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Rolphton Hydro Colony and Dam1950
Des Joachims, Ottawa River, Ontario/Quebec, Canada
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THE LITTLE TOWN THAT WAS:Due to the remoteness of the location and the very limited supply of housing in the area at the time, Ontario Hydro constructed the Rolphton Hydro Colony to house the people who would come to the area to operate the new Generating Station. The water system which had served the Construction Camps and the Recreation Center from Camp #1 area became part of the Colony.
The following "Reminiscences" provide a snapshot of life in the Rolphton Hydro Colony in the ensuing years.
By the 1980's due to automation and remote operation, the manpower requirements of the Generating Station had decreased substantially. At the same time, the housing supply in the surrounding area had significantly increased. Faced with an aging infrastructure in the Colony and mounting maintenance costs, a decision was made by Ontario Hydro to close the Colony and sell off the houses.
On 21 October 1988 tenders were called for the sale and removal of the remaining 33 houses. The houses were sold and trucked away to begin new lives in various parts of the Ottawa Valley and like the village of Mackey Station before it, the little town that was the Rolphton Hydro Colony slipped quietly beneath the waves of time.
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Rolphton Hydro Colony House #10 and Occupant list1990
Rolphton, Ontario
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REMINISCENCES - Janine PoleyThere were all kinds of kids in the colony; mostly young couples with lots of young kids, so our children had no trouble making friends. There were no jobs for women in the colony, so I raised my kids and I cleaned the house. That kept me busy; especially when I had young children growing up.
There was a good group of people in the colony; we were all having a good time together. There were activities usually held at the community center, we had a tennis court, and an ice rink. Men played hockey in the winter and the ladies skated. I taught organized tennis in the summer and we organized a little tennis tournament for the kids. There were all kinds of people with different backgrounds in the colony. I would say it was pretty harmonious.
There were two very nice hotels. There was one main hotel and a smaller one for guests. In the colony there used to be big events. We used to have parties and movies one night a week on either Friday or Saturday night. We used to watch the movie and then dance at the hall. I remember always having big Christmas Balls with dinner for the kids. Santa Claus would come for the kids and there used to be a New Years party for the adults. It was the company's way of providing recreation for the staff.
Through the community and our children we learned of a program called Scouts, for boys, and Guides, for girls. So my husband and I decided to be involved in these programs. Scouts and Guides are programs that involve outdoor activities ranging from camping in the summer to tobogganing in the winter. My children weren't involved in the program for several years because they were too young, but we brought them along anyway for the experience.
The best memories I have of the colony were the Girl Guides for me and my husband had the Scouts. You have no idea what a wonderful time everybody had. We would camp two or three times in the summer and we would go camping near Ottawa; it was a wonderful life with the Girl Guides.
In the colony there were many styles of houses at the time. We chose the second floor model, but it all depended on what you wanted. Our house was really nice; it was easily constructed with hinges to place the walls together. The houses are quite small: they had two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs. We made one room downstairs into a dining room and the other into a kitchen. In the winter, with the stove, the houses became very warm and comfortable.
I used to go skiing every day in the winter and I used to have two-way skis. They had a funny attachment so it allowed you to either go cross-country or downhill skiing with them. There was a three-mile loop, which was made of old roads that were not plowed.
The colony also had it's own security for the dam. The O.P.P. (Ontario Provincial Police) actually had their own houses in the colony. They were nice people and we got to be friends with them. There was never too much trouble with the law there. There was the odd vandalism or fight, but nothing major.
Wilf was a volunteer fire fighter. That was exciting. There weren't too many big fires in the colony, but there were several fires across the highway. I remember one very big fire that burnt a lot of forest.
I have always loved Deep River; we tried to live in Deep River and buy a house there, but Hydro told us that it was part of your contract with hydro to live in the house that they provided for us. We lived in the hydro colony for seventeen years. It was a great place to raise children but they had to be bussed to Deep River for the later grades. We all outgrew the colony after ten or fifteen years and most of us then bought houses in Deep River."
