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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Big Train managers earn bonuses for greenlighting unsafe cars

Tomorrow (November 16) I'll be in Stratford, Ontario, appearing onstage with Vass Bednar as part of the CBC IDEAS Festival. I'm also doing an afternoon session for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library.

Almost no one knows this, but last June, a 90-car train got away from its crew in Hernando, MS, rolling three miles through two public crossings, a ghost train that included 47 potentially explosive propane cars. The "bomb train" neither crashed nor derailed, which meant that Grenada Railroad/Gulf & Atantic didn't have to report it.

This is just one of many terrifying near-misses that are increasingly common in America's hyper-concentrated, private equity-dominated rail sector, where unsafe practices dominate and whistleblowers face brutal retaliation for coming forward to regulators.

These unsafe practices – and the corporate policies that deliberately gave rise to them – are documented in terrifying, eye-watering detail in a deeply reported Propublica story by Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop,Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel L Sandoval:

https://www.propublica.org/article/railroad-safety-union-pacific-csx-bnsf-trains-freight

It's a tale of depraved indifference to public safety, backstopped by worker intimidation. The reporting is centered on railyard maintenance inspectors, who are charged with writing up "bad orders" to prevent unsafe railcars from shipping out. As private equity firms consolidated rail into an ever-dwindling number of companies, these workers face supervisors who are increasingly hostile to these bad orders.

It got so alarming that some staffers started carrying hidden digital recorders, so they could capture audio of their bosses illegally ordering them to greenlight railcars that were too unsafe for use. The article features direct – and alarming – quotes, like supervisor Andrew Letcher, boss of the maintenance crews at Union Pacific's Kansas City yard saying, "If I was an inspector on a train I would probably let some of that nitpicky shit go."

Letcher – and fellow managers for other Tier 1 railroads quoted in the piece – aren't innately hostile to public safety. They are quite frank about why they want inspectors to "let that nitpicky shit go." As Letcher explains, "The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders and what we’re doing to get them down."

In other words, corporate rail owners have ordered their supervisors to reduce the amount of maintenance outages on the rail lines, but have not given them additional preventative maintenance budgets or crew. These supervisors warn their employees that high numbers of bad orders could cost them their jobs, even lead to the shutdown of the car shops where inspectors are prone to pulling dangerous cars out of service.

It's a ruthless form of winnowing. Gresham's Law holds that "bad money drives out good" – in an economy where counterfeit money circulates, people preferentially spend their fake money to get it out of their hands, until all the money in circulation is funny money. This is the rail safety equivalent: simply fire everyone who reports unsafe conditions and all your railcars will be deemed safe, with the worst railcars shipped out first. A market for lemons – except these aren't balky used sedans, they're unsafe railcars full of toxic chemicals or explosive propane.

When cataclysmic rail disasters occur – like this year's East Palestine derailment – the rail industry reassures us that this is an isolated incident, pointing to the system's excellent overall safety record. But that record is a mirage, because the near-misses don't have to be reported. Those near-misses are coming more frequently, as the culture of profit over safety incurs a mounting maintenance debt, filling America's rails with potential "bomb cars."

Rail mergers and other forms of deregulated, anything-goes capitalism are justified by conservative economists who insist that "incentives matter," and that the profit motive provides the incentive to improve efficiency, leading to lower costs and better service. But the incentive to externalize risk, kick the can down the road, and capture regulators rarely concerns the "incentives matter" crowd.

Here's an incentive that matters. Rail managers' bonuses – as much as a fifth of their take home pay – are only paid if the trains they oversee run on time. Inspectors have recorded their managers admitting that they have quotas – a maximum number of bad orders their facility may produce, irrespective of how much unsafe rolling stock passes through the facility.

Inspectors have caught their managers removing repair order tags from cars they've flagged as unsafe. Inspectors will log orders in a database, only to have the record mysteriously deleted, or marked as serviced when no service has occurred. Some inspectors have seen the same cars in their yard with the same problems, and repeatedly flagged them without any maintenance being performed before they're shipped out again.

Former managers from Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern told Propublica that they operated in an environment where safety reports were discouraged, and that workers who filed these reports were viewed as "complainers." Workers furnished Propublica with recordings of rail managers berating them for reporting persistent unsafe conditions the Federal Railroad Administration. Other workers from BNSF said that they believed that their bosses were told when they called the company's "confidential" work-safety tipline, setting them up for retaliation by bosses who'd falsified safety reports.

