Gatineau
— the French side of the river.
Not only on a wall.
“On the north bank of the Ottawa River, directly across from Parliament Hill. Formed in 2002 from Hull, Aylmer, and three other towns that had grown into each other, and now the largest French-speaking city west of Montreal. The Canadian Museum of History sits along the water; the Gatineau Park hills rise behind it, the maples turning hard in October.
Gatineau, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Gatineau sits on the north bank of the Ottawa River in western Quebec, directly across from Ottawa, and together the two form Canada's National Capital Region. The current city was created in 2002 by merging Hull, Aylmer, Gatineau, Buckingham, and Masson-Angers; its population was about 291,000 at the 2021 census, making it the fourth-largest in Quebec. Most residents speak French at home, and the older Hull sector along the river is the historic heart, founded in 1800 as Wright's Town around the Chaudière Falls timber trade.
The Canadian Museum of History sits on the Ottawa River bank in old Hull, opposite Parliament Hill, and is the most-visited museum in Canada; its Grand Hall holds one of the world's largest indoor collections of totem poles. Behind the city rises Gatineau Park, a 361-square-kilometre wedge of the Canadian Shield administered by the National Capital Commission. The park's Champlain Lookout, Pink Lake, and the Mackenzie King Estate are the anchor stops, and the maple ridges along the Eardley Escarpment are what most visitors come for in late September.
Late September into the second week of October is when the Gatineau Hills do their work. The sugar maples along the Eardley Escarpment, the red oaks below Champlain Lookout, and the birches around Pink Lake turn within a tight ten-day window that the National Capital Commission tracks publicly. The park sees several hundred thousand visitors across that fortnight; the Sunday-morning road closures along the Gatineau Parkway open the corridor to cyclists and walkers. By the first week of November the canopy is down and the hills stand bare against the river.