Gatineau Military Relocation Agent

Mary Lou Cote is your Gatineau/Hull BGRS Relocation expert.

Gatineau is a city in western Quebec, Canada. It is the fourth-largest city in the province after Montreal, Quebec City, and Laval. It is located on the northern bank of the Ottawa River, immediately across from Ottawa, Ontario, together with which it forms Canada’s National Capital Region.

The current city of Gatineau is centred on an area formerly called Hull, the oldest European colonial settlement in the National Capital Region. This area was mostly not developed until after the American Revolutionary War, when the Crown made land grants to Loyalists for resettlement in Upper Canada.

Gatineau Park, a nature reserve with a diverse ecosystem and considerable cultural heritage. The park is wedged at the confluence of the Ottawa and Gatineau rivers, just fifteen minutes by car north of Parliament Hill.

More than a hundred years ago, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s tenth and longest-serving prime minister, also biked the area. It’s easy to see why he fell in love with the region. He purchased a large chunk of it and ensured that the public would enjoy its beauty for generations to come.

Like many other people of his time, King came here to retreat from the grime of the capital city. Although Ottawa is cleaner now, its residents still flock here year-round to enjoy treasured features such as Pink Lake.

Hull was founded on the north shore of the Ottawa River in 1800 by Philemon Wright at the portage around the Chaudière Falls just upstream (or west) from where the Gatineau and Rideau rivers flow into the Ottawa. Wright brought his family, five other families, and twenty-five labourers to establish an agricultural community. They considered the area a mosquito-infested wilderness. But soon after, Wright and his family took advantage of the large lumber stands and became involved in the timber trade. The original settlement was called Wrightstown, and was later renamed as Hull. In 2002, after amalgamation, it was part of a larger jurisdiction named the City of Gatineau.

In 1820, before immigrants from Ireland and Great Britain arrived in great numbers, Hull Township had a population of 707, including 365 men, 113 women, and 229 children. The high number of men were related to workers in the lumber trade. In 1824, there were 106 families and 803 persons. During the rest of the 1820s, the population of Hull doubled, owing to the arrival of Ulster Protestants. By 1851, the population of the County of Ottawa was 11,104, of which 2,811 lived in Hull Township. By comparison, Bytown had a population of 7,760 in 1851. By 1861, Ottawa County had a population of 15,671, of which 3,711 lived in Hull Township.

Gradually French Canadians also migrated to the Township; their proportion of the population increased from 10% in 1850, to 50% in 1870, and 90% in 1920.

The Gatineau River, like the Ottawa River, was a basic transportation resource for the draveurs, workers who transport logs via the rivers from lumber camps until they arrived downriver. (The Gatineau River flows south into the Ottawa River, which flows east to the St. Lawrence River near Montreal.) The log-filled Ottawa River, as viewed from Hull, was featured on the back of the Canadian one-dollar bill; the paper money was replaced by a dollar coin (the “loonie”) in 1987. The last of the dwindling activity of the draveurs on these rivers ended a few years later.

Ottawa was founded after Hull, as the terminus of the Rideau Canal. This was built under the command of Col. John By as part of fortifications and defences constructed after the War of 1812 against the United States. Originally named Bytown, Ottawa was not designated as the Canadian capital until the mid-19th century, after the original parliament in Montreal was torched by a rioting mob of Anglo-Canadians on 25 April 1849. Its greater distance from the Canada–US border also made the new parliament less vulnerable to foreign attack.

Nothing remains of the original 1800 settlement of Hull. The downtown Vieux-Hull sector was destroyed by a terrible fire in 1900; it also burnt down the original pont des Chaudières (Chaudière Bridge). The bridge was rebuilt to join Ottawa to Hull at Victoria Island.

In the 1940s, during World War II, Hull, along with various other regions within Canada, such as the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, and Île Sainte-Hélène, was the site of prisoner-of-war camps.  Hull’s prison was identified only by a number, as were Canada’s other war prisons.  The prisoners of war (POWs) were organized by nationality and status: civilian or military status.  In the Hull camp, POWs were mostly Italian and German nationals detained by the government as potential threats to the nation during the war. As a result of the Conscription Crisis of 1944, Canadians who had refused conscription were interned in the camp.  The prisoners were required to perform hard labour, which included farming and lumbering the land.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the decaying old downtown core of Hull was redeveloped. Old buildings were demolished and replaced by a series of large office complexes. In addition some 4,000 residents were displaced, and many businesses uprooted along what was once the town’s main commercial area.

On 11 November 1992, Ghislaine Chénier, Mayoress by interim for the city of Hull, unveiled War Never Again, a marble stele monument that commemorates the cost of war for the men, women and children of the city of Hull.

Amalgamation

As part of the 2000–06 municipal reorganization in Quebec, the five municipalities that constituted the Communauté urbaine de l’Outaouais were merged on 1 January 2002 to constitute the new city of Gatineau. They were:

• Aylmer
• Buckingham
• Hull
• Gatineau
• Masson-Angers

Although Hull was the oldest and most central of the merged cities, the name Gatineau was chosen for the new city. The main reasons given were that Gatineau had more residents, and this name was strongly associated with the area: it was the name of the former county, the valley, the hills, the park and the main river within the new city limits. Some argued that the French name of Gatineau was more appealing to the majority French-speaking residents.

Since the former city of Hull represents a large area distinct from what was formerly known as Gatineau, some people refer to “Vieux Hull“.  The name “Hull” was often informally used to refer to the entire urban area on the northern shore of the river facing Ottawa. In other areas of Quebec, the National Capital Region was often referred to as “Ottawa-Hull”.

After the 2003 election, the new Liberal government of Jean Charest passed Bill 9, which created a process by which former municipalities could be reconstituted. Contrary to Charest’s election promise of full de-amalgamation, Bill 9 restored only selected powers to the de-merged cities (e.g., animal control, garbage pickup, local street maintenance, some cultural facilities). The bigger expenses (e.g., police, fire, main streets, expansion programs) and the majority of the taxes remained in the hands of urban agglomerations. These are controlled by the central merged city because their larger populations give them greater voting weight. 10% of the eligible voters in each former municipality would have to sign a “register” in order to hold a referendum on de-amalgamation.

Residents of Aylmer, Buckingham, Hull and Masson-Angers all surpassed this threshold in seeking a referendum on de-merge. A simple majority of “yes” votes, based on a turnout of at least 35%, is needed to de-merge. All of the above jurisdictions had the required turnout, and all rejected the de-merger.

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