Northern Ontario man solves local legend, finds vintage liquor at bottom of lake | Hacker News Reader

Northern Ontario man solves local legend, finds vintage liquor at bottom of lake

cbc.ca

209 pointscolinprince64 comments

Besides the intrinsically fun story, I really enjoyed the small-town news vibe of the whole article – the local guy who discovers the sunken taxi while fishing, takes a photo of its hubcap, samples some of the whisky, and takes a selfie showing his wincing reaction to the "rough" second bottle. In ye olden days, local newspapers would be full of charmingly mundane stories like these alongside town council minutes, the results of the 5K fun run, and lots of classifieds.

For all the hate that the CBC gets, I actually do think they do a pretty good job most of the time.

CBC gets hate perhaps because it's intellectual. Growing up in a house with no TV it was on all the time. The best news, comedy, and music, and programs like Ideas to make you think. The US has PBS, but it has never felt quite like peak CBC to me. Of course this was 40+ years ago, YRMV now.

CBC is far from intellectual. There’s far more politically neutral programming about current events out there including Steve Paiken on TVO. CBC News editors seem to be very selective about chosen stories and which seem to align with the narrative of the current political party. There’s little room for playing devils advocate. While they have a mission for diversity, it’s clearly not a diversity in thought they strive to represent.

Whenever I’ve seen “diversity in thought”, it’s usually a justification for a room full of white people in a multi ethnic society, apparently thinking differently.

The CBC gets hate for being politically biased and involved, while being publicly funded. Many if not most of the people calling for defunding the cbc still believe it often produces high quality content.

I have not watched the CBC regularly for a few years (because I no longer live in Canada), but I grew up in rural Alberta, about as conservative of an area as you can get. When I was young, I was annoyed by the slight liberal bias of the CBC. Then I met someone from Ontario who complained about the conservative bias of the CBC. It was at that point that I decided the CBC actually probably did a pretty good job of riding the line if people on both sides are complaining that it is biased towards the other side. Now, it is possible that it has changed (my politics certainly have), but I think it does a pretty good job.

Alberta really does seem like the Texas of Canada.

On another note, I did a cross-country road trip across Canada many years ago. I loved it, and people were so nice everywhere, except in Edmonton, Alberta. The people there walked around with sneers and seemed to be suspicious of all visitors, like me. I won't ever be back in Edmonton for sure. Calgary, on the other hand, was super nice and the people friendly.

Calling Alberta the Texas of Canada is exactly what it wants. It’s much more like an incompetent Michigan with an unreasonable amount of Trump supporters. Its heavy reliance on oil is a lot like Detroits heavy reliance on the automotive industry.

The fact that leadership was even seriously considering abandoning one of the worlds best public pension funds is indicative of how short term greed is killing the province.

Alberta wasn't seriously considering abandoning CPP, it was seriously considering taking it.

That's interesting. Edmonton was the closest major city to me growing up. I always kind of liked it. There are definitely nicer cities in the world, but I have never had any complaints about it.

Are they biased or just an outlier?

Almost every other news outlet in Canada has a definite slant and actively endorse one political party.

In that landscape, an outlet that’s truly neutral is an outlier and would _appear_ biased.

(And that’s not even getting in to how it would look next to a lot of the US “news” many people consume.)

For my money, the CBC gets a lot of shit not because of bias or political activism, but because they’re one of few news outlets (certainly big ones) that _isn’t_ actively espousing a particular viewpoint. When you already own the entire media landscape, that makes it a bit of a thorn in the side.

> Almost every other news outlet in Canada has a definite slant and actively endorse one political party.

Unless you are counting Postmedia's 130 different brands as independent news outlets, that is quite an exaggeration. Torstar and Postmedia tend to endorse a party, as do a few other small newspapers you've probably never heard of, but that's about the extent of it. There are a lot more news outlets than that. Significantly, broadcasters, which includes the CBC, most certainly do not endorse a political party as doing so would be a clear violation of the Broadcasting Act.

“Intellectual” as defined by white middle class urbanites. But as a result, CBC programs comes across as rather narrow and tends to regurgitate the same takeaways no matter the topic.

This is far more true of national programming, but even for the local stations the reporter tend to come off as “my sht does stink”

I live on a small rural island, our local newspaper is exactly this. Only about 8-10 pages, local news and photos. Pics of the elementary school Christmas concert, or the fall fair. The people that run it are a younger couple with kids, nice folks. We still have a phone book too! It’s about a half an inch thick.

“I was excited. I almost gave up fishing for the day.”

I love how he almost gave up fishing.

Possibly the most Canadian thing I've ever read

Second to "housing is too damn expensive"

I'm curious if there were any way to bring up the whiskey bottles without losing the contents when they pop? Something like an underwater bag that they can place the whiskey into, then pump out any air, and pour the popped whiskey from the bag into the bottle when they're on the surface.

