Township (Canada)
The term township means the district or area associated with a town. However, in some systems, no town needs to be involved; the specific use of the term to describe political subdivisions has varied by country to describe a local rural or semi-rural government within the country itself. In eastern Canada a township is one form of the subdivision of a county. In Canadian French, it is called a canton; the a historic colony of Nova Scotia used the term township as a subdivision of counties. In Prince Edward Island's case, the colonial survey of 1764 established 67 townships, known as lots, 3 royalties, which were grouped into parishes, hence into counties. In New Brunswick, parishes have taken over as the present-day subdivision of counties, whereas present-day Nova Scotia uses districts where appropriate. In Ontario, there are both geographic townships and township municipalities. Geographic townships are the original historical administrative subdivisions surveyed and established in the 1800s.
These are used for geographic purposes, such as land surveying, natural resource exploration and tracking of phenomena such as forest fires or tornados. Township municipalities called "political townships", are areas that have been incorporated and are a lower-tier municipality or single-tier municipality. A township municipality may consist of a portion of one or more geographic townships united as a single entity with a single municipal administration, they consist of one or more communities that are not incorporated for various reasons. Rural counties are subdivided into townships. In some places if the township is in a county rather than in a regional municipality, the head of a political township is called a reeve, not a mayor. However, this distinction is changing as many rural townships are replacing the title Reeve with the mayor to reduce confusion. A few townships keep both titles and designate mayor as the head of the municipal council and use the title Reeve to denote the representative to the upper tier council.
The term "geographic township" is used in reference to former political townships which were abolished or superseded as part of municipal government restructuring. In Quebec, townships are called cantons in French and can be political and geographic, similar to Ontario, although the geographic use is now limited or not used at all, they were introduced after the British conquest as a surveying unit. They were designated and cover most of the unattributed territory in Eastern Quebec and what is now known as the Eastern Townships, used in surveying the Outaouais and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean regions. Townships served as the territorial basis for new municipalities, but township municipalities are no different from other types such as parish or village municipalities. In the Prairie provinces and parts of British Columbia, a township is a division of the Dominion Land Survey. Townships are 6-by-6-mile squares – about 36 square miles in area; these townships are not political units, but exist only to define parcels of land in a simple way.
Townships are divided into 36 equal 1-by-1-mile square parcels known as sections. In Saskatchewan, a political unit called a rural municipality in general is 3 townships by 3 townships in size, or 18 miles squared – about 324 square miles. Three municipalities in British Columbia, Langley and Spallumcheen, have "township" in their official names, but hold the status of district municipalities. List of townships in Ontario List of townships in Prince Edward Island List of townships in Quebec
Niagara Peninsula
The Niagara Peninsula is the portion of Golden Horseshoe, Southern Ontario, lying between the southwestern shore of Lake Ontario and the northeastern shore of Lake Erie. Technically an isthmus rather than a peninsula, it stretches from the Niagara River in the east to Hamilton, Ontario, in the west; the population of the peninsula is 1,000,000 people. The region directly across the Niagara River and Lake Erie in New York State is known as the Niagara Frontier; the broader Buffalo Niagara Region includes the Niagara Peninsula, the Niagara Frontier, the city of Buffalo, New York. The greater part of the peninsula is incorporated as the Regional Municipality of Niagara. Cities in the region include St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Port Colborne and Welland. Towns include Niagara-on-the-Lake, Pelham and Fort Erie, as well as the townships Wainfleet and West Lincoln; the remainder of the peninsula encompasses parts of the City of Haldimand County. The area was inhabited by a First Nations people called the "Neutrals", so named for their practice of trading goods such as flint arrowhead blanks with both of the feuding regional powers, the Wyandot and Iroquois.
