Chaudière Falls

Chaudière Falls, on the Ottawa River between Ottawa and Gatineau, has long been one of the river’s most important sites. For Indigenous peoples, especially Algonquin Anishinaabe communities, the falls and nearby portage routes formed a major landscape of travel, trade, and ceremony, and the site is also known as Akikodjiwan and Kana:tso. Recorded by Samuel de Champlain in 1613, the falls later became a key obstacle in the fur trade and then a focus of timber slides, mills, paper production, and hydroelectric development that helped grow both cities. Though dams and industry reshaped and reduced the falls, they remain a place of deep historical and cultural importance.

Québec · Canada