The Birth of a Mine: Alex McPhee and Canadian Refractories

More than a century ago, a man walked alone through the forested hills of Grenville-sur-la-Rouge.

His name was Alex McPhee. What he found in those wild lands would forever change the face of an entire region. The rock he discovered was magnesite — a rare and precious mineral, used as a refractory in the blast furnaces of the world's steel industry. McPhee understood immediately the value of what he held in his hands.

And so began the story of Canadian Refractories Limited — CRL — a company that would make Kilmar one of the most important magnesite mines in Canada and the world.

The first men arrived with their tools and their families. A village rose from the ground. Houses were built, a school opened its doors, and a community took root around a vein of white rock. The Kilmar mine operated for more than sixty years, extracting thousands of tons of magnesite destined for steel, glass, and cement industries across several continents.

When operations ceased, the quarry slowly filled with the groundwater of the region. What had been a wound in the earth became, over time, a lake of remarkable clarity — White Rocks Lake, which you see today from the dock at Maison Kilmar.

That lake is the legacy of one man's vision and the labor of hundreds of others.