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Rolphton Hydro Colony House #15 and Occupant list1990
Rolphton, Ontario
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REMINISCENCES - Trudy BredewoldMy family moved to the Hydro Colony in February of 1961, my husband had moved there in September of 1960. He lived in the staff hotel before they had a house for us. Our first house had two bedrooms - we were practically crammed in there. Other houses were bigger, but you had to wait for someone to move out. Eventually, we moved into a bigger one.
When you think we have a cold winter now, it is nothing, it was really cold then. At the first sign of snow, we would bank the snow against the house, to keep the floors warm. When it was really cold, if you happened to have a bed against the wall, the blankets were frozen. The only time I was ever really scared was when our house shook when we had an earthquake. We were sure that the house would collapse in the middle of the night.
Thursday afternoons, at one o'clock, the men would go to work and the women would do their shopping. If someone needed a haircut, that was on Thursday night or Saturday morning. There were people of all ages around and there were a lot of community get-togethers. The community was fairly close. We went bowling in the winter. Every Tuesday night, there were movies in the Recreation Hall. There were Brownies, a Girl Guide company, Boy Scouts, and Cubs. There was also a rifle club and a tennis court. You could play tennis in the summer and hockey in the winter. It was a pretty friendly atmosphere.
There was a school with three rooms - grades one and two in one room, three in another, four and five in another, and six, seven and eight in the other. The high school kids went to Deep River. The movies arrived by bus. Before they redid the recreation hall there were posts, you had to watch that you weren't caught behind one or you couldn't see.
The Recreation Hall was one big building; it had four bowling lanes, there were a couple of rooms, where the Brownies, Girl Guides and Boy Scouts met, and then under it they dug out a rifle range. It was all there. The dances were held in the Recreation Hall. If there was a Girl Guide banquet or a Christmas play, they were held there too. There were a lot of community things there. You lived there. You did your thing; just as you would in any small town.
We went camping sometimes at Driftwood. At that time you could leave your stuff on the table and walk away. You could even leave your camera out on a picnic table if you were camping. Nobody would take it. It was fantastic. There was also no gate at the Driftwood Park entrance, you could just drive in and be there, now you can't do that. We also did a lot of berry picking there. One time, in the winter the four of us went up to Driftwood Park, walked in up to where the first hill was. We sort of had to toboggan down it, but the snow was deep so we stamped that whole road flat clean in. We stamped all our names in the snow, which was fun. We had pictures of what they looked like, and we made snow angels. We made a fire and tea with melted snow, and dumped the tea bag in. It was fun.
We did lots of outside things. In the summer you could go and take your kids to a swimming hole, and there was a beach just above the dam on the river. You did a lot of your own thing, like snow- shoeing, canoeing, blueberry picking, hiking; we did a lot of snowshoeing. There were lots of black flies! Well there may have been mosquitoes too, but I noticed the black flies much more then. It seemed like the black flies were a lot worse than they are now because we were right in the bush. They were spraying DDT then, and then the kids were playing outside.
We had no TV! But, I think it was fun for the kids to grow up in the Colony. You had lots to do, outside and inside. There was a lot to do. I don't think that school organised any sports, the school kids just played during recess. It was sort of ' like a pickup game. Even for hockey, it was not really organised; they would just get together at a certain time, and then play hockey.
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Rolphton Hydro Colony House #25 and Occupant list1990
Rolphton, Ontario
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REMINISCENCES - John ReinwaldThere was about 200 people living in the area around that time. There were 2 schools in Rolphton, a separate school and a public school. I went to the public school in Rolphton.
The majority of the people that went to the school were kids of people that worked at the dam. It was a 3-room school and in one room there were grades one, two and three and in the second classroom was grades four and five
and the third classroom grades six, seven and eight. There were 3 teachers and one of the
teachers was the principal.
