London Soap and Cosmetic Company

In 1985 the oldest surviving soap factory in Canada was destroyed by fire. Today this is all that remains. How very, very sad. This was a interesting plant, and with some imagination it could have been a really cool museum with a great location beside the Thames River.

According to the plaque, from 1875 until 1984 the factory on this site produced a profuse variety of soap products. For the last four years the property was owned by the City of London and the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority.

The rusting artifact is a toilet soap milling machine that mixed soap flakes with different fragrances to produce bars of fine soap. The flakes of soap are long gone and in their place flakes of rust are appearing on the massive gears.

In the coming days, I am going to be running pictures from this core London neighbourhood, a neighbourhood under stress. More has been lost in this neighbourhood than the century soap plant.