An outlaw priest is the subject of this week’s Timmins history feature on colourful characters.
Father Charles Paradis was shipped from Ottawa to Upper New York State, where he continued to cause chaos in the Catholic Church.
Hearing about opportunities in Northern Ontario in 1909, Father Paradis headed this way and opened a halfway house near Matheson for others coming our way.
As local historian Karen Bachmann recounts, he prospected in the Nighthawk Lake area.
“He found what he hoped was a promising show of gold,” she says, bbut unfortunately when he blasted the area, he caused what would be seen today as a major environmental disaster.”
Paradis’s destruction of the embankment near the falls eliminated value water power in the area.
That continues to affect that waterway today.
“As we all know now,” says Bachmann, “if you go to Frederickhouse Lake, you know you can’t boat on one side of it. You can thank Father Paradis about that.”
We’ll have one more colourful character next week.
