THE USES OF MALAGASH SALT

The salt was sold as a hay and fish preservative throughout the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Its colour, a brownish white, militated against it for that purpose, and it had the peculiar quality of adhering to fish. In the late 1920's highway engineers were seeking a cheap means of prolonging the surface of dirt roads which were beginning to suffer the ravages of heavy motor traffic. The problem was solved by the ingenuity of A. R. Chambers. He found that rock salt mixed with clay presented a tough surface, and Malagash Salt appeared on the verge of prosperity. Each year more and more salt was sold for highway use, as a dust layer and for a primitive type of hard surfacing. Car-load lots were shipped to central Canada and as far west as Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The meat packers in Winnipeg, Burnes and Swift, became customers. The C.N.R. took Malagash salt for their refrigerator cars. The Nova Scotia Highways Minister Hon. Percy C. Black, in whose constituency the Malagash Mine was located, favoured its use, and as the 1930's began the company's prospects were favourable.

As the thirties waned and the forties came, war or no war the public wanted to drive its better cars the whole year round, winter and summer.

Snow plows kept the roads free of snow. Salt spread thinly from the backs of trucks on the roads, was the answer to ice. It was found cleaner and more efficient than sand. A fairly coarse grade was produced for highway ice-control - which worked on the well-known fact that salt lowered the freezing point of water, thus converted dangerous ice to soft slush.

Thus did the Malagash Salt Company come into its own. De-icing winter highways saved the day. In early autumn 1948, J. L. Cavanaugh journeyed to Toronto and sold 3,000 tons of rock salt to the government of Ontario, to de-ice highways. By spring of 1949 that initial order had grown to 7,000 tons per year.

From 1949 on its sales of salt, in bags and bulk, steadily increased. The City of Montreal and the Highways Department of the Province of Ontario were added to the company list of customers, and the Maritime Provinces network of paved roads found Malagash rock salt a winter necessity.

LAND SALT

The sale of land salt reached considerable proportions in the early 1920's. There are farmers who declare that the salt not only sweetened the soil but also actively promoted growth.

(Taken from the book 'Malagash Salt', first published in 1975)