There was one teacher I'll never forget. Her name was Miss Moore. She was a very, very strict woman. Even in the younger grades if you were fooling or joking around she had this pointer or yardstick and she would hit you over the head or on the back with it. I remember one time about grade 3 she was going to hit me with it but I took off and she came chasing after me. One of the walls at the school was all glass and
there was a fire exit there, it was basically just a window that hinged open and I jumped out. I ran home so she wouldn't get me. But my father brought me back to school so I ended up getting my punishment. She probably used more yardsticks than you could shake a stick at, but you would learn really well.
I remember at recess, there were squirrels running around. There was about 15 or 20 of us chasing the squirrels. We were throwing rocks and sticks and everything at them and they were jumping from treetop to treetop. The recess bell rang and some of us were going to head back, but one of the older ones said 'Oh don't worry, we'll get the squirrel'. So about 10 or 15 minutes later, our teacher came out and got us. She brought us all back to school and lined us up in the hall and we all got the strap.
We had lots of fun at that school. At every recess there were always sports going on at lunchtime. We would play, baseball, softball, soccer,football, whatever the group wanted to do. Somebody would throw a soccer ball onto the field and everyone would play soccer. There were a lot of kids my age in Rolphton. At that time in that school alone there was probably 80 or 90 kids going to school. That was quite a bit for a small 3- room school.
We used to spend a lot of time in action sports up in Rolphton. I really enjoyed hockey. Hockey was probably my favorite sport. We used to play full body contact. There'd be people there ranging in age from 10-17 really getting into full body contact so there were some pretty gruesome, cuts and bruises. We used to set up one of the rinks and do the initial flooding, then after that we got out of school and rushed down and played hockey until about 9:30 or 10:00 at night. We'd scrape the rink and flood it so that the women could bring the children down the next day for skating. Then the next night we'd do it all over again.
That rink was a tennis court in the summertime. We had a net set up and we used to play tennis. We also had a recreation hall there. The recreation hall had a bowling alley and we had a bowling league. I used to set pins for them. I got paid 25 cents a game for pin setting. They also had pool tables there, and a Boy Scout and Girl Guide hall too. There was a dance hall and a firing range in the basement for riffling.
In the summer we had the Ottawa River. Hydro built a dock for us with a diving board. There was a nice beautiful beach that we used to go down to in the summer. I used to cut grass in my early teens for people in the summer time and shovel snow in the wintertime to make a little money on the side.
There was this one time a friend of mine. Mark Meilleur and I decided we wanted to golf. Mark had done quite a bit of golfing with his father at that time. Mark and I decided to build our own golf course right in the colony itself. We had a golf course set up, we had some long runs where we used the driver. We used to use a 9 iron over the top of the house and then over the other side onto the field and then down over the tennis courts, through some trees. I don't think we damaged anything, we didn't break any
glass or anything.
One of the other things that comes to mind when we were younger is we decided we were going to canoe to Deep River. There was about 6 or 8 of us that got together and we each grabbed a canoe and we carried them down to the river in Rolphton. The most exciting part of the trip was, we put the canoes right into the tailrace just below the dam. We paddled down the tailrace in the canoe. It was scary as you paddle along you see all these whirlpools around you. You were scared that you could get sucked right down. But we made it through and we ended up in Deep River.
There were all sorts of these little things we used to try. We were spoiled rotten up there. For a small community we were very well taken care of.
We weren't allowed to, but we played around the dam anyway. We used to Jump off the back of the dam and dive into the water. Just in front of the dam on the Ontario side, there's a pretty steep hill going down towards the dam. There's no water at the bottom where we used to slide. We used to go down the hill beside the dam and then ski up over onto the side or even toboggan up onto the side of the dam and up onto the hill. We used to really enjoy that hill because it was the steepest one around so you'd get the most speed out of it going down.
One time we climbed one of the large, high tension towers, the ones the powers lines run up. A friend of mine and myself were climbing, we were about three quarters of the way up,
and the constable came down and caught us. He made us come down, but before we got
to the bottom he contacted our parents. Our parents were waiting for us when we got to
the bottom, so we ended up getting into a bit of trouble with the law. But it was all fun, at that time. I don't recall any hard times. I can only recall a lot of good times.
