wanted to see the remains of the timber rafting relay station at Pointe Opémican, on Lac Témiscamingue, preserved. In the 1880s and ’90s, squared logs of white and red pine bound for Britain and America were assembled here into enormous rafts of as many as 3,000 individual logs to be driven down the Ottawa River to Montreal or Quebec City.
“Pointe Opémican was a unique place at that time,” says Dany Gareau, the park’s director. “People there were even developing new techniques and tools to improve the job,” including larger-than-normal booms capable of handling the frequent high waves on the lake.
By the turn of the 20th century, steampowered tugboats had replaced the raftsmen, and although the site continued to be used by the Upper Ottawa Improvement Company for boat maintenance and storage until the late 1970s, the original buildings, including the blacksmithing workshop and the house erected in 1883 by superintendent Joseph Jodoin’s family, fell into disrepair.
The road to redeveloping the site for tourism would be a long one. Community groups first approached the Quebec ministry for forests, wildlife and parks in 2002 with a proposal to save Pointe Opémican by integrating it into a provincial park, but it took more than a decade for the ministry to finalize the boundaries of the park. In 2013, responsibility for the park’s development was transferred to the Société des établissements de plein air du Québec (SÉPAQ), the Crown corporation that manages 24 of the province’s parks and 13 wildlife reserves.
Watch: Dany Gareau explains what makes Parc national d’Opémican special
As construction began on roads and campsites and the park’s three scenic hiking trails were blazed, SÉPAQ struck a roundtable made up of representatives from the local municipalities, including the Wolf Lake and Kebaowek First Nations, to keep them updated on the progress. At first there were a lot of questions, says Patricia Noël, president of the unorganized territory of Laniel on the park’s northeastern border, which has just 80 year-round residents.
“A lot of people were scared that with the park, they would lose the tranquility and the wilderness they found here. We want to develop tourism, but in a way that respects nature.”
Now, she says, with the park’s opening imminent, uncertainty has given way to excitement at the possibilities for showcasing the region.
“It’s not just the beautiful views,” she says. “I can’t explain it, but we have ‘wow’ here.”
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