Laidlaw's Pond

A teenage hockey player. — This young Brightsider might have been on his way to Laidlaw’s Pond when this picture was taken. (Courtesy of Mary & Mike Zivolak and Brightside Memories FaceBook page)

Laidlaw’s Pond sat near the end of what had been Lottridge Inlet. Its water turned reddish brown from acid and other industrial liquids dumped into it from the nearby Laidlaw Bale-Tie Company something that did not prevent Brightside kids from playing hockey there on its sometimes-thin ice.

Listen: You'd Turn Red. Click the play circle below.

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

Listen: Hockey On Thin Polluted Ice. Click the play circle below.

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.

Listen: Rubbery Ice and Acid. Click the play circle below.

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.

Laidlaw's Pond

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