Granite from Vermilion Bay......

It's an interesting fact that a lot of the granite for building projects and monuments in Canada & the U.S. comes from the granite quarries near Vermilion Bay. We had a bit of a tour courtesy of Brent who runs one of the huge loaders which can move around 80,000 pound blocks of granite. You can see from the pictures how the drills bore out the basic shape of the blocks. From there if you look closely in the second to last picture you will see a row of rods sticking up. These are actually wedges that are driven into the holes and split off the huge blocks of granite. The Vermilion Bay quarries, just west of the village, produce pink granite. Nelson Granite, who owns the operation, also has quarries near Kenora that produce brown, green and yellow granite. In the top picture you can see the various types of granite waiting to be shipped.