Peat as a Fuel Source in the 1930s

Peat was the fuel burned in the kitchen of Jack and Beanie McEwan. Each Fall Jack would drive out to the Ellice Swamp where he would purchase a load of peat. Peat came as round cylinder-shaped tubes of densely compacted, dry vegetation. Jack would store the peat in the cellar where it could be brought up in a kettle to be burned in the kitchen stove throughout the winter. Of course they had no furnace. The pipe from the peat stove which went up through the ceiling to the second floor provided the only source of heat for the remainder of the house: small wonder that everyone gathered in the kitchen on cold winter evenings. Lois remembers that the peat burned very hot and that resulted in problems for the grates in the stove. Lois' second recollection was that peat was a dusty and dirty fuel. According to a recent article in the Stratford Beacon Herald, ( 7 Jan 09) William Leasa was producing peat in the Ellice swamp outside of Gads Hill on a commercial basis as early as 1835. "Mr Leasa invented a machine which greatly facilitated the production of peat as a commercial fuel. The harvested peat was put into a mixer which ground it into a powder. Once properly mixed it was forced by pressure through three tubes and as it came out it was chopped into six-inch lengths by the workmen." (p. 5). When Lois married Gordon in 1937 the McEwan farm home was split into two parts and Lois got a proper cook stove in which they did not burn peat. In any case, the use of peat as a source of heat was weakening. By the late 1940s, according to the article in the Beacon Herald, " the demand for peat as a fuel had waned and the land was sold to the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority which has since reforested it." On the left is a picture from the Stratford Archives of peat harvesters in Ellice Township in the 1890's.