Laidlaw's Pond

Speaker 1:    

[Siren ] It’s part of the inlets.  

It’s part of the inlets. 

Speaker 2:    

That one inlet.  

Speaker 3:    

Lottridge Inlet.  

Speaker 2:    

Which inlet? 

Speaker 1:    

Yeah.  

The tracks separated it.  

Speaker 3:    

CNR took over and put a railway track through it.  

Speaker 4:    

What about the streetcar track?  

Speaker 5:    

And the Laidlaw company - it was on the other side - used that for their acid.  

Speaker 2:    

That’s why Simon should know the contents of the water; what the level of the carcinogen that was in there. 

[chatter] 

Speaker 1:    

Carcinogen in the air, forget the water. The land and the air. Lump all three of them together. 

Speaker 2:    

I don’t know how acid froze but it would freeze on the ponds. 

Speaker 1:    

Nah, it didn’t freeze where it came out.  

No.  

Speaker 3:    

That’s where we use to lose a lot of pucks.  

Speaker 5:    

It didn’t really close it because of the red stuff that was coming out of that pond 

Speaker 2:    

Iron oxide John, off the rust of the wire. 

Speaker 3:    

Yeah. 

Speaker 4:    

John, it was iron oxide? 

Speaker 5:    

John went in and his clothes came up rusty... 

Sandy, fell in. Pfweet… 

Speaker 1:    

We only sent the littlest kid in thereafter the puck  [laughing] but they didn’t weigh much, eh? 

But we only had one puck; you had to go in and get it…  

[chatter] 

Speaker 2:    

It was our outdoor arena - the two ponds. The ladies casual skating only and hockey pond on the south side 

Speaker 1:    

All of the sports were invented right in Brightside. When they played hockey we had a pond, it was called Laidlaw’s Pond. 

And one section of it wouldn’t freeze because of all of the effluence from Stelco would flow into it… 

Speaker 2:    

No, no not Stelco. Laidlaw’s. 

Speaker 1:    

Laidlaw’s.  

Speaker 2:    

It had all that Hydrochloric Acid always never froze… 

[chatter] 

Speaker 3:    

That’s the one we played hockey on then… 

Speaker 2:    

That’s the waters. 

[chatter] 

Speaker 4:    

If you fell in there, you’d never last… 

Speaker 1:    

That was just by Trigger’s house… 

[chatter] 

[laughter] 

Speaker 4:    

…you’d turn red.  

Speaker 2:    

And this is Burlington Street. 

Speaker 1:    

One was for pleasure skating, and the other one was for sports. 

Speaker 1:    

The ice would be about that thick, eh. 

Speaker 2:    

Yeah. 

Speaker 1:    

In the springtime it would be kind of rubbery. 

Speaker 1:    

So, the trick was to run from Birmingham right across to Gage, and you had to go like a son of a gun, and if it had a little weakening down you went. 

Speaker 2:    

Yeah. 

Speaker 1:    

And when you come up, you’re all red. 

Speaker 2:    

Shoosh. 

Speaker 3:    

I read that there was a lot of clay around old Joe’s Pond and that’s what made the red… 

Speaker 1:    

No, no it was acid. Acid from the wire factory. 

Speaker 3:    

Oh. 

Speaker 1:    

From Laidlaw’s. Laidlaw’s. 

They made wire and they had all that acid. And they’d just dump it into the pond.