File:DSC01625 - Carbide Willson Ruins (44716300822).jpg

English: The ruins are what’s left of Carbide Willson’s fertilizer plant, this is what is left of the generator station built on Meech Creek.

In front is what remains of the acid condenser tower he built and believed it to be the perfect acid condensation plant, the first Phosphorus Acid Condensation Plant in the world.

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Carbide Willson:

Thomas Leopold Willson (1860–1915) was a Canadian inventor. He experimented with industrial and chemical processes, a lighting system that failed and electro-thermal reductions of metallic oxides, which resulted in marketing success. He is best known for the commercial process of making calcium carbide and using it to generate acetylene fuel. His process led to the formation of what became Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical. In 1895, Willson developed a carbide industry on the Welland Canal in southern Ontario, plants in Ottawa, and in Shawinigan, Quebec.

Acetylene lighting became the standard for lighting on streets, in buildings, and in car headlamps and marine signals, making him a successful industrialist.

He settled in Ottawa in 1901 with a summer house on Meech Lake in Gatineau. He was the first automobile owner in Ottawa. Willson’s experiments resulted in over 70 patents. He also applied his innovative ideas in a number of industries: carbide, pulp and paper, railways, dams, and fertilizers.

One of Willson’s innovations involved the production of a nitrogen-based solid that could be used as fertilizer. Willson believed that the process could revolutionize agriculture and in 1912, set out to establish a fertilizer plant at Meech Lake. His project was financially backed by Interstate Chemical, an American fertilizer company, and James Buchanan Duke, the American tobacco and textile millionaire. Willson’s factory surpassed expectations. With so many projects, Willson was financially stretched. He missed a payment to Duke, who then seized Willson’s Meech Lake factory. Duke wasn’t interested in maintaining the factory and let it fall into ruin. Willson died a short time later, of a heart attack in 1915 while in New York attempting to raise money for industrial plans in Newfoundland and Labrador.