Millstone hauled from river a vestige of submerged towns
Divers recover 19th-century stone from St. Lawrence near Long Sault, Ont.
Over his 10 years of diving in the St. Lawrence River, Marc Pilon has recovered old glassware, an anchor, even a broken tombstone.
Last weekend, though, the amateur historian claimed his biggest catch yet.
Pilon was part of a team that hauled a 900-kilogram millstone out of the river Saturday near his home in Long Sault, Ont. — close to where five villages were flooded in the 1950s during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
"One of our dive buddies, he saw it [and we] did a little bit of research and found out right away what it was," Pilon told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning.
"Our eyes lit up and [we] said, 'Wow, we've gotta take this up. This is really cool.'"
More than a century old
It's believed the stone belonged to a grist mill in the former town of Moulinette, Ont., that was owned by the family of John Snetsinger, who in the late 19th century represented the region in both the provincial legislature and the House of Commons.
The mill was located on a small waterway adjacent to the St. Lawrence River, built to offer safe passage to ships. It was torn down around 1900, Pilon said, and the owners presumably dumped the stone into the water.
Moulinette was one of the five villages flooded to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s. The flooding meant the stone would have ended up submerged in even deeper water, Pilon said, under fast-flowing current.
The team spotted the stone during a recent dive, and sketched out plans to bring it back to the surface.
The ideal scenario would have involved lifting the weighty stone out of the water with a crane, but Pilon told Ottawa Morning they couldn't get permission to use docks near the site.
Luckily, a submerged road just happened to run right past the stone's underwater resting place.
The team rolled a boat trailer down into the water, right up to the stone, then attached lift bags and floated it up onto the trailer.
They then hauled the trailer out of the water, hitched it to a truck, and drove the stone to the Lost Villages Museum, where it's now on public display.
"It was a nice adventure, a nice challenge, and a lot of fun to do, actually," Pilon said. "But there was a lot of pre-planning, a lot of planning in this."
2nd stone still out there?
Being able to present visitors with physical artifacts like the millstone makes the history of the five flooded communities so much more tangible, said Gardner Sage, the president of the Lost Villages Historical Society.
"So much of this stuff is going missing or decaying under the water or getting lost in people's private collections," said Sage.
"It's very important to us to have this here, because it's something we can use to continue keeping the story alive."
There's a distinct possibility that Pilon and the rest of his crew could be re-enacting Saturday's recovery one day. Grist mills typically used a pair of stones to grind grains such as wheat and barley into fine flours, so there may be another stone resting somewhere on the river's floor.
Pilon said he'd definitely be keeping his eyes peeled on future dives — including the one he's got scheduled for Thursday evening.
"Out there somewhere, there is possibly another stone, unless it was destroyed at the time that they dismantled the mill," said Pilon.
"All I can say is, we're always looking."
With files from Giacomo Panico