Timiskaming First Nation

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By the end of the 19^th century, pressure from White settlement had begun the process of nibbling away at the land base of the reserve. Over a 40 year period the Algonquins of Timiskaming lost 90% of their reserve lands





On 11 July, 1894, Timiskaming Band members agreed at a surrender meeting to dispose of all merchantable timber on their Reserve, except for cedar, for a period of ten years. Proceeds from the sale were to be placed to their credit, and the interest distributed to them. Over the following three years, the Band also gave up a number of small parcels along the river for the benefit of the timber companies. In October of 1897, for example, a parcel of 120 acres was surrendered, and then sold to the firm of R.H.Klock and Company for mill purposes.



The largest surrender in the history of the Timiskaming Reserve took place in May of 1898. For more than a decade, some Band Members - led by then-Chief Solomon Massenekejick - had protested the fact that Indian Agent Adam Burwash was squatting on the reserve with a farm he had built. The Band wanted to take over the farm and purchase his improvements. Other Band members, however - apparently encouraged by Indian Agent Angus McBride - had been proposing a surrender of the northern half of the Reserve to raise revenue. On May 24, 1989 the Band agreed to sell 35 square miles (a total of 22,810 acres). The land included Burwash's’s farm.



In August of 1905, Band members agreed to surrender all merchantable timber on the unsurveyed portion of their Reserve, in trust, for a further period of ten years. As before, the pine timber was immediately licensed out. Unfortunately, the last stands of merchantable timber were badly damaged in the great fire of 1916, and virtually wiped out in the fire of 4 October 1922, which burned a huge area of northeastern Ontario and northwestern Quebec.



Between 1905 and the First World War, many of the lots along the Quinze River front were surrendered for sale. On August 17, 1905, for instance, the Band surrendered a total of 157 acres, including lots 6 through 9 and 12 through 15 to the west of the steamboat landing below the modern Church. These are now prime residential lots in the town of Notre Dame du Nord. In December of that same year, Indian Agent Adam Burwash urged the Department to allow the surrender and sale of the remaining part of the Reserve. He believed it "to be in the interest, not only of the place, but in the end, of the members themselves" who, he said, were "talking of taking measures at their next meeting to become enfranchised". Three years later, however, Burwash reported that Band members were not at all in favour of surrendering the rest of the Reserve. Nor was there any mention of enfranchisement		Above: Timiskaming woman photographed by anthropologist Frank Speck, 1913.

By 1908, what had once been entirely Reserve land at the head of the lake was beginning to resemble a checkerboard. This was particularly true of the riverfront. Individual houses and farms of Band members along the Quinze were interspersed with the building lots of non-Natives or parcels of unsold, surrendered lands. Both Natives and non-Natives were part of the Parish of Notre-Dame-du Nord.

As more Francophone settlers began moving into the territory, the pressure on the remaining reserve lands increased. In June of 1908, the Secretary of the Indian Department asked Indian Agent Adam Burwash to find out if the Timiskaming Band would consent to having their unsurrendered lands included within municipal boundaries and		Above: Church at Notre Dame du Nord, early 20th century.

"Whether the Indians would be willing to surrender the whole of the remainder of their reserve, and on what terms, and remove to a more suitable location." Although the Band refused to give up their reserve, they did agree in January 1909 to sell off another 480 acres on various concessions near the Quinze River.



On February 1, 1909, the Quebec government created a new township at the head of the lake and named it Canton Nedelec - after one of the original Oblate missionaries in Témiscamingue. In keeping with government practice in frontier areas, this was a township municipality. Its boundaries encompassed all of the surrendered and unsurrendered Reserve lands, as well as the rang between the Reserve's western limit and the Ontario boundary. The creation of this new township added pressure from settlement which led to the eventual pressure to surrender a large tract of the reserve known as the Nedelec surrender.