Mark Benoit recovered a piece of history while walking the beach at Rondeau recently, but where it came from will forever remain a mystery
Benoit, who retired this spring from his position as chair of the School of Academic Studies for St. Clair College, found a large chunk of coal on the beach.
Benoit took it home to his nearby residence and weighed the black object. His scale read 13.5 pounds.
It’s not the first piece he’s retrieved, but it is the largest.
“I live out at Rondeau, so I do a lot of walking,” he explained. “Usually, I find coal about the size of your fist. But this time, it was after a storm and the lake had really been turned up the night before, there was this huge chunk sitting on the beach.”
As for the coal’s origin, it could be centuries old, or it could be much more recent. Ships hauling coal across the Great Lakes have been doing so for hundreds of years, and some freighters continue to do so today.
Benoit thinks it came from a shipwreck.
“There have been a lot of ships transferring coal across the Great Lakes that went down. That’s why we see it wash up,” he said.
For now, the hunk of coal is sitting in his garage, as he is unsure what he wants to do with it.
Benoit will continue to walk the beaches near his home, coal isn’t the only thing that might find its way home with him. He also collects beach glass – pieces of glass that were long ago discarded and weathered by the action of the waves and sand over the years. The lower water levels this year, he said, are exposing areas of beach that have been unreachable for years.
