Rapides-des-Joachims, Quebec
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Rapides-des-Joachims is a municipality and village in western
Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
, part of Pontiac County in the Outaouais region. The village is situated on Rapides-des-Joachims Island (''l'île de Rapides-des-Joachims'') on the
Ottawa River The Ottawa River (, ) is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It is named after the Algonquin word "to trade", as it was the major trade route of Eastern Canada at the time. For most of its length, it defines the border betw ...
, about 100 km northwest of Fort-Coulonge. It is also known as Swisha. Rapides-des-Joachims is isolated from the rest of Quebec's road network because the only paved road link to the village is through Rolphton, Ontario. It is the only community on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River between Sheenboro and
Témiscaming Témiscaming () is a city located at the south end of Lac Témiscamingue on the upper Ottawa River in the Témiscamingue Regional County Municipality of western Quebec, Canada. Also nearby is Lake Kipawa. It is the administrative headquart ...
. Because it is also isolated from Quebec's telecommunications network, the community is part of Rolphton's
telephone exchange A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a central component of a telecommunications system in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It facilitates the establishment of communication circuits ...
area, and is consequently served by Ontario's
area code 613 Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while ''surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-dimen ...
rather than Quebec's
area code 819 Area codes 819, 873, and 468 are overlay telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for central and western Quebec, Canada, including the Quebec portion of the National Capital Region, and the Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay ...
.


History

The site had long been inhabited by the
indigenous people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...
before Europeans arrived. The explorers and
voyageurs Voyageurs (; ) were 18th- and 19th-century French and later French Canadians and others who transported furs by canoe at the peak of the North American fur trade. The emblematic meaning of the term applies to places (New France, including the ...
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would travel on the Ottawa River to the west and at the foot of the rapids, they would have established a resting place and may have given it the name of an explorer. It was a busy place during the seventeenth century, when a mission post was set up along the river where a
Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...
trading post had been established at the foot of the "Long Rapids", as they were called at the time. But the place was called ''Rapides des Joachims de l'Estang'' in a memorandum of 1686 by Jacques-René de Brisay, Governor of New France, to Marquis de Seignelay, and named ''Portage de Joachim de l'Estan'' on a map of Franquelin of 1688. Another document from 1699 shows ''Joachim de l'Estang''. The ''Joachims'' are sons of Michel Mathieu Brunet dit Lestang, colonist who arrived in New France on 20 August 1657. However, both in Quebec and in Ontario, the name Swisha, Sweshaw, or Shesha Rapids has also long been used for this location as a map of 1790 indicates. Swisha is an obvious distortion of the French pronunciation of "Joachim". In 1863,
Stanislas Drapeau Stanislav and variants may refer to: People *Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.) Places * Stanislav, Kherson Oblast, a coastal village in Ukraine * Stanislaus County, ...
described ''Rapides des Joachims'' and ''Rapides des Deux Joachims'' as "the most important place for navigation on the Ottawa River and flourished thanks to the logging industry." By 1871 it had become a small village complete with a
telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
office of the Montreal Telegraph Company. The river steamers had to stop here because it was the head of navigation on the Ottawa River. In 1886 the Oblate Fathers built a frame church in the village, which was used until 1922, when a new church was built. In 1948, the construction of a dam and hydro-electric station began and the rapids which gave the town its name disappeared. The municipality was incorporated in 1955 when it was formed out of the Sheen-Esher-Aberdeen-Malakoff United Townships. It adopted its present name of Rapides-des-Joachims, which had already been assigned to the post office created about 100 years earlier in 1853. Its first mayor was J.H. Madore. Subsequently in 1960, the territory of the former Aberdeen Township was added to the municipality.


Geography

The municipality covers a vast sparsely populated area characterized by boreal forest, lakes, and streams. Prior to the construction of a hydro-electric dam in 1950, the village's site was not an island. The rising water flooded the old river bed from the north through Lake McConnell.Kennedy, Clyde C. ''The Upper Ottawa Valley, Renfrew County Council'', Pembroke, 1970. The dam can be bypassed on one of the Ottawa Navigable Waterway bypasses, connecting the Pembroke stretch of the Ottawa River to the upstream section to Mattawa.


Climate

Rapides-des-Joachims has a
humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers, and cold ...
with four distinct seasons. Summers are warm to hot, with significant rainfall. Winters are cold for its low latitude, with significant snowfall.


Demographics


Population


Language


Economy

Since Rapides-des-Joachims provides access to vast tracts of wilderness, including
ZEC Dumoine The zec Dumoine is a controlled harvesting zone (''French: Zone d'exploitation contrôlée (ZEC)'') located in the unorganized territory of Les Lacs-du-Témiscamingue, in the MRC Témiscamingue Regional County Municipality, in the administrativ ...
, it depends largely on the hunting and fishing business. It is the long-time base of a charter float plane company (Air Swisha, formerly Bradley Air Service/First Air), operating a
de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver The de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver is a single-engined high-wing Propeller (aircraft), propeller-driven STOL, short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft developed and manufactured by de Havilland Canada. It has been primarily operated as a b ...
. The economy depends also on logging and the Commonwealth Plywood Mill.


Local government

List of former mayors: * Jean-Paul Dupuy (1987-1989 & 1993-1997) * Gérald Dagg (... –2005) * Dale Lévesque (2005–2009) * James Gibson (2009–2021) * Doug Rousselle (2021–present)


See also

*
List of anglophone communities in Quebec This is a list of anglophone communities in the Canadian province of Quebec. Municipalities with a high percentage of English-speakers in Quebec are listed. The provincial average of Quebecers whose mother tongue is English is 7.6%, with a tot ...
*
List of municipalities in Quebec __FORCETOC__ Quebec is the Population of Canada by province and territory, second-most populous province in Canada with 8,501,833 residents as of 2021 and is the largest in land area at . For statistical purposes, the Provinces and te ...


References


External links


Pontiac MRC GatewayVirtual Museum - Swisha Project
{{authority control Municipalities in Quebec Incorporated places in Outaouais Populated places on the Ottawa River