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Thane Aluminum Smelter Plant Location: Keswick, Ontario. Status: Abandoned, and used occasionally as a free-for-all dumping ground by the locals. Accessibility: The plant is wide open for all to see, quite literally. Not only is the place easy to physically access, but also once you are in there are no legalities to worry about. Since the Thane Smelter Plant is so polluted no one is taking responsibility for it, and since no one owns it not a soul can press trespassing charges or anything like that. Hazards: Unknown chemicals are one of the most dangerous aspects at the smelter; however, the chemicals have also caused all the metals to degrade at a surprisingly rapid rate. That being the case, many of the walkways around the roofs and the ladders up to them are in a serious state of disrepair, some of the worst we've encountered. Interesting features: The plant has been out of service for a mere five years yet is littered with old, broken equipment and garbage that certain people in the area did not want to pay to rid themselves of. Inside the building there is a pink powder covering old papers and metal thingamies of every type imaginable, this may be one of the unknown chemicals that the locals say came in on unmarked white trucks for years. Who knows? Outside the main building there are many nifty standing structures to climb around on and look into. Recommendation: The grounds are really quite beautiful, the building isn't anything special on the inside (picture a big garage with some offices and a bathroom) but on the outside it looks awesome. If you do plan a trip to the Thane Smelter Plant be forewarned that there are so many chemicals and other unknowns in this place that not a soul will take responsibility for the place, not even the government. This means that if you, you know, mutate or get super-powers or die or something you will have literally nobody to blame but yourself. The Barren Wasteland of the Keswick Smelter. May 25th, 2002 Behold the Smelter Plant photos. Our expedition to the Keswick Smelter was of a rare breed -- we had a good deal of information on the place before going there, we were given excellent directions (including a little map), we didn't get lost on the way, and we made it before nightfall. Typically none of this is the case. Oh yes, and nobody died, which, while unexceptional, is an upshot in any case. The small excursion consisted of Static, Asher and myself (one Mister Snee). It was part of a larger, weekend-based itinerary, which revolved loosely around a series of planned meetings and targets, most of which will be detailed on the Expeditions page if I ever get the write-up done. In this case, we were meeting with Y.O. Media, a group in Sutton who had in fact been recently involved in an understandable environmental crusade against the smelter. The purpose of our meeting had to do with some form of hell that Asher plans to bring down upon one municipal government or another concerning indiscretions in stormwater diversion infrastructure, but we got onto the subject of the smelter (which we had been hoping to visit anyway) and they told us how to find it. So, off we went. Before we headed to the smelter, we decided we'd need some way to photograph the place. Not having the company of any of the few UEC folk to hold the prestigious position of "owning a camera", we went to a nearby supermarket and got a pair of cheap point-and-shoots. Oldschool, yo. This is how we used to do all our photos for the site. At last, equipped with some cameras, a big box of gummy worms, a bag of brownies and some really frustrating "sour candy" in a bottle with a spritzer head that I couldn't break off to save my life, we headed to our destination. The smelter was further from Sutton than we expected, and we began to think we may have passed it after driving for some time. We had been told, however, that we "couldn't miss it", so we pushed on. As it turned out, they were right. The smelter stood out in stark contrast from the fields around it (and, for that matter, the town dump adjacent to it). There were no gates barring entry into the fenced-in compound so we decided to park out front and see ourselves in. The front of the smelter consists of a largeish, single-story concrete building, and behind it is a rusted white metal tower rising up about four stories. Asher hung back to take some exterior photos while Static and I walked around the perimeter of the building. There was a good deal of abandoned machines and other scrap scattered around, as well as various large pieces of equipment that were probably part of the original smelter. At one point it seemed that pieces of the metal tower had totally collapsed recently. The tower itself had two rather frightening service ladders going up towards its peak, and from the third story there was access to the roof of the concrete building via a decaying catwalk. The tower and the smaller structures around it had only rusting grates as walkways, which was unnerving to say the least. The land around the smelter was obviously highly-polluted, stained grey and totally barren by the innumerable chemicals of questionable nature that had been dumped there. The few plants growing around the building itself were sick or dying. While Static and I surveyed the area and climbed on things, someone pulled up next to Asher on the road and asked her what she was doing here. "I'm a photographer for U.E. Media," she said, "we're documenting the abandoned smelter." He seemed to take well to this, chatted her up a bit about his plans to take home some of the scrap on the property, and drove off. After taking some more external shots, Asher joined Static and I and we entered the concrete building. Its main area was chiefly uninteresting. It either had a dirt floor or just a dirty one, it was hard to tell. There was a mysterious pink powder dusted over the place and several massive concrete blocks stacked against the walls for no apparent reason. There were a few abandoned construction vehicles and some very nifty enormous lightbulbs in the ceiling. A bit of inspection even turned up the only door in the entire place to have a lock on it (which was right next to an open loading bay). There was a small building off to the side which looked like a dumpster from outside -- this contained old machine parts and a few binders and documents. The most interesting thing by far in this area was the small office area hidden away in the corner. Made up in eighties-esque wooden panelling (which was in mint condition), there appeared to be two offices, as well as a lunchroom and a bathroom. The latter, whose entrance was almost inaccessible amongst a heap of television parts, broken bottles, old cans, fallen cabinets and various papers, bore an ironic sign reading "THIS IS YOUR WASH ROOM, PLEASE KEEP IT CLEAN". Hehe. The offices were still loaded with old technical manuals and parts catalogues, and the lunchroom contained the modest telephone equipment for the whole place. If there were ever any computers there, there aren't now -- although there were several smashed televisions. The bathroom itself contained a broken toilet, an empty toilet-paper roll still on the holder and several Sunshine Girls from recent year, stapled to the wall. A nearby utility shed let us back outside from the offices. We climbed up onto the high metal tower and admired the view, and I opted to go over the rather scary walkway to the front building's roof, which featured a small wooden hut surrounding a grated pipe mouth. It was quite weird. When I first saw the metal tower I had hoped it was an actual building, with traversable internal features, but this turned out not to be the case. There were a few doors on its outside which, if one dared to traverse the the decaying walkways to them, opened into a room whose floor consisted only of a grid of holes; there was nothing else to see. The view from the highest point was quite nifty, but we weren't eager to stay on the tower altogether too long, given the sad shape it was in. It was actually pretty easy to visualize a convincing scenario involving the whole thing shuddering mightily an creaking out a metallic groan of protest, rising steadily in volume as several primary supports tore out under the weight of three people on a service ladder and the whole thing collapsed to one side in a cloud of ash and noxious chemicals. You know. There were strange piles of grey powder, not unlike soot, all around the base of the tower. Looking further around the back of the building, we found some other, smaller structures, such as one whose main feature was a large metal wheel covered in enormous studs. Having completed our tour of the building and its grounds, we took a few more photos of the area, then proceeded towards Toronto, where we ended up staying with Mordac and contaminating his home with God-only-knows-what. All in all, a very cool thing to discover on the way from one place to another. The Keswick smelter, while not something I'd drive all the way out from Barrie just to see, is definitely a worthy addition to any trip that goes near the area. Interestingly, a local news station reported just recently (June 11th, 2002) that the township of Georgina has finally agreed to knock the place down and attempt to clean it up, but first they have to ensure that in taking responsibility for the place they won't be held responsible for it. Yeah. In other words, they'll try to clean it up but they don't want to become the official body responsible for it as it currently stands. It's a step in the right direction, I guess. You know, aside from the "knocking it down" part, which always sucks regardless of circumstance. Do check out the smelter image gallery. -Asher Archive & Snee Contact: [email protected] .