By Ines Keane
Medicine Hat, Alberta, has clay beds under and around it. That sentence carries most of the story. The federal register of historic places says the clay industry there grew from a combination of local clay beds, rail transport and natural gas to fire kilns. Medalta Potteries is the best-preserved piece of what grew.
What the register says about the site
Medalta Potteries National Historic Site of Canada is a former ceramics manufacturing complex of about 3.2 hectares, on a spur line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, in the area called The Flats between the clay cliffs and the railway tracks. The register lists five interconnected brick and steel industrial buildings dating from 1912 to the 1930s, four beehive kilns from about 1920 to 1926, the vestiges of five other buildings, a narrow-gauge rail system, an internal road network and machinery left in place.
It was designated a national historic site in 1985. The register says it is significant for having the most extensive resources in place associated with the ceramics industry in Canada, and for illustrating the evolution of ceramics manufacturing from 1912 to 1954.
The companies, in order
The register names two on the site. The Medicine Hat Pottery Company (1912 to 1916) was the first plant. Medalta Stoneware Limited, later Medalta Potteries Ltd. (1916 to 1954), followed. The register calls Medalta the most successful and enduring manufacturing industry in Medicine Hat, the first western Canadian manufacturer to ship goods east of the Great Lakes, and, from the 1920s to the 1940s, the largest pottery manufacturer west of Toronto.
The wider district
A second register entry covers the Medicine Hat Clay Industries district, designated in 1999. It gives the factors that enabled growth: local clay beds, rail access with reduced freight rates on spur lines, low-cost natural gas and municipal incentives. It says the McCord Brickyard was established in the 1880s, starting continuous brick manufacture, and that by 1907 larger ventures had displaced the early brickyards.
It lists other companies in the district: Alberta Clay Products, Medicine Hat Brick and Tile, Medicine Hat Potteries Ltd., National Porcelain and I-XL Industries. The district runs in three clusters from west to east, with open fields and flood plain between them. Medalta shares its cluster with National Porcelain.
What the machinery tells you
The register lists the equipment still in place at Medalta: dry pan grinders, bucket elevators, a clay separator, a pulverizer, pug mills, blungers, a ball mill, a filter press, a sagger press and a spin pressing machine. Read as a list, our reading is that it maps how clay becomes a pot: grind and separate, mix to a slip, press out water, shape, then fire. The register lists the machines but does not lay out that sequence.
The kilns are described as beehive down-draft kilns with domed forms on circular footprints, thick walls of common and fire-proof brick, steel strap banding and a central circular chimney flue.
Dates in order
- 1880s: McCord Brickyard starts continuous brick manufacture (register, district entry).
- 1907: larger ventures have displaced the early brickyards (register, district entry).
- 1912: Medicine Hat Pottery Company starts (register).
- 1916: Medalta Stoneware Limited takes over (register).
- About 1920 to 1926: the four beehive kilns (register).
- 1954: Medalta Potteries Ltd. ends (register).
- 1985: national historic site designation of Medalta (register).
- 1999: designation of the wider Clay Industries district (register).
What kind of sources these are
Two federal registers of historic places, which describe buildings and designation. They give no production numbers, so we give none.
What the sources do not say
They do not say what a particular Medalta pot was worth, how many were made or how to tell one from a later copy. If you are looking for a piece, the honest answer from our files is that we have no sourced maker or dealer to point to.
What we left out
Prices, event listings, opening hours, and the names of living people who work on the site.
Roam first. Shop later.