Da Swisha: the story behind the name

Deep in the Ottawa Valley sits Des Joachims Generating Station (GS). It’s packed tightly between Quebec and Ontario, where it has harnessed the power of the Ottawa River since 1950. If you’re in the know, you call it Da Swisha.

Like most unique nicknames, there’s a story behind it.

Joachims was the name of a family who owned great tracts of land in the district. It first appeared on a 1688 map as “Portage de Joachim de l’Estan,” indicating the rapids in that portion of the Ottawa River (then called “La Grande Rivière”). In 1853, a small community on the Quebec side named Rapides des Joachims opened its first post office.

The 429-megawatt hydroelectric station opened in 1950, with a remarkable 120-foot-high concrete dam spanning the river where the rapids once thundered. The original French named remained – pronounced “day-swa-shem.”

Over time, Des Joachims evolved to “Da Swisha.”

“The local English speaking population pronounced the French name as best as they could, based on the local French pronunciation, and this yielded several variants, such as Swishaw, Sweshaw and Dah-swisha,” said Dr. André Lapierre, at the University of Ottawa’s Department of Linguistics.

Lapierre spent several years researching geographical names of Ontario, especially French names and collaborated on a project called the Dialect Topography of the Ottawa Valley.

His work on geographical names continues, and he is currently the Chair of the Ontario Geographic Names Board.