Pont Noir history
In the first three quarters of the 19th century, the Outaouais area was still without a railway. From 1854, commercial supplies came to the city of Hull mainly through the Bytown and Prescott Railway Company [1]. That railway connected Ottawa (Bytown) and Prescott, a small city in Ontario near the US border. Businesses in the Outaouais wanting to sell or buy products had to deal mostly with Ontario and the United States.
In the early 1850s, a first project was launched to build a rail link between the cities of Hull and Montréal. However, following the construction of a section between Carillon and Grenville, the project was prematurely terminated due to the accidental death of the principal entrepreneur [2].
Some two decades later, the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway company revived the project after managing to secure public funding. The Government of Quebec undertook to finance the construction of the railway, after obtaining promises from the concerned counties and municipalities to pitch in [3]. For its part, the county of Outaouais underwrote $200,000 of the construction project [4]. The railway between Hull and Montréal was completed in 1877. The Hull station, on rue Montcalm, served as its terminal until 1879 [5].
In order to cross the Outaouais, the railway had to ford a number of bodies of water, including the Gatineau river, to reach Pointe Gatineau in Hull. The railway bridge over the Gatineau river was built with steel from plants in Pittsburgh. Its metal structure was supported by large stone piers installed in the middle of the river. That bridge, which was never officially named, is now commonly referred to as the pont Noir.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the pont Noir was the only rail transportation link between Gatineau and Hull. Every train making the trip between the Montréal and Hull stations used that bridge. The structure was part of a railway system that played a key role in the Outaouais area’s economic development. The railway was a trading route for the northern Outaouais, which gave this area an advantage when it came to the agricultural and forest sectors. Starting in 1877, the lumber mills in the Outaouais (mainly those with mills in Hull that until then had exported most of their wood to the United States, now had the opportunity to quickly export their products to buyers in Montréal. Thus, the pont Noir and its railway significantly expanded the pool of buyers for commercial products from the Outaouais. Moreover, local entrepreneurs could now look to Montréal when they needed to purchase various products (materials, machines, etc.) needed to run their businesses. In brief, they were no longer limited to doing business with Ontario and the United States.
In addition to the freight trains, a number of passenger trains frequently made the trip between Montréal and Hull, thereby enabling Outaouais residents to take advantage of a quick means of travel between the metropolis and the Outaouais.
Thus, the public funding that had been provided for the railway’s construction was seen by the county of Outaouais as an investment that would have a beneficial impact on the region for many years. The pont Noir and the railway were instrumental in enhancing the population’s mobility and facilitating commercial and industrial activity in the Outaouais.
Text by Adrien Joanis-Sirois, historian.
[1] Lucien Brault, Hull, 1800-1950, Ottawa, Éditions de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1950, p. 124.
[2] Joseph Tassé, La Vallée de l'Outaouais : sa condition géographique, ses ressources agricoles et industrielles, ses exploitations forestières, ses richesses minérales, ses avantages pour la colonisation et l'immigration, ses canaux et ses chemins de fer, Montréal, Eusèbe Sénécal, imprimeur-éditeur, 1873, p. 54.
[3] " Résolutions importantes ", Le courrier du Canada : journal des intérêts canadiens, January 29, 1878.
[4] Joseph Tassé, op. cit., p. 55.
[5] Lucien Brault, op. cit., p. 125.