Persia steamboat poster, no date

The “Persia” was built in St. Catharines in 1873. From 1877 to 1894 the ship was owned by James Norris of St. Catharines. The Toronto and Montreal Steamboat Co. acquired the ship in 1894, followed by the Quebec Navigation Co. in 1907. A fire severely damaged the ship in 1911, and the following year the “Persia” was rebuilt as a barge.

Scott Misener Steamships Co. Ltd. Records, 1965, 1967, 1972-1977, 1987, n.d.

Ontario Editorial Bureau (O.E.B.)

Upper Lakes Shipping Ltd. fonds 1955-1990, n.d. (non-inclusive)

In March 1931, Captain Bruce Angus was sent to Sarnia by Gordon C. Leitch, general manager of Toronto Elevators. He was sent to inspect the Sarnian to ensure it was still seaworthy. Leitch was a savvy business man, who had been active in the business community for a number of years. Leitch began his career with a partner in the lumber business. When that went under he moved into graineries and worked for the Winnipeg Wheat Pool for 12 years. After Winnipeg he moved to Toronto, which was closer to his home town of Ridgetown, Ontario. In Toronto Leitch became manager of the Toronto branch of the Canadian Wheat Pool. While managing the wheat pools in Toronto Leitch became aware of huge costs associated with shipping the grains from the praries into the Toronto area. He felt that there was no need for such costs and decided to do something to make them better and cheaper for the business. Originally the grain was loaded onto Lakers that would bring the grain from the praries to Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. It was stored there until needed by the Toronto graineries and then hauled across land by either truck or train. The land journey was the most expensive and the one which Leitch wanted to eliminate. This was a fine plan except for 2 obstacles that were quickly overcome. First of all the Welland canals were not large enough to accommodate the large carriers that were bringing in the grain. This was changing as the expansion and widening of the canals was already underway. The second issue was the lack of storage in Toronto for the grain. The grain elevators had been destroyed by fire in the late 1880s and never replaced. Leitch propsed his company built its own storage elevators along the water front to allow not only for easier access to the grain, and more timely production of products. The elevators would aslo create a reduction in shipping costs and an overall more competitoive price for the customers of the grainery. The company refused, so Leitch went elsewhere to friends and contacts within the grain industry. The elevators were built and Leitch quit his job with the Canadian Wheat Pool and became the general manager of the elevators. Although the elevators were built and ready for storage the next issue was filling them. None of the carriers wanted to do business with Leitch because the competition in Georgian Bay threatened to cancel their contracts if they did. Leitch saw no way around this, but to provide his own transportation. This is when he sent Captain Bruce Angus to scout out potential ships. The ship was purchased for $37,000 and after another $30,000 was spent to fix it up, it was ready for business. The need for transportation and the finding of a seaworthy ship, lead to the beginnings of the Northland Steamship Company. The Sarnian proved to not be enough for the business underway. Leitch decided another ship was necessary. He joined forces with James Norris the owner of the Norris Grain Company. He proposed they join forces to create a more economical means of transportating their products.

Schooner Ranger document

A page of entries detailing the financial history of the Schooner Ranger, a Great Lakes cargo ship, from 1810-1815. The ship sustained damage in 1811 on its journey from Detroit to Black Rock, in which 3 people drowned. The ship was subsequently “destroyed by the enemy in January 1813”. In August 1815, the ship’s account was settled. The settlement acknowledged that the ship was “taken by the U.S. Navy Officers for the use of the Government”, and is signed by Porter, Barton & Co., and George Kibbe.

J.W. Spencer fonds, 1866, 1881-1921

Joseph William Winthrop Spencer (commonly known as J.W. Spencer) was a geologist and geomorphologist best known for his work on the geology of southern Ontario and the Great Lakes. He was born in Dundas, Upper Canada in 1851, but moved to Hamilton, Ontario in 1867. In 1871, he began studies in geology at McGill College in Montreal. In 1875 he worked in the Michigan copper mines and shortly afterwards prepared a thesis on the copper deposits. He submitted this thesis to the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1877 and was awarded a doctorate in geology, the second Canadian to earn a doctorate in this field. In 1880, he became a professor of geology and chemistry at King’s College in Windsor, N.S. Subsequently, he taught at the University of Missouri, and then the University of Georgia, but moved to Washington, D.C. in 1894, where he worked as a consultant geologist. Spencer spent much of his life studying preglacial river valleys in Ontario and the origins of the Great Lakes, as well as the Niagara River and Falls. In 1907, he published a book titled The Falls of Niagara: their evolution and varying relations to the Great Lakes. His opinions in these areas differed from some of his contemporaries, namely the American geologist Grove Karl Gilbert. Gilbert published a review of the The Falls of Niagara that exposed some flaws and inaccuracies in Spencer’s estimate of the age of the falls. Spencer’s studies also took him to the Caribbean and Central America. In 1920 he moved back to Canada, but died the following year.

