Mark your calendars for a Guided Quarry Tour on September 10, 2016

One of Lanark County’s claims to fame is the high quality maple syrup that is produced at the maple sugar bushes that are located throughout Lanark County.  Each year Perth celebrates with a Festival of the Maples held the last Saturday in April.   (This year was the 40th annual Festival of the Maples.)   I’d swear that half the county attends.  At this year’s Maple Fest I noted that one of the booths selling maple syrup was operated by Tom Lalonde & Family Farm  and manned by Tom  and his wife.   Those with an interest in geology in Lanark County will know that Tom is a geologist who is the Quarry Manager at OMYA’s Tatlock marble quarry.   My wife and I stopped to buy some maple syrup and maple butter and while there I told Tom that both my wife and I had really enjoyed the tour of OMYA’s marble quarry last fall. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that OMYA will be hosting another tour this year on Saturday, September 10th.   Mark your calendars for an enjoyable tour.
                           
Last year OMYA provided buses (thankfully, not school buses) to transport visitors around and down into the quarry.  In addition it provided a refreshment tent with cold drinks, burgers and hotdogs available.   The refreshment tent also served to provide a history of the quarry told through posters mounted on the inside walls of the tent.

OMYA is a world leader in the production of calcium carbonate which it mines from quarries located throughout the world.   In Lanark County it operates a quarry at Tatlock which is said to be the largest calcium carbonate mine in Canada and to produce the purest calcium carbonate in the world.  OMYA mines and crushes the calcium carbonate at the Tatlock quarry and processes the product at its plant west of Perth along Highway 7.   OMYA’s calcium carbonate products have many applications including being used in paints, plastics, construction materials,  paper and packaging materials.

The Tatlock quarry is about 900 meters long, 400 meters wide and 110 meters deep.  It is located about 30 km north of Perth up Highway 511, turning right on McIlraith Road.  There is more than ample parking available in the fields opposite the quarry entrance.  A Google satellite view of the quarry can be obtained  by typing   45.145370, -76.497971 into the Google search engine and searching under MAPS, and switching to SatelliteView, or by going to:

  http://wikimapia.org/95877/Tatlock-Quarry-OMYA

Last year the guided bus tour of the Tatlock quarry was advertised for Saturday September 12th, 2015 from 10am til 2pm,  rain or shine.   I expect the tour will operate over similar hours this year.   Below are two photographs that I took last year while on the tour.  In the first photo, at the bottom of the quarry, is a bus for scale.

Christopher Brett
Perth, Ontario

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Update:   On August 22, 2016 I phoned OMYA in Perth and confirmed that the quarry tour is still scheduled for September 10th.  I was told that advertisements for the tour will appear in the local papers over the next two weeks.