In the 1946 classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, George and Mary Bailey (played by James Stewart and Donna Reed) bring bread, wine, and a box of salt to a house warming celebration. With the gift of bread, they wish that the “house may never know hunger,” the wine so that “joy and prosperity may reign forever,” and the salt so that “life may always have fl avour.” Today, in some cultures, salt is still among the first gifts brought to a new home.
Such is an example of our long and varied relationship with salt. In fact, we go back a long way. The Roman army received at least part of its pay in salt (the origin of the word ‘salary’), the bible has numerous references to salt, and explorers all over the globe traded salt. Before refrigeration, salt was the most widely used method of food preservation. We actually can’t live without salt. As an essential mineral in our diet, salt regulates the fluids in our bodies. Our kidneys and our heart need it to work properly.
Modern uses for salt are numerous, with thousands of industrial uses alone. In cities like Barrie, where the mineral content of groundwater sources classify it as hard, salt is used to soften the water so that dishes remain spotless and soaps lather better. We still use salt for preserving foods such as pickled vegetables, and it remains the most popular food seasoning. And anyone who drives on the roads – and ‘sideroads’ – in a Canadian winter knows that a major and important application for salt is to enable safe winter travelling.
Spreading salt on our roadways constitutes the largest use of dry salt in Canada. It has been used as a de-icer since the 1930s. The science of salt is simple. It lowers the freezing temperature of water. When applied to ice and snow that has frozen at 0 degrees Celsius, melting occurs. We’ve come to rely on salt to keep our roadways safe and accessible when Mother Nature delivers her frozen flurries. In fact, salt is such a necessary part of winter, that today over 4 million tons of it are spread on Canadian roadways each year.
That makes the port of Parry Sound a very important place. With two salt storage sites, Parry Sound supplies road salt to the greater area of Huntsville – including MacTier and Gravenhurst – to Barry’s Bay on the east and Kirkland Lake to the north. (Points further north are serviced by the storage site on Manitoulin Island.) Salt for these sites is mined from the earth and because of its impure nature, road salt requires no further processing. Parry Sound’s inner harbour site is privately owned and operated. It receives its supply of salt from the Canadian Salt Company at the Ojibway mine in Windsor, Ontario.
The town of Parry Sound is the landlord of the second salt stockpile, located at the Smelter Wharf, on Salt Dock Road. Nearly 100,000 tons of salt arrive at this site each year. This land is leased to the Sifto salt company, which mines the salt for this site in Goderich, Ontario. Money generated from leasing the land channels into a fund to pay for site maintenance and repairs, such as the recent repairs to the Salt Dock Road itself.
The Great Lakes have long been a water highway for the transportation of goods. Shipping is still the least expensive method of transporting large amounts of salt. It is also the least contaminating, with estimates of it being 100 times less polluting than truck transportation and approximately 10 times less than rail. Since naturally-occurring salt deposits in Ontario are located along Lake Huron and Lake Erie shores, it also makes sense to ship salt from the mines at these sites via the Great Lakes. If you have ever been on Georgian Bay or near the Parry Sound harbour when the salt ship comes in, you know how impressive these vessels are. It is fascinating to watch the salt unload. Described as self-unloading, the ships discharge the salt through a tunnel belt conveyor system within its cargo hold. This belt system runs the length of the ship. As the salt unloads, gravity forces the cargo supply to continue to fall onto the belt. From there, it is carried to elevating conveyors and out through the boom onto shore.
A boom can be as long as 85 metres. Self-unloading vessels require very few ground crew, which is one reason this transportation method is economical. Self-unloading technology is a North American / Great Lakes invention that is now being used in the oceans. So, underneath those covered salt piles in the Parry Sound harbour is not just one of earth’s most abundant minerals millions of years old. It is also a substance representing the co-ordinated efforts of several companies and the town itself towards the ultimate goal of delivering an economical de-icing material to our roadways. As a player in this process, you could say that the port of Parry Sound is “worth its salt.”