Remembering the Stonehookers

Remembering the Stonehookers. . , In an age before concrete, a constant supply of building stone was essential. Beginning in the 1840s and lasting until just after the First World War, the Lake Ontario waterfront between the Credit River and Burlington Bay was busy with sailors engaged in mining the shallow waters for shale and loading the stone onto small sail-driven schooners known as stonehookers., The stonehooker was a small vessel, usually between twenty to one hundred tons in burden. Schooner-rigged with shallow draft, the typical stonehooker could sail fast in light winds. Port Credit became a centre of the industry., Many stonehooking vessels were built at the shipyards here, and many more called the port home, including the Ann Brown, Ariadne, Arthur Hannah, Catherine Hays, Defiance, George Dow, Hunter, Lithophone, Lone Star, Mabelle, Madeline, Mary Ann, Mary E. Ferguson, Maude S., Olympia, Raleigh, Rapid City, and Reindeer, amongst others., In order to harvest shale, a stonehooker would anchor close to the shore, usually in anywhere from six to twelve feet of water. Sailors pried slabs of shale from the lake bottom using long rakes ("hooks"). The shale would be loaded into a small scow. The scows were equipped with hoists and A-frames to assist in lifting the stone. The loaded scow would then be poled to the waiting schooner where the shale would be loaded onto the deck. It was backbreaking work., Stonehookers such as the Lillian and the Newsboy could carry thirty tons of shale. The stone was piled into rectangles three feet high, six feet wide, and twelve feet long, called a toise. A toise would bring the stonehooking crew between $3.00 and $5.00. Three trips a week and two toise per trip were considered a good output for an average two-man crew. Much of the shale was taken to Toronto where it was offloaded at Queen's Wharf at the foot of Bathurst Street., The stonehooking trade declined as available shale deposits in shallow waters were depleted and demand declined. The last of the active stonehookers were sold in 1929.