Whistleblowers who seek justice at OSHA are stymied by long delays, and while switching their cases to court can win them cash settlements, these do not get recorded on the company's safety record, which allows the company to go on claiming to be a paragon of safety and prudence.

The culture of retaliation is pervasive, which explains how the 47-cars worth of propane on the "bomb train" that rolled unattended over three miles of track never made the news. There is a voluntary Close Call Reporting System (operated by NASA!) where rail companies can report these disasters. Not one of America's Class 1 rail companies participate in it.

After the East Palestine disaster, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg pushed the rail companies to join, but a year later, none have. It's part of an overall pattern with Secretary Buttigieg, who has prodigious, far-reaching powers under USC40 Section 41712(a), which allow him to punish companies for "unfair and deceptive" practices or "unfair methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Buttigieg can't simply hand down orders under 41712(a) – to wield this power, he must follow administrative procedures, conducting market studies, seeking comment, and proposing a rule. Other members of the Biden administration with similar powers, like FTC chair Lina Khan, arrived in office with a ranked-priority list of bad corporate conduct and immediately set about teeing up rules to give relief to the American public.

By contrast, Buttigieg's agency has done precious little to establish the evidentiary record to punish the worst American companies under its remit. His most-touted achievement was to fine five airlines for saving money by cancelling their flights and stranding their passengers. But of the five airlines affected by Buttigieg's order, four were not US companies. The sole affected US carrier was Spirit airlines, with 2% of the market. The Big Four US airlines – who have a much worse record than the ones that were fined – were not affected at all:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/ftc-noncompete-airline-flight-cancellation-buttigieg/

Rather than directly regulating the US transportation sector, Buttigieg prefers exacting nonbinding promises from them (like the Tier 1 rail companies' broken promise to sign up to the Close Call Reporting System). Under his leadership, the Federal Railroad Agency has proposed weakening rail safety standards, rescinding an order to improve the braking systems on undermaintained, mile-long trains carrying potentially deadly freight:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

The US transportation system is accumulating a terrifying safety debt, behind a veil of corporate secrecy. It badly demands direct regulation and close oversight.

If you are interested in rail safety, I strongly recommend this episode of Well There's Your Problem, "a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides" – you will laugh your head off and then never sleep again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMQTdYXaH8

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/15/safety-third/#all-the-livelong-day

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beyondthisdarkhouse · 9 months ago

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Well, I just got VERY distracted.

I was researching wholesale sewing supplies companies, and came across one from Eastern Canada that showed their shipping policies and times, which included a map like... this.

I've simplified the colours from the original, but not the positions of anything. And that made me DISTRACTED, because like... if you have also spent time staring at road maps of the prairie provinces, let me ask you: what the entire actual fuck, eh?

Let's superimpose. (Click for better resolution)

This map is sus in so many ways I can't even explain what went wrong here. The northern shore of Lake Athabasca gets faster shipping than Winnipeg? Kindersley is a priority destination, but Regina isn't? Edmonton has been usurped by (*reads smudged writing on hand*) Edson? The best shipping in Alberta is not centrered around Calgary, but, like... Nordegg? It's not on the map, but I swear to god it's fucking Nordegg. Also, who the hell did Saskatchewan have to fuck to get that kind of relative priority? (Come to think about it, though, if I were in charge of Saskatchewan, I'd absolutely sell my honour for some kind of rural logistics boost. What else would I do with it?)

And I wouldn't mind, except that this is the map that tells me how fast my shipping is gonna be! This is the only indicator on their website that lets me know whether my shit will arrive tomorrow, or a week from now!

(Okay, self. Deep breaths. I'm getting a bit upset and overblown here. It's okay. Clearly my shit wouldn't arrive until the next business week whether I lived in the Pembina Valley or not.)

So, in the larger map, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Vancouver, and Victoria are all where they ought to be. But what if, I don't know, these shipping zones were the right size and shape, but just in the wrong place?

I'd still be desperately curious to know what Saskatchewan did. And if I had to accept them, I'd guess they'd be more like...

If I'm right, clearly it's not just one thing wrong with them. They're not off in similar directions or amounts. At which point my only explanation would be that, like... someone started out with a shitty map, compressed the image, and then tried to blow it back up into a regular image again. And then it happened three more times, if not more.

