Bottle diggers in downtown construction sites

[Arob]

Has anyone ever looked down into the hole at night and seen people with flashlights digging bottles and pottery in the darkness?

How do you feel about that?

On one hand these people are taking your British colonial heritage away into the night - but on the other hand the builders are about to obscure these relics forever...?

For more insight into this ethical debate, you should read There's Treasure Under Toronto on a friendly little blog called Dumpdiggers

 

[junctionist]

Dumps existed all over the city, and at least someone is finding something before it's all paved over and topped with many floors. With that said, it seems that profit is what drives these people, and what right do they have to remove valuables from private property for the purpose of making profit? They could be sold to anyone, anywhere in the world through ebay. The irresponsible sale of relics can't be good for the city's heritage because it scatters it around a diverse group of buyers, some who might, for example just like the old character of the item. The responsible thing would be to maintain a collection and perhaps turn it over to heritage groups or for the new museum. But then, where's the thrill in that?

 

[Arob]

Its more than profit that fuels such trespass and burglery.

Dumpdiggers in construction sites are breaking the law - pure and simple. But look at the situation from their point of view, as they see it - most veteran diggers that scout construction sites have done their homework and they know that relics are being destroyed. Perhaps they can even see the backhoe scraping off the top of the privy (old latrine structure) or old pottery shards in the bucket dumps of the backhoe into the dump truck - tomorrow is too late.

In most cases the 1850-70 Canadian glass bottles are primitive early specimens from the first glass works in Canada, the pottery is from all over Upper and Lower Canada and is as rare as anything in the ROM... What would you do?

Sure it's against the law... But there is nobody around except some underpaid security two properties away... you and your mates could dig all night in the ambient glow of the city and museum quality relics that won't be there tomorrow.

Yes they are worth some money online, but more importantly they are worth recovering and should be added to the historical record regardless of stratigraphical information or essay details that may or may not be recorded by the diggers.

I ask again, standing at the fence at 5:05pm as the men leave the site, what would you do?

 

[junctionist]

It's a tough situation that would probably still be illegal, but it doesn't have to be if the developers granted permission to a group that could work with local preservationists and historians. A digger identifying himself with a group of people who sneak in for profits probably wouldn't get that permission. I think a community of diggers and historians has to form to responsibly and ultimately legally rescue artifacts.

 

[Observer Walt]

It would be interesting to know how widespread this is. Most condo sites at excavation stage have pretty good fences around them, and constant security presence. I realize it's different at a site where only a few houses are being built, although even there I think security has been beefed up in recent times following some arson incidents or fires started by transients.

Interesting topic.

 

[Urban Shocker]

My former neighbours found quite a few small glass vials and bottles in their back garden in 1993, during digging for some renovations done just outside their back door. The first owner of the house, in 1908, worked for a pharmacist and the bottles had embossed lettering with the name of his employer's firm.

 

[Arob]

Cherry street was a landfill site in 1903

That's good news! I collect Toronto pharmacy bottles - you don't happen to remember the name do you? Anyway I'm happy those bottles were saved from the indiscriminant shovels of most modern construction workers.

Now this is a rare pictorial treat that folks on this forum are bound to appreciate - this is the Cherry street dump here in Toronto in 1903! Those big jugs at the bottom of the heap are still there, and someday we'll all see them again - selling for thousands of dollars each online at eBay!

 

[Urban Shocker]

Jacobs? Rogers? Something like that ...

Great picture, Arob. One day some condo developer will build the luxurious Residences of Landfill ( "Where the Landfill meets the Lake ... " ) on that historic site.

 

[Conrad Black]

That looks more like the foot of Bay Street than Cherry Street.

 

[adma]

And it's more like 1923 than 1903: the Harbour Commission's there, Union Station's there, the King/Yonge skyscraper cluster + the King Eddy tower is there...

 

[Arob]

Be Kind to Bottle Diggers

This part of the original 1830 Toronto shoreline is very similar to the mythical Irish town of Brigadoon - it only appears once every hundred years, and only for one night.

 

[interchange42]

Scottish village.

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