Jean Farquharson
What do the following activities have in common?
- A hike through a field of ripe soybeans to locate old concrete ruins;
- Three days on duty at a display booth at the Golden Horseshoe Steam Show;
- A visit to the Drilling Rig Museum near Selkirk;
- A bumpy wagon ride through several farmer's fields to observe a pile of rocks and filled-in holes;
- A visit to Ontario Archives to examine old documents and government reports;
- A hike to visit a rare perched fen and disappearing and reappearing stream phenomena and tufa beds;
- Setting up and monitoring a display at Geo-Rama, the annual lapidary show held in Paris;
- A meeting where a mining engineer describes the processes followed when opening a mine at Drumbo;
- Leading a group on a walking tour through the heritage area of Paris;
- A trip down Georgia Pacific's No. 3 Mine in Caledonia, a working mine where huge machines are powered electrically to eat out many thousands of tons of gypsum rock every year to process in the plant above ground..
The answer? - membership in the Grand River Heritage Mines Society, a unique organization composed mostly of lay persons who are curious about their heritage, natural and man-made, of the environment around them - Carolinian plants, a heronries, rocks and geological formations, wildlife, Indian sites, old mills, remnants of corduroy roads, hydrogeology, old mines and quarries, mining equipment, etc.
Who can be bored? We are too busy finding out all kinds of interesting things.
The Grand River Heritage Mines Society was founded in 1993 as the result of a few people coming together while researching the old Paris Plaster Mines south of Paris to get information for a OMB hearing. We discovered that the Town of Paris had been founded because of the beds of gypsum and the water power available at the forks of the Nith and Grand Rivers. There were many mines opened in Brant County from 1822 onward, many of them unrecorded in government reports and local histories. Gypsum (CaSO4.2H2O), then called land plaster, was mined and ground up and applied to the farmers' fields as a soil conditioner. Gypsum was also used to make stucco and plaster of Paris. Today it is used mainly for drywall and additives in other products. We discovered from the 1851 census that, Paris with a population of about 1000, had 208 "lath and plaster" (stucco) houses, and that several people laboured in the various mines and mills, or hauled the plaster to the mills by wagons some by barge through the raceways and along the river, or using sleighs in the winter.
We worked with a geologist from the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and showed him some of the old mines we had located, including one that had not yet collapsed that we could carefully examine. In turn, he provided us with a lot of the historical information he had gathered for a project to locate and assess the stability of the old mines in the area. He served as a witness at our hearing. Our curiosity aroused, after the hearing we decided to continue our research and field trips looking for the old gypsum mines around Paris. It was then that we officially called a meeting and formed the Grand River Heritage Mines Society.
We decided to hold a public meeting in the museum at Cayuga to find new members and more information about the gypsum mines and mills now located near Caledonia and Hagersville. The organization acquired members from around York where mines and mills were located from the 1840's onward. One couple, the Pearts, who joined our society, own the farm where the Cook mine was located. We have held several meetings in their home, a beautiful old colonial house where the Cooks established their home on Crown lands and raised eleven children, many of them buried in a family cemetery in a pasture above the old mine. Their neighbour, Herb Martindale, lived at Plaster Hill Farm and could show us where the old Martindale mine was located and the dinky train which was built on a narrow gauge railway to move the ore to the plant at Lythmore where a later mine was located.
We also have members who lived or had lived where the ghost village called Gypsum Mines is located, an area a few miles below Cayuga where farms are now nestled along the Grand River, and no sign of mining exists unless you know where to look and what to look for. An old brick schoolhouse is located along River Road; a miner's house still exists, built by William Hamilton Merritt, grandson of his namesake, the founder of the Welland Canal. One of our members had lived in one of these houses early in her married life. She had some ancestors who were miners, and had amongst the family treasures a copy book from the Grand River Plaster Co.(Merritt Mine), which she is transcribing for our archives collection. We visited a horse farm where the Excelsior Mine was located in the later 1800's, and found in their fields sinkholes ringed with bramble bushes to keep the horses away, old ruins of the mill and mine, and rusted remnants of old machinery hidden in the bushes. Using these clues and the mine maps and descriptions acquired from the Ministry, we could trace where the drifts and tunnels were located. Other mines were located in the area on other farms - the Glenny, the Anthany, New England and Teasdale Mines.
We found that the gypsum was transported by barges and lighters down the Grand River through the locks and canals built by the Grand River Navigation Company. Because most of the mines were located along the banks of the Grand River, this was an economical way to transport the gypsum to markets as far a way as U.S. and many parts of Ontario through the Welland Canal system or Lake Erie. There was even a gypsum mill at Port Ryerse. Later when the railroads were built, the Navigation Company could no longer compete and went bankrupt. That was when many of the small mines closed.
There were many small companies bought and sold, but the main ones that survived were the Alabastine Company of Paris and the Crown Gypsum Company. They were amalgamated as the Ontario Gypsum Company, which later formed the Gypsum Lime and Alabastine Company. In the 1950's, this was bought out by Domtar, and recently it was sold to Georgia Pacific. The competing Canadian Gypsum Company (CGC) in Hagersville was founded more recently. A third competitor, Westroc, closed their mine in Drumbo a few years ago to use less costly artificial gypsum produced as a by-product when ground limestone is added to buffer the acid smoke exiting the chimneys of the huge coal-burning Ontario Hydro generating stations.
Every year, the Society holds a few meetings, some public, some only for members. When we go on field trips, we often hold informal meetings the same day while eating a packed lunch or have an informal pot-luck supper when we can socialize and show our slides or photos, talk about our research, plan future activities, or explain some technicality of mining or milling gypsum. Our gypsum investigations now reach from above Paris to Dunnville. We have not limited our investigations to gypsum but have done some research also on the marl beds of Blue Lake where a large Portland cement plant existed for a few years, the limestone mines and quarries around Limehouse and the Forks of the Credit, and the extraction of bog iron near Turkey Point for the iron foundry at Normandale.
We hear of other interesting stories and sites by word-of-mouth when we attracting people to our displays and meetings. We also have a research group which visits museums, archives and libraries to collect information about the mines, the mills, the people involved, and how gypsum fit into the local economy. We also produce a quarterly newsletter. Today the mining society has members from all walks of life from all over Ontario.
If you are interested in joining our group or can contribute information to us, you may contact us through Jean Farquharson at 519-442-2156, fax 519-442-2373, e-mail or Ilse Kraemer at fax/phone 519-756-6634.
GYPSUM WEB RESOURCES
http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/floodway.html
http://www.minerals.net/mineral/gypsum.aspx