MY FELLOW CANADIANS: DO BETTER

That's it that's my post. I wash my hands of the subject and will focus on suppliers from BC.

Except, just for fun, Saskatchewan's suspiciously spacious shipping corridor (what a great new tongue-twister!) with some European scale for spice.

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hazelcephalopod · 2 months ago

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Well today feels like as good a day as any for me to mention some real history I learned after I watched The Terror. This has basically nothing to do with the show I’ll tell you rn -I’ll also mention some facts about the Franklins at the end. Let’s talk about Dr. John Rae and one of the first investigations into “Wtf happened to the Franklin expedition.”

Background

John Rae was born on September 30, 1813 in Orkney were he was also raised -The Orkneys are a group of islands off Scotlands northern coast. He became a doctor and then got a job to what is not Ontario with the Hudson Bay Company. During that time he worked with First Nations people of the area and became adept with snowshoes and survival skills.

He was later chosen for an expedition which required further training that he had to travel to receive. He then joined expedition and took advice from Inuit he met along the way. During this period he learned to build igloos which he preferred to tents. While he did not reach his destination he made progress on its goals. He later explored the Arctic coast exploring areas that Franklin had before -or near them.

Journeys to find Franklins Expedition

Dr Rae became the second in command on a expedition to find Franklins taking an overland Arctic route, in 1848. Many other took place Using different routes and at different times, most with limited or no success. One of the rivers they encountered is named after him. Ultimately this expedition failed to find Franklins nor much evidence or information about it. Rae returned to England in 1852, roughly 4 years since it started.

Back in England he was granted an attempt to to return in 1853 and had by March of that year. This attempt would prove far more fruitful.

In 1954, after over a year of travel he met some Inuit who had a gold cap-band. When asked they explained they had found it 10-12 days away at a place where roughly 35 non-Inuit had starved to death. He bought it and offered to buy any similar items.

Several weeks later and only two of his men able to travel he began to turn back, on the way he met several Inuit families who wanted to trade with him. With them they had a small silver platter engraved on the back read “Sir John Franklin, K.C.H.”.

They informed him that 4 winters prior some Inuit met no less than 40 non-Inuit who where dragging a boat south, describing a man who fit the description of Francis Crozier. This party of probably Englishwomen communicated by gestures to the Inuit that their ships had been crushed and they were looking to hunt further south. When the same Inuit returned the next spring they found roughly 30 deceaseds, also found were signs of cannibalism.

Rae found this information sufficient to end his search and return to England and report his findings. Ultimately leaving Repulse Bay several months later in August 1854. His journey he taken a roughly a year and a half. He may have been the first European person to discovery the Northern Passage and was certainly one of the first.

Report and Disgrace

Once returned to Britain Dr. Rae made two reports. The the British Admirality he made a full report including the cannibalism, to the public his report excluded the mention of cannibalism. The Admirality, apparently by mistake, released the full report to the public, causing backlash. Lady Jane Franklin was especially affronted and had Charles Dickens write a tirade against Rae published in a magazine. The tirade ignited racist claims that the Inuit were liars, with some accusing they themselves of the cannibalism, claiming Englishmen would not have stooped to such acts. Additionally implying Dr. Rae the fool for believing the Inuit themselves.

Dr. Rae’s reputation was somewhat tarnished, he received a portion of the prize money for the information gathered, but it likely prevented him from being knighted and receiving further recognition in life and for the century after his death.

Post Expeditions, Death, and Legacy

Despite this he planned a polar expedition, building the “Iceberg”. Before he could take this journey the ship was used as a cargo ship and sadly sunk with its crew of 7. The wreck remains lost. Following this he became a founder of the “Hamilton Scientific Association” which would become the “Hamilton Association for the Advancement Literature Science and Art”. He later worked to establish telegraph lines in America and Canada. He visited Iceland and Greenland. He also married in 1860.

Dr. John Rae died in Kensington, London on July 22, 1893 at the age of 79. He was buried in Kirkwall, Orkney. His death went by mostly unacknowledged due to the backlash at his discovery of the fate of the Franklin Expedition. Later findings would confirm the reports he had been given by Inuit traders and delivered tactfully to Britain. (Author here: Authorities completely bungled his attempts to deliver the news with tact)

He has been noted as perhaps the foremost European Arctic survivalist. Likely in part due to his willingness to learn form local Arctic Peoples and other First Nation Peoples, setting him apart form many of contemporaries.

