Reflections of the South Nation Watershed: A Pictorial History of Its People and Natural Resources

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto. He is the author of Beyond Their Years: Five Native Women's
Stories.

The South Nation River flows northeast from a bit north of the St.
Lawrence to the Ottawa River in eastern Ontario. This book is an
attempt, in English and French, to tell the human story of the river.

One weakness is the treatment of Algonquin peoples. Before it was given
its current name (in 1908), the South Nation River was known as the
Petite Nation River, an appellation it shared with a south-flowing river
that meets the Ottawa on the opposite shore. The Petite Nation, or
Ouaouech-kairini Algonquin, lived on the lands surrounding the northern
river in the first half of the 17th century. The people living on the
lands drained by the South Nation were another Algonquin group, the
Onontchataronnon, who are not even mentioned in this book. The Algonquin
people generally are only briefly mentioned, and the author’s use of
the words “Algonkian” (referring to the peoples speaking languages
belonging to the largest Aboriginal language family in Canada) and
“Algonquin” could readily confuse the uninformed reader.

While the collection of pictures is impressive and the accompanying
text appears to be carefully researched, there is little discernible
order to the presentation of the pictures, nor is the connection between
the text of the pictures and the main text always clear. Finally, there
are no individual life stories, a common feature of good local
histories. This could be an interesting coffee-table book for local
people or tourists visiting the area, but the reader seeking narrative
will be disappointed.