History unearthed in NOTL
They dig for buried stories. Pieces of the past entombed in layers of earth that hold the secrets of history.
A team of archeologists from the Ontario Heritage Trust has been excavating the backyard of The Niagara Apothecary, a museum restored to an 1869 pharmacy at the corner of Queen and King streets in Niagara-onthe-Lake, since the middle of July.
Brandishing triangular-shaped mason’s trowels, the kind used by bricklayers but sharpened to slice through tree roots and hard-packed clay, they spend hours carefully scraping away dirt, looking for artifacts.
It is slow, deliberate work. They sometimes use a paint brush to delicately whisk away dirt. Other times, when professional judgement suggests that the layer of soil below them is not significant, they will expedite the process with a square-edged spade.
Dirt gets deposited into silver aluminium pails, then spread across a wood-framed screen that rocks back and forth to sift out small treasures.
“We’re making sense of what the site is telling us layer by layer,” says Dena Doroszenko, senior archeologist with the Ontario Heritage Trust.
After nearly 40 years of unearthing history, she still loves a good mystery.
“Archeologists are very much detectives,” she says. “We have to piece together the past based on fragments.”
A few days back, they found a button in Hole 3. They could make out a few letters. A capital ‘K’ above ‘DG’. Archeologists are astute historians. And Doroszenko immediately identified the button as something off the military tunic of a soldier of the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards, a cavalry regiment of the British Army.
“The question I get is, ‘Why did we find it here?”
Her response is more like a working hypothesis. Perhaps the soldier was billeted in the house that once stood at the back of the property. Maybe he lost his button. And when the house was torn down, the button was buried in the yard. Lost to history. And then found by the present.
And then in Hole 1, a five-foot deep square hollow dug much closer to the building and the most prolific producer of artifacts so far, they found the bottom of a metal container. Maybe a pail. The inside was packed with a collection of glass bottles with volume measurements embossed into the sides. Medicine bottles.
Pressed up against the outside of the metal container were two coins. One was readable – 1 cent Canada, 1919.
How it got there remains a mystery. It’s significance is more about dating the bottles around it. A find that makes sense, since there was a change of pharmacists in 1921 and Doroszenko suspects the new owner did some housecleaning, and tossed old bottles into a hole in the backyard.
Indeed, even the hole is a bit of a conundrum. Back in 1988, the first dig at the site took place. The team, led by Doroszenko, excavated one half of a circular pit. Maybe a dry well? The hole had been filled with ash – likely from a coal-burning furnace – and layers of clay. It took 28 years, but a team returned last year to dig more. They had discovered the hole continued further north, and speculated that it might just be a cold cellar instead.
Last year, they found 8,000 arti- fact pieces – 60 complete medicine bottles. Another 72 bottles were reconstructed from glass fragments.
Helping the archeologists is a group of volunteers from the Niagara-on-the-Lake Historical Society and Museum. They help to dig and wash artifacts, and educate the public about the site. Since July, there have been some 4,700 people stop by to watch the team work inside the fenced-in yard. The team will be there until Aug. 25.
Visitors can also see inside the apothecary (open daily from noon to 6 p.m.), to experience one of the earliest pharmacies in the area and explore prescriptions of the past.
The building was an apothecary from 1869 to 1964. It is now owned by the Ontario Heritage Trust, a non-profit agency of the provincial Ministry of Tourism and Culture. The Trust is responsible for protecting, preserving the heritage – buildings, natural spaces and culture – of Ontario.
The original building on the site dates back to 1810, but was burned to the ground during the War of 1812.
Most of the artifacts are bottles. Any with residue left inside are sent to a chemistry lab for analysis. Last year, a thin glass vial filled with pills could only be identified as a “homoeopathic” remedy, as the active ingredient was no longer. Bottles with white powder were determined to be an antacid formula. Small brown bottles were tested and found to contain film development fluid.
But the red powder in an amber bottle confused the team.
“That really stumped us,” she says.
After analysis, it was determined to be – paint.
The importance of the archaeology reaches beyond the apothecary’s backyard. Beyond the excavation site. It’s about starting a conversation. Provoking thought about the importance of heritage, she says.
“What does Ontario mean to you? It’s the memories of buildings and towns and places. It’s the cultural landscape and natural spaces.”
“You want people to feel invested in the past,” she says, “so we don’t just see buildings being torn down and tracts of land disappearing because of our need to expand.”