21 October 2010

Town No Longer Needs Old Cheese Monument

Perth's Mammoth Cheese monument.

Perth Ontario - Although some people prefer old cheese, the original monument built to commemorate the "mammoth cheese" of 1893 has lost its allure for the town of Perth.
 
At a 12 Oct 2010 meeting of Committee of the Whole, town councillors voted to approve a motion to notify the Canadian Pacific Railway that the town has no objection to the railway demolishing or moving the now-crumbling concrete replica which was unveiled in 1943, and has recently been replaced with a new monument.
 
Director of Community Services Shellee Evans reported to the committee that the old monument had been erected on CPR land by the Cheese Producers' Association of Lanark County to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the mammoth cheese being shipped to the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair.
 
The cheese producers' association, which has since disbanded, negotiated a lease agreement with CPR to place the monument beside the Perth railway station at a cost of $1 per year.
 
On 30 Jun 1992, the railway advised the Lanark County Milk Committee that rent for the use of the property would increase from $1 a year to $300 per month, a proposed fee hike which Evans reported "severed communications with the two parties."
 
CPR did not cash the last $1 cheque, and threatened to tear down the monument and send the milk committee the bill.
 
The Lanark Milk Committee did not want to take responsibility for the monument, reported Evans, because it had inherited the problem from another association which had disbanded.
 
Perth council, via the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC), in 1993 negotiated an understanding with CPR to leave the monument standing and give the town a right-of-way to the monument and a small space surrounding it.
 
Over the subsequent decade the monument fell into disrepair and was vandalized despite the efforts of the LACAC to maintain it.
 
A new replica was unveiled in the Tay Basin in 2008.
 
"We need to close the loop," Evans told councillors.
 
"We no longer have an interest in the (old) monument."
 
The original mammoth cheese was the combined effort of 12 Lanark area cheese factories which provided the curd for the cheese.
 
The mammoth cheese was six feet tall, nine feet in diameter, 28 feet in circumference, and an incredible 22,000 pounds.
 
Chris Must