My father worked on the dam. He actually started there as a laborer and got on as
a truck driver on the construction of the dam. When the dam was in operation he got
an apprenticeship as a machinist and became Foreman of the machine shop. A number of years later he got a mechanic supervisor's job for the dam and for all of the property that was around it. This meant maintaining the hydro colony.
If you talk to my dad today he would tell you that he really enjoyed his time there, since we had a big family, there were lots of mouths to feed so he basically had two or three jobs going on. He worked at Hydro and he also had a bulldozer. When I was about 13, he taught me how to operate the bulldozer. We used it for building roads in bush, or for cottages and building homes. Dad also had a lot, some property over by Swisha just over 300 acres. He built roads from there so people could come in and do some logging.
He used to do little machining jobs for people, welding and things like that. He was a very hard worker. When the dam construction was complete he decided to stick around and he started with operations. That's when he obtained a machinist's apprenticeship. He worked for Ontario Hydro for 39 years before he retired.
My mum had a pretty full time job just looking after us. We had 7 children at home. The main part of her job was looking after us.
The dam was completed in the late 40's. I was born in' 54 so the dam was already completed. I worked there for summer employment. One summer, around 1972, the first year I worked as a laborer, I did everything from sweeping the streets to working on the large generating units overhauls, washing down the units, and grinding out the large rotors that have cracks. I used to have to grind them out so then the welders could weld everything back up.
The second year I was there I worked up in the office area and did a bunch of design work for the dam between college years. I made some minor designs, that are still in there today. One's called a creep detector and the other thing I designed was something for out at McConnell dam when they raised and lowered the gates. If the gates are raised, there's two large screws and they used to get all clogged up with dirt and sand so I designed a flexible cover that would go over top of these screws so that the sand wouldn't get in them. They implemented those.
The dam was quite a tourist attraction back then. A lot of people would drop in at the lookout and they used to sign up to take the plant tours. In the summertime it was very busy there with tourists. The tourists would be taken through by security guards and if it got too busy they'd ask me to do some of the plant tours. I found that really interesting. When they first asked me, I knew how the dam operated in very general terms, so I had to learn quickly. Just about every tour someone would ask me a very embarrassing question, one I couldn't answer. Then I'd find the answer and I'd learn from that and then I'd go back to tell the tourists what I knew.
After the dam was built, the hydro colony was approximately 30-35 houses. The people who were in the operation of the Swisha dam lived in the colony. There was an upper and lower colony. In the upper colony, were the people that worked at the dam lived there. The security and police officers resided down in the lower colony.
It stayed that way right until the early 70's, when hydro decided to down size. They were going to reduce the number of staff at the Swisha dam, so a lot of people from the colony started moving out. Then at that time NPD, which is a nuclear power demonstration reactor, just down the stream from here they started utilizing those houses for a while.
I think it was in the late 70's they decided to tear the hydro colony down. So now it's non-existent. It's all bush now, there's really nothing left. I took a drive around the colony and there was nothing to be seen, the only thing that's remaining are the old roads.
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The Rolphton Public School rear view1950
Rolphton, Ontario
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Rolphton Hydro Colony Public School11
SANTA'S WILD CHRISTMAS EVE RIDE: by Ron HotchkissMy mother's first impression of the small Northern Ontario Hydro community she would call home between 1948 and 1951 was not favorable. "If the house hadn't been sold in Toronto, I would have turned around and gone back," she said.
Together with me, her seven-year-old son, and my one-year-old sister, she had left the comfortable existence of family, friends and a city where she had lived all her life. She had come to Rolphton, Ont., to join my father, who had been promoted to paymaster of the massive hydro-electric project at Rapides des Joachims.
