—James C. Stewart
North Bay, Ontario
November 2010
4 R.C. DeFrietas, Vanishing History: Historic Buildings of Northern Ontario (Toronto: Fireside Gold Publications, 1988) p. 5.
Northern Ontario communities have a nasty habit of demolishing their historic buildings. Of the ten listed for North Bay, only four remain.
5 Freemasonry is certainly the largest, probably the oldest, and still the most controversial of secret societies surviving on the planet. No two scholars can even agree on how old it is, much less on how “good” or “evil” it is. Although Masonry is often denounced as either a political or religious “conspiracy,” Freemasons are forbidden to discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. I can offer personal testimony that after many years as a Mason I have never been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals, or to plot against the government or any political party. The only values taught in a Masonic lodge are charity, tolerance and brotherhood. The more rabid anti-Masons, of course, dismiss this testimony as lies. The enemies of Freemasonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants, insist the rites of the order contain “pagan” elements. This is true, but only to the extent that these religions themselves contain “pagan” elements, e.g., the Yule festival, the spring solstice festival, the dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough. The major offence of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see the Masonic tendency as inimitable to their faith
6 A Masonic lodge uses the directional compass points; thus the Master of the lodge sits in the east, the Senior Warden sits in the west, the Junior Warden sits in the south and the Chaplain sits in the north. Each of the three degrees of Freemasonry is explained by a series of symbols in a drawing. These drawings are called ‘tracing boards’. The first degree tracing board usually sits above or near the Junior Warden’s Chair, the second degree tracing board above or near the Senior Warden and the third above or near the Chaplain.
7 Many operate under the mistaken belief Freemasonry has 33 (or more) degrees. The reality is Freemasonry has three degrees, no more, no less. These three degrees are sometimes known as Craft Lodge. There are, however, separate orders; among Masons these are known as concordant bodies. Two of the more well-known examples (there are many) are the York and Scottish Rites. These orders are additions to Craft Lodge, and in reality have nothing to do with Craft Lodge. The Scottish Rite has 32 degrees, the 33rd being an honorary degree. These bodies are rich with their own meanings, but their beginnings are well-documented, and relatively modern. It is important to remember this is not the case with the three degrees of Craft Lodge…their origin is a matter of much speculation and debate.
8 A candidate for Freemasonry is Initiated into the first degree, Passed to the second degree and Raised to the third degree.
9 “North Bay was totally the creation of the railway. Before its first buildings were erected, the main institutions were located in railway cars shunted onto sidings. Even early church services were held in these cars and the custom continued for some time until the first church was constructed in 1884.” From Pierre Berton’s The Last Spike (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971) p. 280
10 Originally called the Cobalt Nugget (the name changed in 1921), The North Bay Nugget has an unusual history. Born in the silver boom, it has survived two world wars, at least two recessions, and dug its roots deep into Northern Ontario. It was born in 1907 when A.G. Davie had the idea that he could print a weekly paper and ship it from North Bay to Cobalt. Little is known about him, but he was probably a local printer. One of the more notable moments in The Nugget’s history occurred Monday, May 28th, 1934 when then editor Eddie Bunyan took a call from Leon Dionne. Dionne had just heard he had five new nieces and wanted to know if a birth notice for quintuplets would cost more than for one. Thus began the Dionne Quintuplet Story (a national phenomena), which transformed North Bay and the surrounding area. Years later it was to have many tragic overtones. But the Quints’ story brought thousands of tourists to the North Bay area and founded a tourist trade that prospers to this day.
11 The Canadian Pacific Railway Station in North Bay is the city’s oldest building, dating back to 1882. R.C. DeFrietas, Vanishing History: Historic Buildings of Northern Ontario, p. 5; pp. 12-15
12 The ‘anteroom’ is a convenient room adjoining the lodge.
13 Built in 1932 by the Roman Catholic Church, The Baycrest Mental Health Facility has a dark history. Originally St. Mary’s Indian Residential School for the surrounding area’s First Nation population, it became St. Mary’s Mental Asylum in 1953, and changed its name again in 1975 after being rocked by a financial scandal and allegations staff were abusing the patients. In recent times, Baycrest has been back in the news, the focus of an on-going probe by the Federal government investigating its period as a residential school.
14 A couple of intriguing volumes come to mind immediately: Dr. Richard S. Broughton’s Parapsychology: The Controversial Science (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992) and Stephen E. Brande’s Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life after Death (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
15 A pattern explaining why the spirit could only occasionally become visible was never found, and the science behind the appearances remains completely obscure.
16 Craft Lodge is sometimes referred to as Blue Lodge. The exact reasoning behind this remains a bit of a mystery even to Masons, but the term ‘Blue Lodge’ is widely believed to have come into use due to the colour of the aprons worn by its members.
