Dave Cappo with some of the bottles
he located from an old dump site.
Not long ago, Dave Cappo was busy drilling post holes along the old Port Perry railway line, north of the library, when he heard the clatter of glass in one of the boreholes.
Dave, who works for Badger Daylighting, was in town drilling holes for new hydro poles for Hydro One. Upon investigation he located and salvaged more than a dozen old bottles from one hole. Many of the bottles dated back to the 1930s and he said there appeared to be “tons more broken bottles” in the area they were drilling.
While interesting, it’s not a surprising revelation since at least one of Port Perry’s dumps was located along that stretch of road throughout much of the 1940s and 1950s.
There is an old saying that only two things in life are sure - that being death and taxes - but possibly dumps should be added to that list.
People have had to dispose of garbage for as long as humans have inhabited the planet, although by today’s standards, garbage dumps of a century ago would have been little more than small pits in which to get rid of scraps and bones.
Today, dumps have become big business as governments struggle to get rid of thousands of tons of garbage which include plastics, bags, bottles, metal tins, packaging and almost anything you can imagine.
Here in Port Perry, we’ve traced back the disposal of garbage as far as possible, with the earliest mention of dumps coming in December 1922 when the Village of Port Perry passed a by-law to provide a “Dumping Ground” which the town fathers could regulate.
Prior to this by-law, garbage disposal was unregulated and was being dumped beside the lake along the west side of Water St. between Casimir and Scugog Streets (7A Hwy.), with no controls over what was being thrown out.
So it was in March 1922 the Village of Port Perry passed its first by-law, prohibiting disposing of garbage in the old dump along the south end of Water St.
A new dumping ground was established at the north end of Water St. where an area was staked off near the lake, adjacent to the lands of the Union Milling Co. (now location of the Scugog Library and Port Perry Marina).
This is the probable dump site Dave Cappo drilled into when he came across the large cache of old bottles.
The bottles he found ranged from what appear to be ‘food’ related products such as Lang’s CC Sauce, to a small inkwell with the inscription “Script - the successor to ink”.
Possibly the most unusual bottles are those labelled “Esco Distinctive Embalming,” fluid. A quick check on e-Bay and we find identical embalming bottles, dated from the early 1900s, selling for between $25 and $40 each.
About the same time as the dump along the south end of Water St. was in use, there was another site near the lake also being used to get rid of garbage.
An April 1927 article in the local newspaper reported, “due to widening of the Scugog Bridge (now known as the causeway), arrangements have been made for citizens requiring to dump rubbish, to dump it on the south side of the bridge, not on the bridge.
It was when this dump, near the west end of the causeway (Scugog Bridge) was still being used that a rumour began suggesting the causeway had been built on top of old automobiles.
But the rumour about the causeway having been built on top of hundreds of old cars was untrue, according to information provided by lifelong resident Bill Carnegie before he died a number of years ago.
Bill explained the rumour got started because in January 1931, following a fire at the Carnegie Ford dealership (located behind the present Home Hardware), the burnt-out shells of a number of cars were hauled to the lakeside dump near the causeway where they were disposed. Many of the cars ended up at the water’s edge, but were removed when the causeway was expanded by the provincial government in 1961.
Further research reveals no further information about this dump site, although it appears from newspaper articles that dumping was taking place on both sides of the roadway (7A Hwy.), which today would be the land adjacent to the Vos Independent grocery store parking lot on the north side and the Homestead Furniture property on the south side.
No further mention of Port Perry’s garbage dumps could be found for 15 years, but in August 1943 the newspaper reported a new site for the town dump had been selected, north and west of the current dump, along the old C.N.R. track beyond the limits of private property.
One of the dump sites during the 1940s
The article went on to report, “What has been an eyesore at the lakefront for some time is to be cleaned up and the town dump is to be moved to a new site. Great carelessness has been shown by a number of people in the way they have scattered rubbish of all kinds, not only on the dump itself, but along the road side to the ‘Curts’ corner (Dairy Queen corner) and across the Scugog Bridge” (causeway).
The following week the Village placed an advertisement notifying ratepayers that all dumping of garbage and junk at the dump south of Reesor’s Sawmill (north west corner of 7A & Water St.) had been forbidden by the Provincial Board of Health. Violaters, they said, would be subject to legal action.
The new dump along the old railway line (see photo on previous page) was used until 1959 when a delegation appeared before council requesting it be moved from Water St., claiming it was an eyesore and source of contamination.
In 1971 the Village of Port Perry, along with the townships of Reach and Scugog agreed to share the cost of a landfill garbage disposal area, that would be used jointly by the three municipalities. The site picked was located on Regional Rd. #8, just west of the Port Perry town limits. This is the current site of Scugog Township’s garbage transfer site.
This site was operated efficiently by the three municipalities until 1975 when it was taken over by the Region of Durham. In July 1988 the Region’s works department recommended that the Scugog landfill site be closed, since it was reaching its maximum for garbage. The last load of garbage was dumped in this site on March 31, 1989.
This dump site closed in March 1989
After being closed, the Region of Durham spent a couple of years reclaiming the entire site by covering it with clean fill. A few years later a garbage transfer site was constructed on the property. This is the same waste disposal station that is in use to this day.
When the site first opened, local residents were allowed free dumping priviledges, but that ended in December 1996 when Durham Region announced a $2 dumping fee at local garbage transfer stations. Many residents where angered by the $2 charge insisting it was a ‘user fee’ for a service they already pay for in their taxes.
Today the Port Perry Waste Disposal Site accepts all types of garbage and recyclable materials. All vehicles, including cars, vans, and pickup trucks are subject to waste disposal charges based on the weight of material disposed. Minimum cost to dispose of household garbage at this site is $5 per vehicle load.
The latest one year figures available (2007), show that 51,462 vehicles utilized the Region’s waste disposal site in Port Perry. During the same period 6,924 tonnes of waste was processed through the transfer facility.
Port Perry’s come a long way in the past century - from throwing garbage onto an open dump alongside the lakefront, to a sophisticated dumping system from which much of our garbage is hauled off to Michigan in the USA to be dumped.
By J. Peter Hvidsten
Focus on Scugog
Personalities