Needle through the cork.

I think if they are popping from coming up, that means the pressure forced lake water into the bottle around the cork, and so the contents are corrupt anyway.

Still safe to drink, just not a preseved example of whatever it was originally.

Destroying 3 out of 6 of something is a terrible custodial record. Especially the other 2 after they already had the 1st explode.

It gives all non-professionals a bad name and gives elitist professionals ammo against anyone but themselves daring to dig or explore or even be interested in anything without a license.

>that means the pressure forced lake water into the bottle around the cork

no, it doesn't. perhaps the cork seal was tight enough to not let water pass, but helium could get through. The lake water pressure and very trace amounts of helium in the water would slowly increase the pressure in the bottle due to helium infiltration.

of course other "air" molecules might make it in, H2 or N2 (i'm not an expert on the size of N2)

Shouldn't the partial pressure of helium in the lake water be extremely low, given the low partial pressure of helium in the atmosphere above the lake? Physics class was a long time ago but I think that's how Henry's Law works.

the partial pressure of helium in the atmosphere is minimal (about 0.0005%), and the amount in the lake water would be even lower, making helium infiltration unlikely to be a significant factor. my extremely unqualified opinion is that water seeped in through the cork, but the cork was still fairly well lodged in place, so it had the high pressure of being 15 meters down despite not being originally bottled at pressure, and when brought back up, the glass shattered instead of the cork popping out

Are you saying helium would move into the bottle from an area of low concentration to one of higher? Against the gradient? Free energy?

are you saying that your coffee water doesn't pass through the coffee filter because it's against the gradient, or that your coffee grounds will pass through the filter to eliminate the gradient? Are you Maxwell's daemon!?

Water moving through a coffee filter is not moving against a concentration gradient, it's moving with it.

This is basic science.

It's not like he was opening king tuts tomb.

I don't think it it was a custodial relationship- it was basically trash

> it was basically trash

Exactly. Just like Al Capones vaults. They just needed to wait a few several hundred more years. Then they could do the custodial thing.

Maybe if they start a foundation now they can make sure nobody forgets about it until they can make bank with the historicity.

After enough time has passed, records and analysis of excavations may be lost and proper archeology just becomes looting again. It's possible this has already happened; for instance in Egypt where ancient people might have dug up far more ancient ruins while properly writing down and cataloging their findings, but those records have been lost to us and we remember them as looters.

Something like a decompression chamber.

Did not expect to see my home pop up on the front page of HN — I live in Northern Ontario, and only a ten hour drive from where this article is set!

More seriously, I did actually live just an hour south of there briefly. Northern Ontario is a big place.

Being from Belgium a 10 hour drive makes me go from Belgium -> Netherlands -> Germany -> Austria.

Now that I live in the USA it's... weird. I moved from 1 city to the next city. 7 hours away.

In Europe, 100 years is recent history; in America, 10h drive isn't too far.

Calais is farther from Paris in Maine than in France.

What?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calais,_Maine is farther from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,_Maine

than Calais (France) from Paris (France)

He says the car is "too fragile to remove," so it will stay at the bottom of Larder Lake for other divers to enjoy.

I'm sure that would give a few YouTubers some ideas. "Submerged for almost 90 years, will it run?"

This is what an intact one looks like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/carphotosbyrichard/51802374832

Forget the booze. Too bad they couldn't recover the car. The 1929 REO Flying Cloud was a cool car.[1] (Although the guy who fully restored one couldn't get more than US$22K for it.)

[1] https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1929-reo-flying-cloud-mode...

On the plus side, if the reserve was not met, at least he still has the car :)

Losing a quart of oil every 150 miles seems bad? For the environment more so than the price of the car?

Until the 1980s, most cars came with a mandatory oil leak. Look at pictures of 1970s freeways, with a dark band down the center of each lane. It wasn't until the 1980s, when Japanese cars got good, that it became abnormal for automobiles to leak their working fluids.

Restoring really old, rare cars means paying for custom part manufacturing. Or having your own machine shop. There are still parts for 1957 Chevys, but a 1929 REO, no.

When you drive to 'certain' parts of towns there is always an uptick in stained parking spots from oil leaks.

Those cars are much more used. as a kid my dad had a car turn 100k miles - he called all his friends to see. He added oil as he left, drove off in a cloud of blue smoke (burning oil was blue) and when he returned a ten miles latter he already had to add more oil. Now I have a car with 200k miles and I rarely check the oil.

When I was a kid I had to keep several quarts of oil in the car in order to replenish when necessary. Also a bottle of antifreeze and several bottles of water.

It didn't have seatbelts or crumple zones either.

I know that judging the past by the morals of the present is a fashionable but pretty much everyone in 1929 found oil on the road far preferable to horse excrement.

