A Gauvreau Mattawa Ontario bottle

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RCO

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another bottle show find , just getting around to posting it . I was aware there was a bottler from Mattawa Ontario as I had seen a listing in a bottle book for one but I had never actually seen a bottle before . its a fairly small town and only around 2000 people today and not sure what population would of been when bottle used

a seller had this bottle at the Toronto bottle show and I had to pay a little for it but still felt the price was rather reasonable considering its rarity .

don't really know a lot about it , I've actually never been to Mattawa before , although have been to north bay many times and that's fairly close by , just never been down highway 17 in that direction before

also don't have any local history books from that area which might be able to shed more light on who A Gauvreau was or who was bottling in that area . according to a web search it might be Albert Gauvreau .

there is also 3 listings in the ontario bottle books for mattawa . napoleon Gauvreau 1895 ( mineral waters ) , O W Gauvreau 1908 ( aerated waters ) and A Gauvreau 1931 . the time span between the listings and fact there only for 1 year seems odd and perhaps they operated a bit longer . there just wasn't any records to be found . it definitely appears the Gauvreau family was involved in bottling in mattawa for a few years


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RCO

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also acquired another northern Ontario bottle thru a trade , an aqua version of the Macdonald and co Cobalt Ontario bottle , cobalt was a silver mining boom town around the time bottle used so there is actually a larger number of different bottles from the town , saw 3 or 4 other bottles from cobalt at show , a couple from bottlers I had never even heard of or unlisted in book , but you can't buy everything so didn't get them

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botlguy

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This is sort of off topic but is there or has there been any "Privy" (as opposed to dumps) digging going on in Canada? I can't remember ever hearing about it done up there. Maybe it's just my bad memory.
Jim S.
 

CanadianBottles

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I just got a nice tooled lip version of that MacDonald bottle yesterday at the Ottawa show, probably from the same dealer. It's not really the area that I normally collect from but I got it for only five bucks so I figured I might as well. I think it's my first Northern Ontario bottle.
 

CanadianBottles

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This is sort of off topic but is there or has there been any "Privy" (as opposed to dumps) digging going on in Canada? I can't remember ever hearing about it done up there. Maybe it's just my bad memory.
Jim S.
Seems to be pretty rare. It is occasionally done but I rarely hear about anyone doing it. I know the diggers out on the West Coast dig privies but I don't remember ever hearing anyone mention doing it in Quebec, and rarely in Ontario. I'm not sure why. I've always wondered about trying it out but don't know any active bottle diggers currently in my area and certainly don't want to try it out on my own.
 

RCO

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I just got a nice tooled lip version of that MacDonald bottle yesterday at the Ottawa show, probably from the same dealer. It's not really the area that I normally collect from but I got it for only five bucks so I figured I might as well. I think it's my first Northern Ontario bottle.

there was a dealer at the Toronto show who had a huge assortment of northern Ontario bottles and many at really reasonable prices like $5 - $10 , some of them were fairly uncommon too .

some of the good ones likely sold before Ottawa show as he seemed to be fairly busy , saw him sell a really uncommon acl from Kirkland Lake . I also got a north bay and Kirkland lake bottle for $5 each that I haven't posted yet
 
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RCO

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This is sort of off topic but is there or has there been any "Privy" (as opposed to dumps) digging going on in Canada? I can't remember ever hearing about it done up there. Maybe it's just my bad memory.
Jim S.

it really doesn't seem to be that common , I've heard about it being done but mostly in farm country in southern Ontario . where I live the Canadian shield starts and ground is much more rocky and harder , its unlikely many privies were dug into this area originally , its simply too difficult . although some could exist on older farms and in older areas of the nearby towns
 
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RCO

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also have an older postcard from Mattawa , its postmarked 1906 a bit earlier than bottle but shows town from a distance . you can see the large catholic church and a few other buildings , seems to have been a fairly small town back then
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CanadianBottles

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Yep that sounds like the guy, I also bought a couple ACL's from Kingston that I didn't have. That was all he had from my neck of the woods.

As for privy digging, it's very odd that someone would bother digging on a farm, I was under the impression that those privies were usually nearly empty. I think there are a few mentions of it in the GTA on the ecbw website. Never heard of anyone doing it out my way, although I'm sure there are plenty of privies to dig. I'd imagine Montreal would also be a gold mine for privies, though there are a lot of bottle diggers in Quebec so maybe they do dig them and I just don't know about it. Never seen anything mentioning it on the Quebec forum though.
 

Robby Raccoon

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A scene of the town, not necessarily the whole.... but my city is of quite a decent size and has few buildings over 3 stories. Not sure why a tiny town would have a huge Cathedral and a 4-story court(?) building plus a well-maintained beach-front park back in 1906. Not sure if that's normal for small Canadian towns.
Wikipedia shows the last 20 years' population as a constant decline. Could have been bigger back in the day, than it is today, with that being the general trend for the last century.
 

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