At the time, Rolphton consisted of nothing more than a store and a few houses dotted along Highway 17. Yet Rolphton was located near a site on the Ottawa River that the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario had regarded as ideal for a generating station.
Winter is what I remember most about living up north. It was not unusual for the temperature to dip to minus 40 F. More than once I suffered frost-bite to my ears. But it was a dry cold, and if you dressed properly, you could be quite comfortable. The snow would arrive in November and still be there in April.
The winter season at the colony was as busy as the summer. For the adults, there were dances, bingos, bridge and bowling tournaments. We kids occupied ourselves with tobogganing, skating, building snow forts and going to movies.
The first winter we were there, the recreation committee decided to construct a rink. But no one seemed to have any idea about the proper length and width. Measurements were obtained from somewhere and the rink was built. When it was ready to be flooded, we were amazed at how big it was. Later, it was discovered that the dimensions had been taken from a calendar sent out by the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. We had replicated the ice surface of Maple Leaf Gardens.
Of all the activities for adults and children at Des Joachims, the Christmas Eve party marked the culmination of the recreation committee's work. It was held at the recreation centre, a large building where talent shows, movies, bingos and dances were held.
The centre was the social hub of the community and played a prominent role in the life of the colony during the three years we were there. Each Christmas Eve, families would gather to sing Christmas carols (accompanied by my father on the piano), admire the tree and decorations and enjoy the Christmas treats prepared by the project's cafeteria staff.
It was the appearance of Santa Claus, however, that we anticipated most eagerly.
And when he did arrive - preceded by the sound of jingling bells and the familiar "Ho!Ho! Ho!" - we would rush to greet him. Then, each of us would be called up to sit on his lap, tell him what we wanted for Christmas and receive a small gift from his bag.
Santa was always played by Percy Bennett, the chief electrician. A man with ruddy complexion, blond hair and an extroverted disposition, he was a natural for the role. An avid outdoorsman, "Perce" always kept a fishing rod and a rifle in the back of his Jeep in case an opportunity presented itself as he travelled the back roads of the project. He was a favorite of us kids, especially during the winter when he would tie a couple of toboggans to the back of his Jeep and pull a gang of us around.
One Christmas, it was decided that Santa would arrive at the recreation centre in a sleigh. Reindeer were out of the question, so a horse was used to pull the sleigh. The idea was that Santa, sleigh and horse would be kept out of sight. Then, at the appropriate moment, they would drive up to the recreation centre entrance, and we would be there to meet them.
No one had ever thought to question Perce's inexperience with horses, least of all Perce himself. And when the time arrived, he confidently got into the sleigh, grabbed hold of the reins and prepared to make the trip.
Perhaps it was the fact that the horse was not used to pulling a sleigh, or perhaps it was the bold manner in which Santa applied the reins to its flanks. But for whatever reason, the horse bolted and Santa found himself the helpless passenger in a sleigh careening down the road out of control.
Back at the centre, the emcee of the Christmas party announced that Santa was on his way. This was our cue to rush to the hall entranceway. But when we got there, Santa was nowhere to be seen. We began to get restless. My father was particularly concerned. It was his responsibility - once Santa was spotted - to go back into the centre and play "Here Comes Santa Claus" on the piano.
Finally, in the distance, we could hear the sounds of sleighbells and horse's hooves. Yet, as the sleigh drew closer to the hall, the noises suggested something was amiss.
Instead of slowing, the sounds indicated that Santa was coming on at a furious pace. Suddenly, the horse, sleigh and Santa burst out of the darkness. We could see the flaring nostrils and wild, flashing eyes of the horse as it drew even with us. It was running as if a pack of hungry wolves was nipping at its heels.
Santa, bent low in the sleigh, his beard askew, was grimly pulling on the reins. And as they rushed by, snow whirling all about, I heard Santa use words I hadn't heard since my father had hit his thumb with a hammer.
