Jul 18 2019
July 2019 The City of Brockville in eastern Ontario has the distinction of having Canada’s first railway tunnel in one of Canada’s oldest railway centres. Construction of the 1, 700 foot tunnel began in September 1854, thirteen years before Confederation, but it wasn’t until 31 December 1860 that the tunnel was open for service. The …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/canadas-first-railway-tunnel-now-a-tourist-attraction/
Jul 10 2019
July 2019 In the Village of Eugenia, Ontario, an unincorporated municipality in Artemesia Township, beside the Beaver River at the top of Eugenia Falls in the Eugenia Falls Conservation Area, sits a lone stone arch seemingly serving no purpose. This stone arch was once the entrance to a long-vanished tunnel intended to be used in …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/monument-to-a-failed-hydro-project-the-mystery-arch-in-eugenia/
Jul 06 2019
July 2019 On Gilmore Road in Fort Erie, Ontario, behind the Fleet Canada plant, sits an abandoned 2500 foot runway that once served as a private airfield for one of Canada’s oldest aerospace manufactures: Fleet Aircraft of Canada, Ltd., the predecessor company of Fleet Canada Inc. Fleet Aircraft of Canada officially opened for operations on …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/abandoned-airfield-played-a-role-in-canadas-aviation-industry/
Jun 17 2019
June 2019 Eckley Miners’ Village offers an insight into life in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region, with an authentic coal mining patch town. Coal companies would establish a coal town or coal patch to house the workers that toiled in the company mines. Many of these “towns” were very exploitative of their workers, as the company …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/a-walk-through-the-past-eckley-miners-village/
Jun 15 2019
June 2019 “By the time we got to Woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere was a song and a celebration” –From “Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell In May 2019, I finally made the pilgrimage to the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Arts Festival outside of Bethel, New York. The site looks …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/peace-music-at-yazgurs-farm-woodstock-50-years-later/
Jun 07 2019
June 2019 In the Port Credit section of Mississauga, Ontario, a former village on the shores of Lake Ontario, the harbour is protected by two crushed stone break-walls and a third that is actually a former lake freighter: the S.S. Ridgetown. The Ridgetown, originally named the S.S. William E. Corey, was launched on 24 March 1905 as the flagship …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/old-lake-freighter-finds-second-life-as-a-breakwater/
May 27 2019
May 2019 (Updated April 2022, April 2023, August 2024, & July 2025) Note: This is Chapter 2 in my Borscht Belt series. Links to the other Borscht Belt articles are at the bottom of this article. If you don’t find a write-up on a specific hotel or bungalow colony in this chapter, either they are …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/a-second-helping-of-borscht-the-crumbling-remains-of-americas-jewish-vacationland/
May 24 2019
May 2019 When an entire town is abandoned, it’s usually due to things like the exhaustion of the natural resources that sustained it, a natural disaster, or man-made disaster like a mine fire or toxic contamination. There are literally thousands of “Ghost Towns” across the country. For Concrete City, it was due to the construction …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/concrete-city-the-abandoned-company-town-that-was-killed-by-its-design/
May 24 2019
May 2019 The Kinzua Bridge was a railroad trestle near Mount Jewett, Pennsylvania, that collapsed during a tornado in 2003. The 301 foot high, 2052 foot long trestle spanning over the Kinzua Valley, was built in 1900 for the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railway; a steel bridge that replaced the original wrought iron …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/the-destructive-force-of-nature-the-shattered-remains-of-the-kinzua-bridge/
May 17 2019
May 2019 Elvis Presley may be the King of Rock & Roll, but there would be no Rock & Roll if it wasn’t for Alan Freed. Alan Freed was the Rock & Roll Disc Jockey and media personality who coined the term in 1951 to describe the uptempo rhythm and blues sound playing on radios …
Permanent link to this article: https://militarybruce.com/rock-rolls-broken-heart-the-rise-and-tragic-end-of-alan-freed/
