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MisterF

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Link to part 1.

Renfrew has one of the busier downtowns in the region. And a clock tower that’s pretty much identical to the ones in Almonte and Carleton Place.

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Downtown Pembroke is kind of dead even though it has some great architecture. Petawawa is about 10 km away and has no downtown at all, so I didn’t get any pictures of it. The CF base there is the biggest land forces base in the country.

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I find Deep River really interesting from a planning point of view. It's a post-war planned community built to support Chalk River Laboratories. It has a main street, but all the buildings are one storey so it doesn’t really look like a traditional downtown. I was there after all the stores were closed so the pictures make it look quieter than it really is.

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I don’t know if Mattawa is really considered part of the Ottawa Valley but I’m including it anyway. It’s a really dramatic setting for a town, and pretty much the only town of any size between Deep River and North Bay. They have wooden statues set up all over town.

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Big Joe Mufferaw
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I don't know about you guys but these pictures make me miss summer! Full galleries at Trillium Photography.
 
More good Ottawa Valley pics!

MF: More good pics in part two of your Ottawa Valley tour of Renfrew,Pembroke,Deep River and Mattawa-like that Customs Building in Renfrew(pic 8) and Pembroke's interesting City Hall(pic 12) with its reddish stone type-that looks like red clay to me! Lots of good sturdy brick and stone construction pictured!

Were those TVs in pic#17 worth taking or were they junk?

LI MIKE
 
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The Ottawa river valley reminds me of the Mohawk river valley in Upstate New York, not because the two look the same or have similar histories, but because both of them are these poor backwaters that really were in their heyday 100 years ago. I mean, jesus, the buildings in downtown Renfrew look more prominent than the ones in downtown Kitchener, a city twenty times its size. Is the town smaller now than it was a hundred years ago?
 
The 1957 Ontario Road Map has Renfrew's population at 8200, about the same population as today. The 1937 map has 5200 (Kitchener in 1937 had 26,000). The Ottawa River Valley towns certainly do look their age because of low growth since the 1950s though.

I've taken some pictures in 2007 and posted them here. The Quebec side, Pontiac County is the equivalent, though with smaller towns. It even, otherwise unheard of in Quebec, has the Ontario concession land survey system! It is also majority Anglophone (though a majority are bilingual).
 
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Were those TVs in pic#17 worth taking or were they junk?

LI MIKE
lol those old tube tvs with dials on them? Even if they work they're still junk!

Outside of Ottawa itself there's not a lot going on in the region. Arnprior and Renfrew are shrinking despite the 417 being extended and how close they are to the city. Pembroke and Carleton Place are the fastest growing towns. Technically Pembroke is a city.

I've never been to Pontiac County. But east of Ottawa a lot of the Ontario towns look and feel like they're in Quebec, and are largely francophone.
 

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