EPISODE 283 STONEHOOKING
Jackson Skeoch and I are admiring a pile of rock shingles on a Mississauga beach
…yesterday…March 15, 2021. We have been in isolation for a
full year now due to Covid 19. A good time to reflect on an event
that happened a year ago.
alan skeoch
March 2021
It took a month to put my lecture together. The occasion was a fund raising dinner held at the Stonehooker Brewery, Port Credit, on
Feb. 29,2020. We had a grand time entertaining and drinking fine beer with 100 guests. Sold out tickets. I was the feature
speaker who was introduced by my wife Marjorie. She took 20.5 minutes in her introductory remarks which were a hoot.
In the process she managed to push a wine bottle from lecture to cement floor which shattered like a hand grenade. Shaymus
Stokes then picked up the pile while Marjorie continued with her admiration of her husband. She had practiced the speech
for four weeks. Why the wine bottle? Because the label featured a wise comment by Albert Einstein. “A mind that opens to
a new idea never returns to its original size.” Think about that for a moment.
Now we had allocated 45 minutes for my speech and the rest of the time for dining and sampling beer from the huge vats
surrounding our dinner tables. Our son Andrew began tapping his watch as Marjorie spoke. She ignored him just
as she ignored the splintered wine bottle. Imagine the scene…Shaymus at the foot of the lectern gathering shards of glass
while Marjorie carried on without pause. She was on a roll. If the gods of ancient Greece really existed then her
husband, namely me, should be placed among them. Wow! I know this long introduction sounds like trouble. It was
not so because Marjorie performed with a kind of innocence few speakers are able to accomplish.
The result? I cut my speech…less than half. Who would listen to a Greek god? I did not have a
wine bottle to smash on the cement floor. I was just a back up speaker. Andrew tapped his watch.
If there had been a long pole with a hook it would have been used to haul me off the stage.
So a year has passed. One of the most catastrophic years in human history. Pandemic … Covid 19 spread
with the speed of summer lightning. Meetings of people in large groups has plummeted. We had 100
people at the Stonehooker Brewery on Feb. 29,2020. One daughter in law, Gabriela, and one grandchild
Nolan flew over from London , England for the occasion. Other friends came from as far as Collingwood. We had fun.
Then the deadly PANDEMIC curtain came down. We have
all been in isolation for a year. And the isolation may continue longer.
Seems to me like a good time to send out that speech. So here we go.
Begin forwarded message:
From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>Subject: speech feb .29 shingle beach at Rattray Marsh…OrdovicianDate: March 29, 2020 at 5:11:34 PM EDTTo: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
WALKING BACK IN TIME(will make you feel smaller than a grain of sand…or speck of shale)alan skeochMarch 11, 2020“Let’s take a walk, Marjorie,“Where?”“There is a shingle beach that fronts the Rarrray Marsh.”“Why?”“Because I am trying to get a grip on ‘time’”‘Time cannot be held.”“It can in the mind…”“Not even there. Tine moves on…fast sometimes, slow at others.”“Let’s just take our time and see where it leads.”
(Note, the Rarrray Marsh is one of the wonders of the City of Mississauga, It slumbers behind a rock strewn beach of Lake Ontario. The southwest quadrant ofMississauga…almost approachable….definitely unforgettable.)“Wouldn’t a sand beach be more charming?”“That depends upon the power of your imagination.”“Easy to trip and fall here.”“Right…if you do trip and fall you will find yourself among interesting company.”“Piles of flat stones.”“Piles of blue shale….”“Are you trying to make these stone sound romantic?”“Romantic? No, these stone make me feel humble…like a speck of sand on the beach of time.”“Carry on.”“Do you know how old these pieces of shale are?”“I don’t even know what shale is”“Shale was once mud…pressed by the weight of untold piles of mud…heavy…so much sothat this ancient mud became sedimentary rock called shale.“Our city sits on top of this vast expanse of ancient mud…for that matter the ancient mudonce ground and dried became the cement that holds up all the buildings in Mississauga.And for seventy years, 1850 to 1920, slabs of this shale were pried up by crowbars right fromthe place we are standing, pried up in great slabs, manhandled onto schooners and sailedto Toronto as the foundations of all the great buildings of the time.”“Do you mean the Stonehookers?”“Right. Nothing quite as Romantic as those stonehooking years.”“Unless, you actually had to do the stonehoking…it was a brutal business.“Anybody die?”“Many. In 1900, One of those old stonehooking schooners, the Pinta, capsizedjust offshore around here. Young crew trying to make a few bucks beforewinter set in. They were spotted by some men shingling a barn roof off Marigold Point.Spotted in the November mist…then gone. The schooner just flipped over. Searchersfound three of the men right away. The fourth was found frozen under the thwartsof the hooking scow some days later…body frozen solid.”
The Stonehooker Lillian resting in Port Credit Harbour in 1910 (Lakeshore Road and Credit River, SE shore.)
The harbour reached its peak between 1880 and 1900 with the advent of stonehooking; one of the primary building materials for construction in Toronto was shale from the bottom of Lake Ontario. The vessels that raised this stone were called Stonehookers and a great many of them were based at Port Credit.
The trade started in the mid 1800s and lasted till about 1910 when inland quarries opened up. The peak of the trade was in 1881 when 23 stonehooking vessels operated out of Port Credit. An extensive lake fishery also operated for a time out of the Port Credit Harbour. Today the historic harbour is largely home to recreational activities.
I often think of one Port Credit lady, whose husband suddenly died. Their only source of
income was stonehooking. She was left alone with several young children and
a decrepit schooner bashed up by the loading and unloading of slabs of shale
from the shallow waters along Port Credit shores. She became one of the few
female stonehookers. Wading with her long skirts in the shallows. Straining with
a stonehooking rake to loosen the flat slabs of shale. Hoisting the slabs with
the help of her children into her skiff and then transferring the slabs to her schooner
anchored offshore. Once loaded she set sail for the docks of Toronto to market
her stone slabs to builders.
THAT IS ABOUT AS FAR AS I GOT WITH MY SPEECH…WE NEEDED BEER
SAMPLING TIME.
END PART ONE: STONEHOOKING