17 The ‘Ancient Charges’ are those documents coming down to us from the fourteenth century incorporating the traditional history, the legends, rules and regulations of Freemasonry. They are called variously ‘Ancient Manuscripts’, ‘Ancient Constitutions’, ‘Legend of the Craft’, ‘Gothic Manuscripts’, ‘Old Records’, etc, etc. In their physical makeup these documents are sometimes found in the form of handwritten paper or parchment rolls, the units of which are either sewn or pasted together; of handwritten sheets stitched together in book form, and in the familiar printed form of a modern book. Sometimes they are found incorporated in the minute book of a lodge. They range in estimated date from 1390 until the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and a few of them are specimens of beautiful Gothic script. The largest numbers of them are in the keeping of the British Museum, and the Masonic library of West Yorkshire, England.
18 The center being the point from which you cannot err.
19 Dr. Prescott’s educated guess was indeed correct. A laboratory analysis revealed the cloth to be a piece of linen originating from the eighteenth century. Following the analysis, Doric Lodge 323 took steps to have not just the third degree tracing board insured, but also the first and second degree tracing boards as well.
20 Eventually this was proven to be true. The Senior Warden at Doric Lodge 323, Bro. Norm Derosier, an avid collector and expert in antique books, took it upon himself to solve this particular mystery. After taking the page to Toronto, and meeting with a number of colleagues and booksellers, Bro. Derosier concluded the page was torn from the back of Candide and Other Philosophical Tales by the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920).
21 The Roundhouse Statements (as they’ve come to be called) remain a highly debated and controversial subject not just among Masons, but also among historians and researchers of the unusual. It’s been noted the Statements bear a striking resemblance to the so-called ‘Georgia Guidestones’ in Elberton, Georgia. If
curious, I suggest Jim Miles’ Weird Georgia: Close Encounters, Strange Creatures, and Unexplained Phenomena (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House Press, 2000). Pages 422-431 discuss the ‘Guidestones’, but the book is a fascinating overall read.
22 The ONR (Ontario Northland Railway) runs north to south from Moosonee to North Bay. Its main offices are located in North Bay, Ontario.
23 A clandestine lodge is a lodge unrecognized by a Grand Lodge (in this case the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario), working without right, authority or legitimate descent.
24 A unique volume, a small note in the opening pages reads, “This book may be purchased by any Master Mason in good standing, through the Secretary of his lodge. Edited by The Special Committee on Publications.” No author is mentioned other than the Grand Lodge A.F. & A.M. of Canada in the Province of Ontario, Beyond the Pillars (Hamilton, Ontario: Masonic Holdings, 1973) pp. 91-92.
25 I don’t have the heart to tell Dr. Prescott, but my research has since revealed Beyond the Pillars misrepresents the characters when identifying them as the ‘Harris Code’. The code is actually an ancient cipher, possibly older than a thousand years. A similar cipher has been attributed to the Roman legions in France (then Gaul). French lodges used a version in 1745, and it was definitely used by soldiers during the American Revolution and the Civil War. The code is variable. Beyond the Pillars uses one example, with the alphabet running left to right in the tic-tac-toe boxes (as shown in the illustration); however, I’ve seen other grids where this is reversed. It would seem the Roundhouse Lodge was using the so-called Harris version, popular in Canadian lodges.
26 Symbolism is an integral aspect of Freemasonry. In fact, when asked what Masonry is, a Mason will often say, “A beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” A symbol is “something that stands for, represents, or denotes something else, not by exact resemblance, but by vague suggestion, or by some accidental or conventional relation” (Canadian Oxford Dictionary). Some symbols occur so frequently in daily life we have stopped thinking of them as symbols. Most familiar are the letters of the alphabet. There is no clear reason why the shape ‘S’ should stand for a hissing sound, but we all accept it as such. Other symbols in common use include numerals, mathematical and monetary signs, musical notation, and scientific formulas. Such symbols are indispensable for almost any sort of communication. Without them the marvels of modern science could never have been achieved. Another type of symbol is found in the arts, both graphic and verbal. It represents something which is abstract, or hard to visualize, in terms of something which can be perceived by our senses, above all by sight. In this way purity is symbolized by the colour white, peace by the dove and olive-branch, poison by the skull and crossbones, Canada by the beaver or the maple leaf, Christianity by the cross, Judaism by the Star of David.
27 The tracing boards of Masonry sometimes display—among other things—the working tools associated with the degrees. In speculative Masonry (as opposed to operative Masonry, which is the actual cutting of stone) the working tools become symbols used to teach a variety of moral lessons. The tools mentioned here are associated with the third degree.
