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By Al Sholund
Port Moody resident and Freedom of the City honouree |
 View of Ioco waterfront, looking east, circa 1922. From the collection of Al Sholund.Did you know that in the early days, Port Moody was known as the "Birthplace of the Fog?" During the fall and winter, there were absolute zero visibility pea soupers that would put old London's reputation for dense fog to shame.
There were a number of contributors to this phenomenon: Before the widespread use of oil and gas for heating, everyone burned smoke-producing wood, coal or sawdust. Also, a number of sawmills have operated in Port Moody over the years and they all produced wood waste in the form of bark and sawdust. They used as much as possible in their power plant furnaces but there was always an excess which had to be disposed of. The simplest way was to burn the waste in a teepee burner. Emission controls did not exist and the smoke created was thick!
Every sawmill in BC (and there were thousands) had a teepee burner. They were generally made of steel plate formed in a conical shape that resembled a large teepee. The open top was covered with a screen to prevent the escape of sparks and embers. Conveyer belts kept the teepee burner well stocked with waste fuel.
New pulp and paper plants in BC that used sawmill's waste signaled the demise of teepee burners. The only remaining evidence of a Port Moody burner is the large circular concrete foundation just offshore of the former McNair mill site on the north side of the Shoreline Trail.
The owners of Flavelle Cedar, Port Moody's longest-running mill, spent a great deal of time and money trying to reduce the smoke from their burner. They managed to reduce the blackness but could not entirely reduce the opacity. In the 1960s a consulting firm hired to do an in-depth analysis of their operation made a very interesting discovery: Chemical analysis of the smoke revealed infinitesimal particles of sodium chloride (salt) which was the main contributing factor to the opacity. All the mills on Burrard Inlet transported or stored their logs in the water prior to processing. Their bark became soaked with salt from the ocean. The bark, stripped off the logs before being sawn, was burned as waste. Moisture contained in the bark left the burner as steam, which unfortunately contained the extremely fine particles of salt, which became the nuclei for fog formation during the right climatic conditions, thereby producing the notorious pea soup fog. All coastal mills using salt water transport and who burned their waste inadvertently contributed to the birth of fog in their areas.
Incidentally, Barnet, our neighbouring town to the west, had two huge mills with teepee burners which would have also contributed negatively to our airshed.
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