Since his death his accomplishment have received greater recognition, his former home in Kensington received a Blue Plaque in 2011. On the 200th Anniversary of his birth a statue to him was erected in Stromness, Orkney. Later that year the charity “The John Rae Society” was created to promote his achievements. Additionally, in 2014 at his birthplace of Hall of Celstrain, Orphic, Stromness, Orkney a plaque was placed by Historic Enviroment Scotland.

Also fun facts: His discover of the Northwest Passage is contested with the generally more accepted discovery by the McClure Expedition also created to find Franklins Expedition. McClure’s went significantly worse than Rae’s.

Places named -in English- after Dr. Rae include-

- Rae River

- Rae Strait

- Rae Isthmus

- Mnt. Rae

- Point Rae

- Rae-Edzo was the legal name for several settlements and communities near what is now called Behchokǫ̀, Northwest Territories, Canada.

Well thank you for reading. I really enjoyed writing this. I might do a better researched essay on this in the future. I’m just happy I got to tell you about Dr. John Rae bc tbh his story has become a minor special interest of mine. I just think he was a neat guy.

Now for those who want some absolutely not respectful words about the dead:

Facts about the Franklins (I’d not call them fun)

my opinion based off the following info: fuck’em. They sucked. (Plz ready Sir/Lady with the maximum amount of contempt you can manage)

As shown in the show this was not Sir first expedition. On his first he lost 11 of 20 men over roughly 3 years. Learning from the first the second went much better, they mapped the area and didn’t seem to suffer any major losses -though tbh some of it seems to have been luck.

Lady Jane Franklin -his second wife- while her husband was a Lt. Gov. of Tasmania (1837-1843) took in two aboriginal children one after the other, to “teach them to be civilized”. A young boy named Timemendic who she soon gave to her step-daughter (who was 18) who trained him as a servant, until he was deemed bad at that and they tried to send him to an orphanage and then ultimately to work as a deckhand.

Several years she decided to try again and “adopt” a very young girl called Mary whom she renamed Mathinna, once again she put her step daughter in charge of her. Lady Franklin liked her much more, but ultimately when Lord Franklin was called back to England they abandoned her in an orphanage, the rest of her life was suffice to say filled with abuse and suffering and by 18 she was dead. Her remains were eventually returned to Tasmania.

#long post #essays #history #the terror #the franklin expedition

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tomwambsmilk · 2 months ago

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Protip just in case I have any Quebec / Ontario / BC followers - you should really really look into ‘Odd Bunch’ produce delivery. They source all their produce from either surplus or ‘cosmetically damaged’ produce that would normally just be tossed out, so it’s SUPER cheap compared to grocery store produce. I get the smallest box which is $20/week plus $4 shipping; with sales tax it comes to $27/week. Just now I calculated how much it would have cost me to buy exactly the same produce I got this week at a couple of different stores, and it came out to $36-40 including tax (but before gas). Plus a lot of it is locally sourced and seasonal, and tbh I rarely notice any difference in quality from grocery store produce. And since they’re very committed to sustainability they use minimal packaging (there are usually a couple of things wrapped in plastic, but mostly it’s all just loose in the box which has been reused from another company). Plus, obviously, the convenience of having all your produce for the week delivered directly to your front door (which also makes meal planning easier bc you just plan around the produce they send you). It’s literally a win-win-win-win

#maybe the best financial decision I ever made tbh #I can’t overstate the quality either like. this week we got pears but they were REALLY nice pairs #idek what the variety is called but they were NOT run-of-the-mill Bartlett #plus I got a whole-ass acorn squash. I’ve never cooked an acorn squash before #but I guess I’m gonna learn how

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disgruntledseagull · 1 year ago

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if you want very good knives and you don't give a fuck about fancy + understand the care requirements of high carbon steel check out Ontario Knife company I have their 7" 1095 meat cleaver and that thing is a fucking beast.

I can power through a pork shoulder joint and then shave some meat without retouching the blade and I use it for weeks this way between sharpenings.

That's just the amazon pic not mine but it's as pictured about 3/4 of a pound and shipped sharp as fuck.

#you gotta oil it and keep it dry so it wont rust but the tradeoff is so worth it

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yatescountyhistorycenter · 2 months ago

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Potter Swamp: From bird haven to farming center

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Throughout the 20th century, Potter Swamp was seen as either a haven for birds and other wildlife or a center for agriculture and industry or both, depending on one’s perspective. This 8-mile-long stretch of Flint Creek between Potter and Gorham – measuring one mile across at its widest and totaling 4,000 acres of land – has been known just as much for the diverse array of flora and fauna that could be found there as for the bountiful variety of vegetables and other crops that are grown there.

