Cast Iron Insulator

Reprinted from "INSULATORS - Crown Jewels of the Wire", July 1973, page 26

Dear Dora,

My wife and two boys aged 10 and 12 and I have been collecting insulators for going on two years. Insulator collecting is relatively new here in the Ottawa area, although there are some who have been collecting for years, such as Bill Boggs who had a newspaper article and TV appearance on the subject. A Mr. Settle lived here for a short time, but has since moved.

Our friends think we are "nuts"; the insulators are all over the house. We must have 600 by now, all from Ottawa area, a great variety of shapes and colours. One odd cast iron has a bakelite or asbestos inside liner "threaded". It came off a pole by the old Ottawa power station below Parliament Hill. The actual size and shape are on the drawing enclosed. In the same area there were many Hemingray and CABLE "Mickey Mouse".

Even though your March 1973 issue has a list of Canadian collectors, we have never met or talked to another collector other than the ones that started as a result of seeing our insulators. There are a number in Ottawa, but we just never seem to get around to calling them. Mostly, we just like to set our insulators in a sunny window and look at them or read all the history about telegraph, railways and glass making.

This summer we are traveling west to Vancouver and hope to find some different types. 

Yours very truly, 
John H. Hayes 
P. 0. Box 412 
Kanata, Ontario, Canada