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Fairbairn House Heritage Centre
         A Little History

Fairbairn house renovations underway.
- Press Release May 3, 2010
- Photos

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The house was built by William Fairbairn in the late 1860s, in a Greek Revival style that was very popular at the time. William Fairbairn and his wife Jean Wanless immigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1817. They settled near Lachute, west of Montreal, and later in Bytown, now Ottawa. In 1834, they moved to the present village of Wakefield, where William built a gristmill on the last falls before the La Pêche River joins the Gatineau. In the 1860s he built a new house near his original log home. It is this new structure, once renovated, that will become the Fairbairn House Heritage Centre. Members of the Fairbairn family lived in the house until the early 1900s. The house was moved twice - once in the 1993 to make way for new road construction and again in August 2005 to make way for a new condominium complex when the Municipality of La Pêche purchased the house, in order to save it from demolition, and moved it to the present location in Hendrick Park. The Gatineau Valley Historical society (GVHS) helped launch the project by establishing a steering committee to plan the various stages of project development. In June 2007, the Maison Fairbairn House Solidarity Cooperative was formed to take over the project and manage the remaining development stages and run the heritage centre once it opens.