Other comments and reflections
The brickyard is best known for the internationally significant geology of its north face, made famous by a geologist at the University of Toronto in the early twentieth century. As the site was quarried, a rare sequence of environmental changes in glacial and inter-glacial deposits was revealed dating back 125,000 years. Fossils discovered in this series of formations include the giant beaver and the types of clams and snails now living in the Mississippi Valley. The west wall reveals Toronto's bedrock, which was deposited 448 million years ago in a warm, shallow subtropical sea.
In 1868 gold was discovered in Deloro, meaning "Valley of Gold". The Canadian Consolidated Gold Mining Company (a British company) began mining in 1873. This eventually failed since the recover of the gold was so poor. In 1896 Canadian Gold Fields Company bought Deloro and built the first mill where they used a new cyanide process to extract the gold. Roasting furnaces were used to remove the arsenic from the gold, but the quality of the gold was poor, forcing the closure of the mill in 1903. After the completion of the railroad in 1904 it opened up the possibility to ship silver to the Deloro mine for treatment. In 1906 the Deloro Mining and Reduction Company was formed. In 1915 the company changed it's name to Deloro Smelting and Refining Company Limited after Dr. Haynes developed the first commercially produced stellite in the world, which was manufacture at the Deloro plant.[2]
Deep within a forest northeast of Peterborough is the largest known concentration of aboriginal rock carvings in Canada. Carved into the white marble rock face hundreds of years ago, the 900 petroglyphs depict turtles, snakes, birds, humans and other images. Hiking trails meander through surrounding forests, wetlands and rocky ridges. Explore The Learning Place interpretive centre.
