Roads

In 1819, a road was opened from Richmond landing, below the Chaudière falls, to the Richmond settlement in the township of Goulbourn, and it later became a continuation of Wellington street in Upper Bytown. Colonel By, who needed to transport building materials used in the construction of the canal, built another road, extending from the Chaudière falls to the canal, and along the canal to Hog’s Back [Brault 1946].

In 1826, Anthony Swalwell, a civil engineer, surveyed and superintended the opening of roads from Bytown to Long Island on the Rideau river and from Bytown to L’Orignal on the Ottawa river [Bond 1968]. In 1840, the road from Bytown to L’Orignal was used to set up the first mail service between these two communities, and people called it the Post road. It ran along the south shore of the Ottawa river through Plantagenet, Clarence Point and Cumberland. Around 1843 work began on making this road more suitable for horses and wagons [Laporte 1982].

Eventually, it was extended to Lachine near Montreal, and Archibald Petrie of Cumberland, who represented Russell County in the first and second parliaments of United Canada from 1841 to 1848 [IADC 1881], succeeded in procuring a government grant of four thousand pounds to complete its construction [MacKenzie 1990]. The section of the Montreal road – as it came to be known – that linked Cumberland and Gloucester townships to Bytown was completed during the winter of 1850 [Legros 1949].