Nowadays, much of the swamp has been drained to become muck fields for farming and growing root crops such as onions, potatoes, and carrots as well as corn. According to an April 2007 article in The Observer of Dundee, eight producers owned and operated 1,500 acres of the muck fields in Potter – the site of the only muck fields in Yates County, with Wayne County to the north and Orange County downstate listed as other major muck fields in in New York State. Potter is so proud of its muck fields and the crops they produce that Franjo Farms, a prominent onion producer in the town, sponsored the Potter Onion Festival for several years both to celebrate the vegetable and to raise funds for the town’s park.

To create the muck fields, a canal-like drainage system – with tiles placed three to four feet underground – moves the water from the swamp into main lines that connect to cisterns, which carry the water into a drainage ditch and eventually into Flint Creek, which flows into Lake Ontario. Left behind is muck – “loose, light, and wet, closer in composition to peat moss than conventionally used soil,” the Observer article states. This kind of ground is suitable for growing the root vegetables that Potter is now known for.

While the largest and perhaps best known drainage project in Potter Swamp took place in the late 1940s, just after the end of World War II, it wasn’t the first time drainage was undertaken or at least discussed in the swamp. In January 1905, the Penn Yan Express carried a report from the Geneva Daily Times that a company that had leased land around the swamp for timbering discovered a peat bog in the swamp. As a result, the company then planned to drain the swamp and harvest the peat to market it – black peat for fuel and red peat for florists.

Five years later, the Yates County Chronicle reported that a group from Boston sought to purchase land in the swamp to mine the large deposits of marl within the swamp. The clay-like marl could be used to make cement, and the Portland Cement Company set up shop in the area. According to another report from the Chronicle, once word got around about the men seeking to buy property in the swamp, the price for land rose from $5 an acre to $35 an acre.

Another time, in November 1915, the Penn Yan Democrat reported Yates County Sheriff Bates planned to experiment in growing cranberries in the swamp upon his retirement a few months later. The climate and soil of the swamp apparently seemed fit for raising the perennial crop. This endeavor aside, and despite previous reports that the swamp could not be used for agriculture, the first attempt to farm the muck land appears to have been Frank Wyman and Peter Lackner’s truck garden on 25 acres.

In November 1921, the Dundee Observer reported the two men planted celery, head lettuce, carrots, and other vegetables and harvested 1,000 crates of lettuce – with approximately two dozen heads per crate – and anticipated harvesting 1,000 crates of celery – with about 80 to 100 heads per crate. Four years later, Wyman Gardens Inc. – as the company came to be called – shipped 40 carloads of vegetables from 55 acres of land the truck garden then comprised.

Against the backdrop of these projects, newspapers over the years carried coverage of the wildlife that could be found throughout Potter Swamp in the first half of the 20th century. This coverage included articles written by Verdi Burtch, Yates County’s resident ornithologist, on the bird species that he and others spotted in the swamp. Professors and students from Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva made an annual trek to the swamp to enumerate the bird species and examine the other fauna and flora found in the area. In May 1922, Burtch wrote that his group during the trek saw 73 species of birds, while a group led by Dr. Eaton and Dr. Burgess found an additional 30 species – for a total of 103 different types of birds located that day. The following year, the Rushville Chronicle & Gorham New Age and the Dundee Observer both reported on wildcat sightings – perhaps bobcats or lynxes or a similar species – in the area around the swamp, with residents concerned about the wellbeing of their children, their pets, and their farm animals.

A July 1919 article about Flint Creek in the Express states Potter Swamp “once abounded in beavers, muskrats, and minks” and was also home to rare plants not found elsewhere in the region. Several years later, in June 1926, A. Flag Robson wrote an article for The Chronicle-Express titled “Canoe Trip in Potter Swamp,” in which he described the different animals and plants he saw in the wilderness during a group canoe trip through the swamp.