Sullivan Agent Confesses, [1948]

The National Seaman’s Association was a labour recruiter hiding behind a union-like name. It was run by H.N. McMaster who collected fees from companies and dues from workers. With McMaster in charge, shipping interests could claim that their seamen had a union, but ship-owners were free to push their vessels and their workers to the breaking point. In 1935, the members on the Great Lakes decided to strike. One year later, they created their own union and amalgamated with a Montreal-based independent body to create the Canadian Seamen’s Union headed by a ship’s cook who became a union leader, John Allan Patrick “Pat” Sullivan. By the late 1940s, almost all sailors on Canadian ships were CSU members. Right from its inception in 1936, Communists were prominent among the leaders of the union. Sullivan had been recruited to the Communist party that year and the union had a close rapport with the party. On June 8, 1940, Pat Sullivan was arrested because of his affiliation with the Communist party. He was incarcerated until March 20, 1942. No charges were laid, no bail was set and there was no trial. After his release, Sullivan was elected second vice-president of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada. In 1943, Percy Bengough was elected as president and Sullivan was elected as secretary treasurer of the TLC while maintaining his role as president of the CSU. On March 14, 1947 Sullivan made a shocking announcement that he was resigning from the CSU and the Labor-Progressive Party. He claimed that the CSU was under the full control of the Communists. Within a month of this announcement, he emerged as the president of the Canadian Lake Seamen’s Union. Ship-owners never really reconciled themselves to having their industry unionized, and in 1946 there was a seamen’s strike in which the union won the eight-hour day. In 1949, the shipping companies had a plan to get rid of the union and were negotiating behind their back with the Seafarers International Union (SIU). In a brutal confrontation, led by Hal Banks, an American ex-convict, the SIU was able to roust the CSU and take over the bargaining rights of Canadian seamen. On July 15, 1948, Robert Lindsay, who was Sullivan’s Welland business agent said that to the best of his knowledge, Sullivan’s outfit, the CLSU, was under the control of some of the Steamship Companies. Lindsay had heard that there was a movement to get rid of Bengough of the Trades and Labour Congress as well as elements of the CSU. He also had heard that the CLSU wanted to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. Lindsay’s allegations raised the questions: Were the ship-owners powerful enough to oust Percy Bengough because he supported the seamen? Could the CLSU get an affiliation with the American Federation of Labor? and Would the American Federation of Labor actually affiliate with a union that was siding with employers against a locked-out union?

Palynology of late-glacial and postglacial sediments in Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada, as related to the Great Lakes history /

This investigation comprises three parts: (1) the source, mechanism of transport, and distribution of pollen, spores and other palynomorphs in Georgian Bay bottom sediments and a comparison of these data with the contemporary vegetation, (2) the relative significance of fluvial transportation of pollen and spores, and (3) the late- and postglacial history of vegetational and climatic changes in the Georgicin Bay region. Modem pollen and spore assemblages in Georgian Bay do reflect the surrovinding vegetation when preservation and pollen production by the different species are considered and accounted for. Relative pollen percentage and concentration isopoll patterns indicate that rivers contribute large quantities of pollen and spores to Georgian Bay. This is further substantiated by large amounts of pollen and spores which were caught in traps in the Moon, Muskoka, and Nottawasaga Rivers which flow into Georgian Bay. The majority of pollen and spores caught in these traps were washed into the rivers by surface water runoff and so reflect the vegetation of the watershed in a regional sense. In a 12.9 metre long sediment core from northeastern Georgian Bay the relative percentage and absolute pollen concentrations allow correlation of Georgian Bay Lake phases with climatic and forest history. Four distinct pollen zones are distinguished: zone GB IV which is the oldest, reflects the succession from open spruce woodland to boreal forest; zone GB III represents a period of pine-mixed hardwoods forests from about 10,000 to 7,500 years ago. A pine-maplehemlock association dominated in zone GB II, although during the culmination of postglacial warming about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago the Georgian Bay forests had a more deciduous character. Zone GB I clearly shows European man's disturbance of the forest by logging activities.

