The morning dawned much milder than one would expect for mid-October in southern Ontario. I, a New Jersey based collector accustomed to empty or nonexistent pole lines, had been lured north by the promise of glass still in the air.

My host, Bruce Templeton of Holland Landing, assured me that we WOULD find insulators. Together with collector Steve Moore of Carleton Place, I hoped to relive some of the thrill I had experienced in my younger days of collecting.

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After a hearty breakfast, the three of us stowed our gear in the back of Bruce's truck, then we were off to begin our adventure. Bruce explained that we would be working a stretch of old Canadian Pacific Railway line, now CP Rail, running east out of Toronto. Not much more than a half hour elapsed between our departure from Bruce's driveway and our arrival trackside. The truck pulled to the side of the road just beyond a grade crossing, and what little of my skepticism that remained vanished instantly. 

Glass was clearly evident up and down the right-of-way. Before me now was a sight I hadn't witnessed for well over a decade. My pulse quickened.

This area of Canada features a series of grid-like roads occurring at more-or-less regular intervals, known as concessions. These roads provide excellent access to the railroad, which made the presence of unwired insulators all the more puzzling to me. Our plan was to work a few concessions Bruce had covered in his early days of collecting. He felt certain that decent stuff had been left behind. With that in mind, we set off along the right-of-way. 

Almost instantly we were seeing CD 143 beehives, in a variety of colors and styles. CD 154 types were plentiful; Diamond, Diamond-P, Dominions and even a few Kerrs. Completing the trio of predominant styles was a variety of CD 145 beehives, surprisingly, most Star embossed.

A striking feature of this particular concession was its basic deep straw color, so deep that even from a good distance, a regular clear insulator stood out like a sore thumb. The CD 143's were as obvious as lone headlights piercing a darkened country lane.

As we hiked, Bruce and Steve used field glasses to determine which pieces we would retrieve on the return leg. At one point Steve, working a few poles forward of Bruce and I, flushed a pheasant from the underbrush alongside the tracks.

I sat on a pile of discarded railroad ties, soaking in the unexpected October warmth as Bruce and Steve put on their climbing gear. With their belts and ropes cinched in place, it was time to retrieve insulators. We gathered at the base of a pole, I stomped down a tangle of wild grape vines to give Bruce access to the pole, and up he went. Within seconds he tossed down our first insulator of the day, an unembossed CD 145 beehive in deep straw with heavy milk swirls. Not a bad beginning! 

One particularly troublesome pole yielded a nice assortment of CD 143 insulators only after we were able to clear the pole and crossarms from a seemingly endless matrix of intertwined grape vines. Soon my duffel bag was stuffed to overflowing. 

With absolutely no room left in my bag, I elected to unload at the truck while Bruce and Steve went on to scope the next concession. No sooner had I rejoined the hunt than we heard Steve calling from somewhere unseen.

It seems that Steve's attention had been diverted from the pole line by the glint of glass in an adjacent farmer's field. That glint turned out to be a CD 143 Canadian Pacific Ry with Standard blotout which ended up atop a small farm dump. All three of us began in earnest to root through piles of debris. After some spirited digging, it became apparent that the dump wasn't old, perhaps circa 1960. No more insulators surfaced, but we did pull out a cobalt screw top bottle, two Mountain Dew soda bottles with Diamond D trademark, and a 1968 Ontario license plate in good condition.

It started raining while we were rummaging through the dump, simplifying our decision to return to the truck. For the next 90 minutes or so we leapfrogged concessions, basically working our way out of the rain. Our final stop yielded four CD 143's from a single pole, then it was time to head for home. 

Upon returning to Bruce's house, our attention quickly focused on the much anticipated "dividing of the goods". I was expecting a traditional three-way split, but Bruce and Steve had something else in mind. They each selected an insulator, then informed me that everything else was mine!

The final tally included CD 143's of the following types: no name whittle mold style in green aqua; Hamilton base style in green aqua and light lime yellow green; scarcer Hamilton base low groove style; backward C's in off clear and green; Standard blot out; and a number of more common varieties ranging from light green to off clear to light blue. Some of these exhibit wonderful milk and/or amber swirling.

Joining the previously mentioned straw with milk CD 145 were a few nice blue Star beehives. A variety of CD 154 types rounded out our find; Diamond and Diamond P embossings with and without drips in straw, aqua, and ice yellow green. I also ended up with a plastic insulator which I described as a CD 154 squeezed around the wire groove by Superman! Rick Soller tells me these come in close to 30 different colors. Mine is black. 

With the possible exception of the milky swirled straw CD 145, we didn't find anything exceedingly scarce or valuable. That in no way diminishes my enjoyment of the time I spent along the CP Rail right-of-way. The companionship was good, the weather was basically cooperative, and true to my hosts' assurances, we found insulators, with each of us adding at least one new piece to our collection. I was sorry to see this Ontario adventure come to an end.