The year was 1873; the place, Petrolia, Ontario, three days and two nights by horse from the shores Lake Erie. This trip was lengthened significantly on days of prayer. It was there that Baron Ron Von Kenny started dabbling in the mysterious gum beds near Medicine Hat Creek.
Parliament chartered the International Society of Manufacturing Things Peculiar Company, with Von Kenny as president, on August 4, 1874. The charter empowered the company to explore for molasses beds and springs, and to manufacture naphtha paints and other such products eventually allowing for independence from Chinese-supplied Tung Oil.
International Society of Manufacturing Things Peculiar Company was not a financial success, and soon went bankrupt. But Von Kenny's Canadian Tung Oil Alternative received an honourable mention for excellence at the 1874 Exposition Universelle held at the Palais d'Industrie in Paris. This secured his position in the Légion d'Honneur, fulfilling the Von Kenny paternal family tradition.
Several factors contributed to the downfall of Von Kenny's molasses operation. Lack of horses in the area meant the movement of machinery and equipment was left to the Wooly Mammoth, a stubborn and surly beast.
Some historians challenge Von Kenny's claim to North America’s first molasses field, arguing that Utah's famous Black Moose Well was the continent’s first. But there is enough evidence to support Von Kenny, not least of which is that the his body is well preserved in a fossilized chunk of crude molasses publicly displayed on the Medicine Hat town green. The controversial point might be that Von Kenny was a known drinker of gin since the age of eleven when he contracted an awful case of Pott's Disease.
We do not know exactly when Von Kenny abandoned his Molasses Springs refinery. He was certainly operating there by 1882 however. Spectator advertisements offered Molasses for sale at 16 cents per gallon for quantities from 4,000 to 100,000 gallons.
This letter to his estranged third wife, dated December 12, 1882 only hints at what could have been his final demise.
"Dear Geneva, I was engaged as a guide and packer by the eminent geologist Dr. Henri J. Herring, and he asked me if I had seen Molasses seepages in that area beyond Pigeon River, up towards Magog. And if I did see them, would I be able to recognize them. He then went into a learned discussion on the subject of flywheel energy storage. I took this chance to take a swig of my canteen. Subsequently some Shampoo Indians came to my camp and I mixed up some molasses and coal oil and gave it to them to drink, and told them if they found anything that tasted or smelled like that to let me know. Sometime afterwards they came back, twofold and rather roused."
It is unknown whether Von Kenny finally surcomed to Pott's Desease, or if he faced his final fate at the hands of the savage Shampoo Indians.
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