Great Lakes Waterways Development Association

This archive contains materials relating to the Great Lakes Waterways Development Association. The collection contains correspondence, financial information, clippings, biographical materials, media releases, presentations and publications. The bulk of the materials are correspondence.

Molluscan carbonate geochemistry and paleoceanography of the Late Cretaceous western interior seaway of North America

North Amerlc8 W8S inundated by fJ major eplcontlnental sea during ihe C:retaceo.us Period. The sOljihw6rd transgression of th.e northern Boreal See along the ~\festern Interior Seaway resulted in a meetlng with the northward edv6nclng waters from the GUlf of Mexico (Obradovich and Cobban, 1975). Th1s link was 1n eXlstence by late Albien time and 6llowed for the comm1ngl1ng of the prol1ferous Arctic and Gulf rnar1ne faunas (F1g. 1). By early Campanlan time, there was a widening of B6ffln Bay wlth a slrnult8neous subsidence 1n the Arct1c Archlpelago and Sverdrup 6as1n (W11liam and Stelck, 1975). Williams and Burk (1964) found 6 break 1n the marines sedlmentatlon in the f1anltoba area, suggesting Bland corlnectlon from the Dlstrlct of Keewatln through eastern M6fl1toba to the lake Sl~perlor reglon, lmplying that the only dlrect connection between the Interlor Sea with Baffln Bay, was yia the Arct1c. This hiatus was also documented by Meek and Hayden (1861) ln the United states between the Niobrara and Pierre Format1ons. Jeletzky (1971) suggested that the retreat of the sea towards the east was by a serles of strong pulses resultlng in the regression of the Campanlan and M66str1chtlan seas. During ttle Cretaceous1 the r1s1ng Corl1111era caused the western shoreline of the Interlor Sea to migrate eastwards and the Cordillera'l detritus produced deltaic cornplexes from the Mackenzie Valley to Ne\N Mexlcoo The foreland basin was continually subslding and thls down\",arplng aided in the eastward m1gration of the western shorel1ne. Thls also lndicates that trle water 'tIes becom1ng deeper in the central Plains sect10n of the Seaway (Fig. 2).

Postglacial water levels in the Great Lakes Region in relation to Holocene climate change : Thecamoebian and Palynological evidence /

Various lake phases have developed in the upper Great Lakes in response to isostatic adjustment and changes in water supply since the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Georgian Bay experienced a lowstand that caused a basin wide unconformity approximately 7,500 years ago that cannot be explained by geological events. Thecamoebians are shelled protozoans abundant in freshwater environments and they are generally more sensitive to changing environmental conditions than the surrounding vegetation. Thecamoebians can be used to reconstruct the paleolimnology. The abundance of thecamoebians belonging to the genus Centropyxis, which are known to tolerate slightly brackish conditions (i.e. high concentrations of ions) records highly evaporative conditions in a closed basin. During the warmer interval (9000 to 700 yBP), the Centropyxis - dominated population diminishes and is replaced by an abundant and diverse Difflugia dominate population. Historical climate records from Tobermory and Midland, Ontario were correlated with the Lake Huron water level curve. The fossil pollen record and comparison with modem analogues allowed a paleo-water budget to be calculated for Georgian Bay. Transfer function analysis of fossil pollen data from Georgian Bay records cold, dry winters similar to modem day Minneapolis, Minnesota. Drier climates around this time are also recorded in bog environments in Southem Ontario - the drying of Lake Tonawanda and inception of paludification in Willoughby Bog, for instance, dates around 7,000 years ago. The dramatic impact of climate change on the water level in Georgian Bay underlines the importance of paleoclimatic research for predicting future environmental change in the Great Lakes.

Four days at Niagara Falls, in North America /

Inscription in ink, t.p. verso: James Ainsworth Esq With the respectful com'ts of the author.

The Statutes of his Majesty's Province of Upper Canada in North America- Sir Isaac Brock, 1812

The Statutes of his Majesty's Province of Upper Canada in North America outlining the recruitment, administration and discipline of the militia.

Draft News Release - Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

A News Release draft to be sent to "100 newspapers, radio and television stations (virtually all those with offices within 20 miles of the Lakes), make them available to the Press Gallery, special interest groups, trade publication and Mayors etc. of Great Lake-side communities". The release discusses the need for an upgrade to "the 1972 Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality agreement". Within the document, O'Sullivan is quoted that the agreement "should be upgraded to become a treaty with the United States, so that after all the effort which has already been put into tyring to clean up the Great Lakes we the provision which provides for cancellation by either party giving twelve months (notice) to do so". The total report is 61 pages in length.