Gypsum Mining in Southern Ontario
At a recent coffee meeting with a grad student friend of mine, I learned that gypsum mining has a rich history in southern Ontario. Specifically, in the lower Grand River watershed, gypsum has been mined for about 200 years!
Gypsum is a soft mineral that is used primarily in the construction industry for plaster or wallboard and as a fertilizer. In southern Ontario, geologic materials of the Salina Formation1 contain thin beds of gypsum that has been mined around Paris, Caledonia and Hagersville, Ontario (west of Hamilton) since the 1800s.
The Salina Formation consists of sedimentary rocks and is known to outcrop (i.e., exposed at ground surface) in an area that trends northwest-southeast from Southampton to Niagara Falls (see map below). Included in this area is an area around the Lower Grand River. The map below shows where the Salina Formation outcrops. Also shown are the locations of gypsum mines.
In the central area of this Salina outcrop belt lies the town of Paris, Ontario. Paris is located where the Nith River and the Grand River converge, within the Grand River Watershed. Early settlers discovered an abundance of gypsum that was reasonably easy to extract by digging tunnels. In fact, the town of Paris got its name back in the 1700s when British colonialists surveyed the area and first discovered the gypsum, which is a key ingredient in plaster of Paris.
In the 1800s, several gypsum mines were in operation, including the Paris Plaster mine, which operated from 1822 to 1905, about a mile south of the town of Paris, Ontario The mining was done by digging tunnels from the riverbank. Approximately 68,000 tons of gypsum was mined from this location. Gypsum was used for fertilizer and stucco. At the Cooks Mine and Martindale Mine (close to each other, near Caledonia, Ontario), two main gypsum layers were mined at a depth of about 33 metres below ground surface. Between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, over 110,000 tons of gypsum was produced. Other mines appeared (e.g., Merritt, Garland, Mount Healy, Glenny, Torrance, Teasdale). In 1896, a plant was built in Paris, and gypsum rock was hauled by donkeys from the mines to the ground surface, where it was moved to the trains, which carried the rock to Paris for processing.
In these early mining days, rock was blasted and the gypsum was mined by hand drills. In the mines, candles and oil lamps were used. Today, mining activities are typically not well advertised, but from what I learned, it appears that gypsum is still being mined in Ontario, by the Canadian Gypsum Company (CGC) near Hagersville, Ontario.
Water and mining go hand in hand. When we dig into the ground, we will hit water, whether it’s just below ground surface or many metres deep, water will be encountered at some depth. When the target geologic materials (in these case, gypsum) are below the water table, dewatering is required. When dewatering occurs, the water table is lowered and this can result in nearby wells running dry. Whenever we extract minerals from the ground, water needs to be considered.
Dewatering can be an immense, depending on the scale of the mine. Water that is pumped from the ground needs to be put somewhere else, whether it’s into a nearby river or a local sewer system. In addition, other environmental effects of pumping need to be carefully examined.
Our Earth is a vast, diverse planet, and it offers us so much. We just need to make sure that our actions are being taken with a complete understanding of the impacts we make when we take from it!
Thanks for reading The Water Droplet and keep watching for more stories about water!
I’ll leave you with this YouTube video where an adventurous explorer finds his way to an abandoned mine shaft near Paris, Ontario.
The Salina Formation (or Salina Group) is aa geologic rock unit of Silurian age (Silurian materials are approximate 400 million years old. The Salina Formation is known for its salt and gypsum and it also represents an oil reservoir in Michigan into Ohio.
Hi, there was a video recently of an abandoned test gypsum mine along the banks of the Grand River near Paris. It was about 300 feet into the side of a hill. Would you know of it’s map co ordinates?