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• Founding of Renfrew, The
  Attracted by the development of the lumbering industry in the Upper Ottawa Valley, a few settlers had located in this region by 1830. Six years later, Xavier Plaunt acquired land here near the second chute of the Bonnechère River and by 1848 was selling village lots and had provided land for the community's first church. In that year a post office, Renfrew, was opened and in 1851, the settlement contained a sawmill, grist-mill, tannery and...

• Flying Frenchmen, The
  Professional hockey was in its infancy in the autumn of 1909 when the promoters behind the National Hockey Association, forerunner of the National Hockey League, created the Montreal Canadiens team to attract French-Canadian spectators. Belleville-born Jean-Baptiste "Jack" Laviolette was hired as the playing-manager and captain. Laviolette signed Cornwall's Édouard "Newsy" Lalonde to play forward and recruited his friend Didier "Cannonball" Pitre from the Renfrew Creamery Kings ('Renfrew Millionaires') as a defenceman. This trio of francophone...

• Sir Francis Hincks at Renfrew
  Premier of the Province of Canada 1851-1854, Governor of Barbados 1856-1862 and British Guiana 1862-1865, Hincks was born in Cork, Ireland in 1807, settled in Upper Canada in 1832, and was elected to the Assembly in 1841. He was prominent in the Reform campaign for Responsible Government and was a keen advocate of railway building. While Finance Minister, 1860-1873, Hincks framed the Bank Act of 1871, which laid the foundation of Canada's banking system. In...

• Renfrew Millionaires, The
  Local tycoon M.J. O'Brien launched a bid to bring the Stanley Cup to Renfrew in 1910 by offering hockey stars like Lester and Frank Patrick and "Cyclone" Taylor, extravagant salaries to play for the Renfrew Creamery Kings. The team was quickly nicknamed the "Millionaires". That season they played thrilling games against Cobalt, Haileybury, Ottawa and Montreal teams, but Renfrew's hopes were cashed when the Montreal Wanderer's took the cup. After the first world wars, the emergence of the National Hockey League signaled an end to small-town participation in big-league hockey.