As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, leaving in their wake a group of flabbergasted children. Raised as we were on Clement Moore's The Night Before Christmas, the scene we had just witnessed was so uncharacteristic and so unexpected that we could only stare, open-mouthed, into the darkness. We listened to the sleighbells fading in the distance.
Then the silence was broken by the muffled laughter of the adults behind us who had also watched Santa gallop wildly by. Sadly, we turned and walked back into the hall, wondering what would become of Santa and the bag of presents we had glimpsed in the back of the sleigh as he stampeded by.
Someone, somehow, was able to corral the runaway and convey the wayward Santa to his original destination. And while the jolly old elf's arrival was slightly late, he was greeted with relief and enthusiasm by us all. As he distributed the gifts to each child with his customary good humor, only his flushed cheeks and tousled hair betrayed anything about his ordeal.
Afterwards, as I trudged home, my boots squeaking on the snow and the night cold and bright, I thought about another trip Santa would be making later that night to all the boys and girls throughout the world. Silently, I hoped that this time his reindeer would be pulling his sled and that, hereafter, his association with horses would be limited to petting and feeding
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One Christmas, it was decided that Santa would arrive at the recreation centre in a sleigh. Reindeer were out of the question, so a horse was used to pull the sleigh. The idea was that Santa, sleigh and horse would be kept out of sight. Then, at the appropriate moment, they would drive up to the recreation centre entrance, and we would be there to meet them.No one had ever thought to question Perce's inexperience with horses, least of all Perce himself. And when the time arrived, he confidently got into the sleigh, grabbed hold of the reins and prepared to make the trip.
Perhaps it was the fact that the horse was not used to pulling a sleigh, or perhaps it was the bold manner in which Santa applied the reins to its flanks. But for whatever reason, the horse bolted and Santa found himself the helpless passenger in a sleigh careening down the road out of control.
Back at the centre, the emcee of the Christmas party announced that Santa was on his way. This was our cue to rush to the hall entranceway. But when we got there, Santa was nowhere to be seen. We began to get restless. My father was particularly concerned. It was his responsibility - once Santa was spotted - to go back into the centre and play "Here Comes Santa Claus" on the piano.
Finally, in the distance, we could hear the sounds of sleighbells and horse's hooves. Yet, as the sleigh drew closer to the hall, the noises suggested something was amiss.
Instead of slowing, the sounds indicated that Santa was coming on at a furious pace. Suddenly, the horse, sleigh and Santa burst out of the darkness. We could see the flaring nostrils and wild, flashing eyes of the horse as it drew even with us. It was running as if a pack of hungry wolves was nipping at its heels.
Santa, bent low in the sleigh, his beard askew, was grimly pulling on the reins. And as they rushed by, snow whirling all about, I heard Santa use words I hadn't heard since my father had hit his thumb with a hammer.
As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, leaving in their wake a group of flabbergasted children. Raised as we were on Clement Moore's The Night Before Christmas, the scene we had just witnessed was so uncharacteristic and so unexpected that we could only stare, open-mouthed, into the darkness. We listened to the sleighbells fading in the distance.
Then the silence was broken by the muffled laughter of the adults behind us who had also watched Santa gallop wildly by. Sadly, we turned and walked back into the hall, wondering what would become of Santa and the bag of presents we had glimpsed in the back of the sleigh as he stampeded by.
Someone, somehow, was able to corral the runaway and convey the wayward Santa to his original destination. And while the jolly old elf's arrival was slightly late, he was greeted with relief and enthusiasm by us all. As he distributed the gifts to each child with his customary good humor, only his flushed cheeks and tousled hair betrayed anything about his ordeal.
Afterwards, as I trudged home, my boots squeaking on the snow and the night cold and bright, I thought about another trip Santa would be making later that night to all the boys and girls throughout the world. Silently, I hoped that this time his reindeer would be pulling his sled and that, hereafter, his association with horses would be limited to petting and feeding
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Santa and kids at Rolphton Hydro Colony1947
Rolphton, Ontario
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Santa and children at aRolphton Hydro Colony Christmas Party
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