International Plowing Match At Earlton: Parks Canada Invites The Community To Discover Temiscamingue’s Aboriginal Culture

FORT TEMISCAMINGUE, QUEBEC – Sept. 23, 2009 – Parks Canada and Fort Temiscamingue National Historic Site of Canada are proud to support the International Plowing Match to be held in Earlton, from September 22 to 26, 2009.The event, which draws around 70,000 people annually, will provide the Timiskaming Algonquin community with an opportunity to share its culture and traditional knowledge with attendees. A birch bark canoe will be built on site using ancestral aboriginal methods. The activity is sure to entertain the whole family. The Timiskaming community has been present in Notre-Dame-du-Nord, in the Temiscamingue region, since 1854.

Parks Canada is endeavouring to help preserve and present First Nations heritage culture through a financial contribution to the construction of the canoe. The $5,000 in funding will help maintain the cultural treasures of the Timiskaming Algonquin community and fulfill the mandate of Fort Temiscamingue National Historic Site. When completed, the canoe will be donated to the historic site by the community as an educational and interpretive tool for presenting their history to Canadians.

Standing testimony to the military presence of the Algonquin, Fort Temiscamingue operated as a major fur trading post for two hundred years. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it played a strategic role in struggle between the French and English for exclusive control of the fur trade in the catchment areas of the Upper Ottawa River and Hudson Bay.

Fort Temiscamingue National Historic Site of Canada is located at 834 Chemin du Vieux-Fort in Duhamel-Ouest and is open to visitors from the beginning of June to the beginning of September.

For more information, please contact

Fort Temiscamingue National Historic Site of Canada
819-629-3222
Toll free: 1-888-773-8888
fort.temiscamingue [at]pc.gc.ca