The 1930s witnessed an effort to turn Potter Swamp into a bird refuge, as the federal government sought to locate such a sanctuary somewhere in western New York. Oak Orchard in Orleans County and Montezuma Swamp in Seneca County were two other sites the government eyed. The bird species that once frequented the swamp were then rarely seen because much of the timber had been cut down, so the thinking was a refuge would help the birds and other wildlife of the swamp to thrive and increase if the wilderness were protected and preserved. The Lake Keuka chapter of the Izaak Walton League, the Penn Yan Chamber of Commerce, and local American Legion posts were among the groups advocating for a bird refuge in Potter Swamp.

For whatever reason, Potter Swamp lost out on the contest for a bird refuge, as the federal government chose Montezuma Swamp and established the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge on the northern end of Cayuga Lake. Thus, in 1945, two Prattsburgh men – Barre C. Wood and E. Vincent DeZetter, described as a farm implement and produce dealer – purchased many acres of land in Potter Swamp and several properties, including Wyman Gardens. The men began working on a plan to develop the area by draining the swamp and converting it into muck land for agricultural purposes and expected to yield 2,500 acres of tillable land.

However, their plan met opposition from conservation-mind groups in the region – the Izaak Walton League as well as the Keuka Park Conservation Club, the Eaton Bird Club of Geneva, the Geneva Rod and Gun Club, and similar organizations, who still hoped to turn the swamp into a wildlife refuge to protect the birds and mammals that made habitats out of the land. On the other hand, the Yates County Board of Supervisors, the Town of Potter, and the Rushville Grange – representing residents of Potter and Gorham – were among the entities that voiced support for the drainage project because of the economic benefits to local agriculture and industry.

The work to drain Potter Swamp began in January 1946, with power equipment widening and deepening Flint Creek to draw water out of the muck. Previously, crews cut down trees in the swamp to make way for the equipment. Once the water drained enough for the ground to be firm enough to walk on, other crews began clearing the land to prepare it for cultivation. By that spring, 100 acres of muck had been planted with lettuce, onions, and carrots. Losing out on their attempt to stop the drainage project and protect Potter Swamp, the Yates County Federation of Conservation Clubs petitioned the New York State Conservation Department to declare an open season on beaver in the swamp so sportsmen could harvest the valuable hides that were otherwise being sacrificed during the clearing.

Four years after the drainage project began, 500 acres of the muck land DeVetter and Wood had developed was being cropped. On this land, Carl Hey remarked, he used to trap muskrats, and now he was raising onions. In fact, he was raising a bumper crop; Hey’s 10 acres of onions were producing 1,000 bushels to the acre. With his son, Kenneth, and Kenneth’s friend David Eames working after school, Hey farmed a total of between 35 and 40 acres of muck land and planted onions, potatoes, and carrots. They used such special equipment as a potato digger and an onion topper.

Three years later, and seven years after Potter Swamp was drained, muck farmer Wilson Damboise and contractor O’Neil Roy filled 31,000 50-pound bags of onions on 38 acres of muck land – a rate of 600 bushels to the acre. Fifty thousand crates of onions were to be stored in the 200-foot-long warehouse the men had built specifically to house their vegetables and those of neighboring farmers. In 1956, demand was down for the onions, potatoes, and carrots grown in the muck land, so the men decided to put up a warehouse to keep their abundance and await better prices.

According an article in the June 28, 1963 edition of The Chronicle-Express – information repeated verbatim in The Chronicle-Express of July 4, 1968 and again in the 1987 summer edition of The Chronicle-Express – Potter Swamp “is still a bird-watcher’s dream, despite the fact that about half of the some 4,000 acres of muckland have been drained and cleared for crop production,” and more than 200 species of birds had been found at one time. So, nearly 80 years after the Potter Swamp was drained for agriculture, it continues to be a paradise for both bird watchers and farmers.

#historyblog #history #museum #archives #american history #us history #local history #newyork #yatescounty #potterny #potterswamp #birds #wildlife #agriculture #industry

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nffica · 5 months ago

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National Freight Forwarding Inc. specializes in providing comprehensive freight logistics solutions to streamline your supply chain and optimize your shipping needs. Our Freight Logistics Service is tailored to meet the unique demands of businesses of all sizes, ensuring efficient, reliable, and cost-effective transportation of goods.

#Freight Shipping Services #Freight shipping company in Canada #freight logistics service in ontario #heavy equipment moving company.#Freight Brokers in Canada

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scotianostra · 8 months ago

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On May 2nd 1779 John Galt the Scottish novelist, was born in Greenock.

Galt was the son of a ship’s captain involved in trade to the West Indies. Sickly as a child, Galt was at first schooled at home, later attending grammar school at Irvine.