28 Geological tests conducted on the southern wall of the chamber show the marble was taken from the Holston Formation, alternately known as the Holston Limestone, a 120 mile (190 km) long outcrop belt in East Tennessee, which is a source of the decorative building stone known as Tennessee marble.
29 Recorded within the annals of Freemasonry is a murder. A heavy-setting maul figures prominently in the tale of this grisly crime.
30 There wasn’t much found in the desk, but what was there proved to be invaluable on a Masonic and historic level. There were particulars of moderate interest like antique fountain pens and an old, crumbling book of minutes (intriguingly, its pages had been torn out, leaving only blanks). But also recovered were two fascinating and priceless items; the first, a medieval Biblia Pauperum or “Bible of the Poor” (twelve pages of Bible stories in a hand-printed text inlaid with woodcut illustrations) dated to either the end of the fifteenth or beginning of sixteenth century. How such a thing came to be in the subterranean chamber continues to baffle. Doric Lodge donated the chiro-xylographic (‘block book’) to the Royal Ontario Museum. The second object; a wood-framed, black and white photograph of five men posed in front of steam locomotive. The handwritten date on the back of the photo is 1881. A stout, bearded man in the center of the group has been identified as Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, the man responsible for laying the Canadian Pacific Railway across this vast and then untamed land. Of the other men pictured only one remains unidentified. But a book could be written about the rest. They include John McIntyre Ferguson (a Scot who’d laid out the townsite of North Bay and built its first house), Rev. Silas Huntington (the city’s first preacher, one of the original Masters of Doric 323, and presumably one of the founding members of the Roundhouse Lodge) and an intense-looking young man named Charles Walter Galt. The desk itself has been restored to its original luster, fitted with a brass plaque honoring the Roundhouse Lodge, and today rests in Doric Lodge where it’s regularly used by the Secretary.
31 That’s not to say information didn’t leak…or that there weren’t consequences to the unwanted publicity. One of the more peculiar incidents occurred when an old chap turned up at Doric Lodge claiming to be Galt’s long-lost son. The man was obviously unbalanced, and clearly an imposter. Yet he knew strange details not just about the discovery, but about the chamber itself. When we told him he was about ten years too young to have been Galt’s son, he threw a fit. The police had to be called, and we haven’t seen him since. Still, the question remains as to how the lunatic had so many facts correct.
32 If interested in this end of things, I can’t recommend highly enough Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger 1: Final Secret of the Illuminati (Las Vegas: New Falcon Publications, 1977).
33 Beside the Doric Lodge membership card and the contentious love letter, Galt’s thin leather wallet contained $3.25 in old Dominion of Canada coins, a 1926-27 driver’s license, a small CPR notepad (inside were two pencil drawings; one a loose sketch of a woman, the other a more technical drawing of a mechanical part), a receipt for a newspaper subscription ($1.10/yr.) and a receipt for John Deere tractor parts ($1.75).
34 Aside from the repeal of prohibition in 1924, another problem with the bootlegging theory lay with the boxes themselves. Dr. Prescott took them to a filming of the popular television program The Antiques Roadshow when it visited North Bay. An expert there dated the boxes to between 1910 and 1915. He also promptly offered the Doctor five hundred dollars to “take them off his hands.”
35 As a source of silver riches, the Cobalt area led the world in yielding a phenomenal 460 million ounces. That’s about $2 billion (US) worth of silver at today’s prices. In 1911, Cobalt’s peak year, 34 mines produced some 30 million ounces. Remarkably, the silver fortunes extracted far exceeded those made from Klondike gold. Cobalt silver helped drive the economy of Ontario—just out of a deep 1890’s North American economic depression. It helped increase the wealth of Canadian Banks and attracted the financing for mining exploration and development. It produced a large number of Canadian millionaires and allowed for great investment in the Toronto Stock Exchange. However, by the 1980’s, most of the region’s silver had been rendered from the earth and mining activity slowed. Cobalt’s population dwindled to a fraction of its former self. The mines of former glory closed and lay dormant, and began to rust back into nature. The mining activities in Cobalt have left a significant environmental legacy. Millions of tons of mine waste rock and mill tailings were dumped on the land and in local lakes. The Cobalt area is also laced with many miles of underground mine workings, as well as surface trenches, pits and shaft openings. As a result, there are risks of collapse or subsidence of underground mine workings and many areas have been fenced off to prevent entry.
36 The $500 000 actually had nothi
ng to do with silver. It was money banked in Cobalt over the Christmas season being moved by rail to the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Toronto.
37 It was unusual for silver to be transported in this manner, at least from Cobalt. Normally only raw ore was shipped by train, the refining was being done in the south. These particular bars of silver had been specifically stamped by the McKinley & Darragh Mining Co. for the Federal government, who’d purchased the bars as a gift for King Albert I of Belgium following his coronation on December 23, 1909.
The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories Page 40
