The HWTProject Celebrates Historic Westmeath Township

Welcome to our travels through Historic Westmeath Township. This HWTProject started in 2013. It has been only a few years in the making, but several generations in the living. It is a salute to those generations that have come before.

A collection of township seals and crests used through the years with the earliest, at the upper right, showing Westmeath in Upper Canada. The images were taken from the pages of the Westmeath Township Council Minute Books.

This township is located in the Upper Ottawa River Valley in Eastern Ontario, Canada, approximately 90 minutes west of Ottawa, our nation’s capital. In 2001 the venerable old township joined with the adjacent municipalities of Ross, Cobden and Beachburg to form a new amalgamated Township of Whitewater Region.

Westmeath Township is embraced by the big bend of the Ottawa River.

Because of its location in the big bend of the Upper Ottawa River, where it juts northward into the Laurentian Hills of Quebec, the Westmeath Peninsula was very much defined by its river shoreline. This main water travel route into the frontiers of the New World meant that natives, explorers, traders, lumbermen and settlers all arrived on its shores, -thus making Westmeath Township one of the oldest of the townships in the Valley and one of the most beautiful and scenic.

This Grand River – the Ottawa’s early name – has been a source of inspiration, recreation, commerce and mystery to its users and visitors. For more on the MYSTERY aspect see Ottawa Caves & Discoveries

Westmeath Township was a rural municipality, which from its inception was unable to provide either full employment or full educational opportunities to its young. For nearly two hundred years, from its inauguration as a municipality in 1831, a large percentage of its young people have had to move away to seek their fortunes. By now thousands around the world can trace their roots to Westmeath. Perhaps this website will help them reconnect to “Home”.

I encourage you to take up the invitation to submit material to this website by using the “Submissions” page. Or just let us know what you think of this website in “Your Voice”.

Please enjoy your time with the HWTProject and visit often; both here digitally and in person in the “Big Bend”.

Gayle McBride Stewart