> There was no gold, but they did spot six bottles in the back of what they now know is a 1929 REO Flying Cloud.

I would also pay a publicist to create this historical record

At what point does it become legally fair game to remove the car and/or its contents?

When the government dissapears and so can't protect the owners. Canada isn't showing sign of collapse. The car is still legally owned by someone and there are likely records so if you remove it you are stealing the car.

Today the law would make the owner remove the car but the laws back then apply which didn't require that expense.

Is it such an impoverished legal system that it has no provision for abandonment?

The world doesn't generally have that concept. The titanic sank in international waters yet when its vault was opened the insurance company immediately sued for everything recovered.

I don't know Canadian law at all, but I would guess things can be abandoned, but it is tricky and not automatic. When a car is abandoned in it is generally a several month process of trying to find the owners before they declare it abandoned (my cousin had a car stolen in Minnesota - it was found abandoned in Mexico and they gave him instructions on how to get it - in his case the cost to recover was more than it was worth but the point is they went through a lot of effort to find him). Particularly in cases like this if any family member wants to they can argue they just couldn't figure out how to get it out of the water but they wanted it all along.

Sort of?

There’s abandonment in the sense of “I don’t want this thing anymore. It’s no longer mine.” and in the sense of “This thing is abandoned, it’s mine now.”

We have the latter but not the former.

Ownership of something allows you exclusive rights to exploit it for gain… but also puts on you exclusive responsibility for it. Nobody minds if you don’t want the benefits anymore, but we want someone responsible for managing that thing’s impact on society and others.

So you can’t just decide to abandon things (*offer not valid in Quebec). You are the owner until someone else chooses to take on the responsibilities of ownership.

But in a case where there are multiple competing claims of ownership, abandonment is a consideration. If someone else wants ownership of something you’ve practically abandoned, they can take it and the court may agree that they have become the owner.

(Though usual disclaimer about lawyers being expensive.)

But the thing _always_ has and had an owner—someone responsible for it. Nothing is ever unowned (*offer valid in Quebec).

Liquor, hazmat-ish object in a body of water, serialized property (car). Living in the US I wouldn't touch this with a 10ft pole lest some bureaucracy make me responsible cleaning it up "the right way" or something (and we all know they don't just let you and your buddies winch it out over a few beers). I'm glad Canada seems a little be more sensibly lassiaz-faire about these things when the actions are being taken in good faith.

Can someone explain why the corks popped on the surface but not in the water? What is the pressure at the bottom of lake keeping the corks in?

The pressure under significant amounts of water is _way_ higher than in air, raises with depth. The small amount of air in the bottles must have started close to 1 atmosphere of pressure (approx normal for just out in the air), but over time it equalized to at least some extent with its surroundings (either some water/gas infiltrated, or just the cork moved in a bit, or some other effect, nature dislikes imbalances).

Then when the bottles were rapidly taken back to 1 atm of pressure, the pressure inside pushed out the corks (it had less to push against than its old equalibrium). Going more slowly almost certainly would have helped (allowed it to equalize slowly, potentially without failing), but I'm not sure if that would have meant hours or months. I'm also not sure how well the contents will have survived regardless.

What if, over the years, the water pressure pushed the cork in further I creasing the pressure inside. Then once brought up, that pressure difference between the walls was too great

Yeah, I think that's likely. I was trying to find info about this type of case on google, but without luck.

I'm also thinking that the cork probably also degraded some over the years, just becoming weaker and needing less to dislodge/break it.

Good question.

Beer, wine or champagne you'd assume it kept fermenting. Whisky rye is distilled and the alcohol is too high so not this.

The temperature differences will cause the pressure in the bottle to have changed each season, maybe the air was absorbed into the liquid, like you carbonate beer.

Then with water ingress and a weaken cork it popped, then it bubbled out at the surface.

    "went back later with some fellow divers, going down 15 metres"

At 15 metres, the pressure is 2.5 × the surface pressure.

Pressure at the surface is 1 bar, and fresh water pressure increases at 1 bar per 10 metres. 15 metres = 2.5 bar

Looking at a map, I'm surprised that's considered Northern Ontario

Generally Sudbury is considered the dividing line between Northern and Southern Ontario. Keep in mind that the far north of Ontario is almost uninhabited save for a few small reserves:

(map) https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Ontario

If you think of where the centre of mass of the population of Ontario is, it is insanely far north. But yeah in its official definition Northern Ontario is more of a political designation than a geographical one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rw4jd...

> Looking at a map, I'm surprised that's considered Northern Ontario

Check out a map of California.

Latitude of San Diego ("Southern California"): 32.7°

Latitude of San Jose ("Northern California"): 37.3°

Latitude of Crescent City ("doesn't count"): 41.8°

"Northern California" is pretty close to being dead in the center of the state, as far as north-south goes.

Aaaand Far Cry 5 just became even more Canadian.

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