Olives don't grow in Ontario.

By Barrett Nicpon; posted December 31, 2007

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One sunny August day, the 22nd of it to be specific, in 2007, Kyle & I met up, and decided to see if we could go retrieve some light yellow green Dominion CD 154s we knew were still on poles along a stretch of the CP tracks out near his place. These pieces have proved to be formidably scarce in numbers, and exceedingly nice to look at with their unusual crystal-clear yellow-green colour, quite different than any other Dominion piece.

Arriving at the tracks, we parked, and decided to quickly check the woodlot next to the track for any kind of bottle dump, or some thing along those lines. As we walked through the flat woods, we encountered several small trash dumps, though nothing of age sufficient to provide us with anything truely interesting - mostly 1940s through 1970s trash people had dumped instead of paying for garbage pickup. One small dump, however, did contain several broken CD 145 B and N.E.G.M.CO. pieces, but nothing intact.

We resumed our walk along the tracks to where I had seen the pieces in the air. As we approached the site after about 10 minutes of walking, we spotted a small creek winding through a woodlot alongside the tracks, and with a lovely yellow brick farm house directly across the vast length of a corn field from the woodlot - perhaps the stream was used occasionally as a dumping site? We ducked into the woods, and began to follow the creek. A very small tributary ran off from the main stream (which was small enough by itself!), and around the intersection of the two, we began to find several bottle shards, including some tooled lip 1 ounce cobalt poison bottles, and crown top sodas. Most of the trash dated from about the 1920s or 30s, so this was old enough to actually be of interest. I came upon several more broken B and Hemingray CD 145s, and then, as I approached the edge of the stream bed once again, I spotted an unusual ring of glass sticking up from the ground. It appeared round, very dark in colour, and quite shallow, with a slightly deeper hole in the middle. I didn't recognize it as any insulator style I knew of, but decided to bend down and investigate further. As I pulled the piece from the ground, my heart nearly stopped. I was holding the most startlingly beautiful CD 191 I had ever seen - it being a magnificent shade of green, somewhere in between yellow and olive. I examined the piece, and found it almost entirely free of any sort of damage, and with B embossed on the front skirt. This was the third CD 191 I had encountered in a bottle dump - the first being an aqua B, and the second being a badly smashed Diamond top in light aqua. Suffice it to say, the piece was an unexpected surprise, and the day was already going well!

Kyle & I proceeded to pick a few of the light yellow green Dominion 154s, but much to our dismay all but 2 of them had very bad damage from some sort of ammunition - large chunks missing, etc - you don't want to hear the awful things they must have had done to them. However, all was not lost, and it was, as usual, still a good day to get out. Another day, another addition. And we'd do it again.

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