In 1789, the family moved to Greenock in Renfrewshire when Galt’s father became a ship-owner and in 1796 John began work as a clerk for a local firm. In 1803 and 1804 he found some published success as a poet when the Scots Magazine published part of his epic poem, ‘The Battle of Largs’. The poem was published in full in 1804, around the time its author moved to London in an attempt to become a businessman. In 1807 his article, ‘A Statistical Account of Upper Canada’, was published in The Philosophical Magazine, and in 1808 his main business partnership was declared bankrupt, though without Galt suffering liabilities.

In 1809 he studied law for a few months, entering Lincoln’s Inn, but then decided to travel around the Mediterranean where he met Lord Byron. In 1811, back in London, he published two volumes of his travels and a biography of Cardinal Wolsey, and became editor of the Political Review. In 1813 Galt married Elizabeth Tilloch and also published a sequel to his Mediterranean travels, Letters from the Levant. In 1814 he became editor of The New British Theatre and the following year gave up this position to become Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Asylum, a charity established by the Highland Society in London. In 1816, Galt published The Life and Studies of Benjamin West, a biography of the American painter who became President of the Royal Academy. In 1818 his tragedy, The Appeal, was staged in Edinburgh with a verse epilogue by Sir Walter Scott. Back in London in 1819, Galt began lobbying Parliament for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal Company, though this first attempt failed. He also turned his hand to writing school textbooks under various pseudonyms. The following year his parliamentary efforts were successful and he was given a substantial reward by the canal company.

In 1821 The Ayrshire Legatees was published in monthly parts in the famous Blackwood’s Magazine, and in the same year Galt was engaged by a group of businessmen from Upper Canada, attracted by his lobbying reputation, to assist them in obtaining compensation from the government for losses sustained in the War of 1812.

Galt was a prime mover in founding the Canada Company whose Secretary he became; in 1825, he was one of five government commissioners sent to Canada on a fact-finding mission. Later that same year, Galt was granted the freedom of Irvine. In 1826, he was appointed superintendent of the Canada Company. He travelled via New York to the areas around modern Ontario including Toronto. In 1827 Galt established the towns of Guelph and Goderich but in 1829 he was recalled to London, dismissed from the Canada Company in June, committed to King’s Bench Prison for debt in July, and discharged in November.

Galt’s methods were subsequently vindicated because the Canada Company, following the patterns he had established, made profits from the 1830s until it was wound up in the 1950s. He was a good community builder but he laboured with little help, he alienated the reactionary establishment of Upper Canada and he failed to impress on his directors that the profits would accrue in the medium to long term.

In 1830, he wrote The Life of Lord Byron, who was a good friend, he also briefly became editor of The Courier, a London evening newspaper. In 1831, Bogle Corbet was published and Galt played an instrumental role in forming the British American Land Company (to do in Lower Canada what the Canada Company was doing in Upper Canada) and appointed its Secretary.

In 1832 Galt suffered the first of a series of strokes and in 1833 he published his Autobiography the following year he retired to Greenock where he lived quietly but continued to write articles, short stories, novellas and poems.

John Galt published over 70 fullworks of literature as well as many more serialised and shorter stories in publications, he died on 11 April 1839. He was buried with his parents in the New Burying Ground in Greenock (now called the Old Burying Ground).

His legacies include the city of Galt in Ontario, Canada, now part of Cambridge, named in his honour, in his home town of Greenock he is commemorated by the John Galt memorial fountain on the Esplanade, by a plaque at the old cemetery where he is buried and sheltered housing built next to the cemetery in 1988, on the site of the old Royal Hospital, is named John Galt House. In Edinburgh's old town he has a slab in Makars Court near the Writers Museum and in Guelph, Canada a historical plaque commemorates his role with the Canada Company in populating the Huron Tract, calling it "the most important single attempt at settlement in Canadian history"

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freightcanadian · 1 year ago

