Land of the Spirits

The Friends of Bonnechere Parks are proud guardians of various unique collections including original paintings and historic artifacts and documents. Our goal is to share them with you through this web site and interpretive displays at Bonnechere Park.

The artifacts in this collection were uncovered and retrieved, between 1996 and 2005, primarily by volunteers from the Ontario Archaeological Society Ottawa Chapter in partnership with the Friends of Bonnechere Parks, along with members of the public who participated in Bonnechere Provincial Park’s ongoing public archaeology program.

Archaeological research adds an extra dimension or layer of investigation. In the case of the Bonnechere, it complements prior activities, including oral history interviews, archival research, and fieldwork that resulted in the 1996 publication by Roderick MacKay, Spirits of the Little Bonnechere – A History of Exploration, Logging, and Settlement, 1800 to 1920.

Artifacts in this collection relate to farms associated with the pine logging industry of the 19th and early 20th centuries on the Bonnechere River. These were the items left behind, both deliberately and accidentally, by people like you and me.

“I never realized that there was history too, close at hand, beside my very own home. I did not realize that the old grave that stood among the brambles at the foot of our farm was history.” ~Stephen Leacock