History
Eastern Ontario was inhabited by several First Nations tribes most notably the Algonquin,Haudenosaunee and Wyandot for thousands of years.
European intervention in Eastern Ontario started as early as the 1600s when the French voyageurs would paddle along the Ottawa River, but actual European settlement in Eastern Ontario didn't first start until the mid-1700s, when the settlement of L'Orignal in what is now Prescott-Russell was founded.
Further European settlement began in the late 1770s and 1780s, with the United Empire Loyalists groups of Americans who stayed loyal to Britain after the American Revolution settled along the St. Lawrence River and parts of the Ottawa River.
But European settlement inland away from the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers didn't start until the first half of the 1800s, when the settlements of Russell, Saint Augustine-de-Catherine now Embrun, Perth and Smiths Falls were founded.
Eastern Ontario continued to grow throughout the rest of the 1800s and into the 1900s. The past 10 years have seen prosperity in much of Eastern Ontario, most notably in Prescott-Russell and Lanark County.