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 1 year ago

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"Investment in railroads helped more than anything else to open up northern resources to southern capital and entrepreneurship. On railroads, the province spent prodigously, George Ross often boasted that under Liberal governments railroad mileage in New Ontario had risen from a mere 12 miles in 1881 to almost 1,750 in 1904. The impulse was so strong and the Liberal commitments so binding that even under reduced assistance from the subsequent Conservative governments new construction proceeded with abated enthusiasm at a rate of 300 miles per year. Rare indeed a line was built without a provincial subsidy, bond guarantee. and grant; some obtained all three! Between 1867 and 1914 the province aided the construction of 2,783 miles of track the extent of $7,969,406 and pledged at least that much s credit again in support of various railroad bond issues. her and above their cash subsidies, Mackenzie and Mann floated a $5 million bond guarantee from the province and owned more than three million acres of crown land in support of the Canadian Northern. An equally persuasive F. H. Clergue convinced the Ross government to increase the usual 5,000 acre per mile grant to 7,400 acres for his Algoma Central line and to throw in the timber and mineral rights which usually remained vested in the crown. Clearly the provincial government could assume no responsibility for the transcontinentals, but it could claim the initiative for three north-south lines (the Northern, the Algoma Central and the Temiskaming and Northern) which, as it turned out, were much more important factors in the industrialization of the north.

These "development roads," and especially the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario, exposed the north both physically and psychologically to the energies of the Toronto business community. By the end of the nineteenth century Toronto had firmly established itself as the pre-eminent regional metropolis of southern Ontario, organizing and financing the trade and commerce of a prosperous, agricultural hinterland. Rail penetration of the Canadian Shield necessarily expanded that hinterland and changed its character. At first the railroads were driven northward simply to tap new agricultural areas to the north and west, but the incredibly rich silver and gold deposits unearthed by railroad construction redirected attention to the much greater opportunities presented by the natural resources of the Shield. Railroads thus brought the Shield under the dominance of Toronto, which developed in response the techniques, facilities and in a sense the energies to finance resource industries, especially mining, with a vigour that Montreal, for some reason, seemed to lack. Toronto's initial advantages of transportation and experience on the Canadian Shield imparted a powerful thrust to its rise from regional to national metropolitan stature. Indeed, as Professor Careless has observed in this connection, the "successive opulent suburbs of Toronto spell out a veritable progression of northern mining booms."

Much of the credit for initiating this mutually profitable relationship must rest with Ontario governments of this time, which in addition to extending the normal generous subsidies to private railroad companies, intervened even more positively to build and operate as a state enterprise the strategically important Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. Without a transcontinental of its own, the Toronto business community seized upon a railroad to Hudson Bay as a cheap and ready, if not entirely rational, substitute. En route to tidewater, so it was argued, the railroad would necessarily expand the city's agricultural hinterland, and by offering a third outlet to Europe, the northern seaport would reduce Toronto's dependence upon Montreal and New York. One promoter actually proposed that a Hudson Bay railroad in conjunction with northwest passage shipping company would make Toronto the headquarters for the Klondike. In due course Hudson Bay became a self-justifying symbol of Ontario manifest destiny and metropolitan commercial ambition. Although several such themes were projected with the usual civic éclat, each failed considerably in accomplishment; the James Bay Railroad managed reach only as far as Parry Sound, and the Toronto and Hudson Bay, among others, remained gloriously stillborn.

Eventually both Toronto businessmen and northern resource promoters turned to the provincial government for help. Taking an "average business man's point of view with no axe to grind," John Bertram told the Toronto Board of Trade 1901 that it was both necessary and sensible that the state should build the northern railways. "The chief thing to be considered was transportation," he said, "and the government would be lacking (land grants) in its duty, to give away such a rich inheritance to any railroad corporation." On January 15,1902, just on the eve of an important provincial election, the Ross government introduced a bill to build a railway from North Bay into the Temiskaming district which, it hoped, would give access to the vast arable lands of the Clay Belt discovered only two years earlier, extend the operations of the lumbering industry and expose, in the Minister of Public Works' prophetic words, "deposits of ores and minerals which are likely upon development to add greatly to the wealth of the province Announcement of the planned intersection of the Ontario go ernment line with the National Transcontinental gave Toronto at long last, its national connections. "I believe it [the T. & N. O.] will prove of inestimable value," J. F. Ellis remarked in his presidential address to the Toronto Board of Trade "in developing and settling the fertile wheat lands of New Ontario and the West-lands that are now practically valueless because of the want of railway facilities. Ontario and particularly Toronto, will be the great gainers." But on their way to Hudson Bay and the West, Toronto businessmen suddenly discovered the Canadian Shield. The T. & N. O. and Cobalt taught Toronto to see its new northern hinterland in its own terms."

- H. V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines & Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941. Second Edition. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005 (1974), p. 117-120

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