The Neutrals were wiped out by the Iroquois c. 1650 as the latter sought to expand their fur-trapping territory as part of the Beaver Wars. From this point until the arrival of United Empire Loyalists following the American War of Independence, the region was only sporadically inhabited, as the Iroquois did not establish permanent settlements in the area; the Niagara Peninsula became one of the first areas settled in Upper Canada by British Loyalists in the late 18th century. The capital of the new colony was established with the founding of Niagara-on-the-Lake called Newark. Many English and Irish immigrants settled in the peninsula, but by the 1800s, Italian and German immigrants populated the peninsula and were the chief sources of immigrants followed by French and other Central Europeans. Following the agricultural period of European settlement, the Niagara area became an important industrial centre, with water-powered mills joined by hydro-electric power generation in Niagara Falls and electricity-intensive industry in both Niagara Falls and St. Catharines.
While agriculture – fruit farming along the shore of Lake Ontario – remains important to this day, it was joined in the 19th century by industrial developments. A succession of canals were built to connect the markets and mineral resources of the upper Great Lakes with the St. Lawrence Seaway. General Motors built a considerable presence in St. Catharines with auto plants and a foundry, a number of auto-parts manufacturers followed. Dry docks were built at Port Weller on Lake Ontario. Heavy industry has been diminishing for the past decade or more due to the slow-down of the North American automotive manufacturers. Thousands of jobs have been lost at long-time area employers such as General Motors, Thompson Products, Deere & Company, Dana Canada Corp, Port Weller Drydocks, Domtar Papers and Gallagher Thorold Paper; because of this, local municipalities have been forced to look at new and diversified opportunities to prevent an exodus of well trained staff. Hospitality and tourism has attracted numerous visitors to the area for more than 150 years thanks to Niagara Falls.
New development beginning during the mid-1990s has spun off an upscale hospitality boom throughout the whole Niagara Peninsula. Today, more than 10 million guests visit the peninsula annually to see the beauty of the Falls and the Niagara Parks. Ecotourism has become more popular with more people finding and exploring out of the way places such as the Niagara Escarpment, named a world Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1990. Another area of major tourism growth in the past thirty years has been the expansion of the grape and wine industry; the Niagara Peninsula is one of four recognized viticultural areas by the VQA in the Ontario wine industry. The many European-style wineries and vineyards have played a major role in attracting visitors seeking a unique cultural experience. Most of the local wineries offer full tours of their facilities with a few offering onsite dining featuring unique Canadian cuisine paired with their own VQA vintages, it is common for many of these wineries' world-class chefs to use fresh ingredients that are grown or acquired from local farms in season.
Some wineries feature live music and theatrical performances in the vineyard during the summer months. Visitors come during the coldest months of the year to watch some varieties of grapes being harvested and pressed outdoors in the vineyard as part of the process of creating the sweetest, among the most expensive, wine on earth – ice wine. A few Niagara Peninsula wineries have won the most prestigious international awards for their ice wine products, many of which are only available from the vintner. There is an official Wine Routes Guide for those that wish to self-drive while transportation companies offering wine tours operate out of major hotel and bed and breakfast establishments in Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Toronto. Another major attraction for the well travelled looking for cultural activities is the famous Shaw Festival Theater located in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. A resident repertory company of actors uses three theatres during a six-month season. Niagara-on-the-Lake is the location of Fort George, a British-built and -occupied fort during the War of 1812.
It is open during the summer months. Other key historical locations
Canada
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border, its capital is Ottawa, its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra, its population is urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons. Various indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century and French expeditions explored, settled, along the Atlantic coast.
As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces; this began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with Elizabeth II as its queen and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the federal cabinet and head of government; the country is a realm within the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie and bilingual at the federal level. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, education.
It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Canada's long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. A developed country, Canada has the sixteenth-highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the twelfth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index, its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the etymological origins of Canada, the name is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement".
In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona. From the 16th to the early 18th century "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named the Canadas. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth"; the government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using'Dominion' in the Statutes of Canada in 1951. In 1982, the passage of the Canada Act, bringing the Constitution of Canada under Canadian control, referred only to Canada, that year the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day.
The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provinces, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion. Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada include the First Nations, Métis, the last being a mixed-blood people who originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married European settlers; the term "Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act 1982. The first inhabitants of North America are hypothesized to have migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 14,000 years ago; the Paleo-Indian archeological sites at Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are two of the oldest sites of human habitation in Canada. The characteristics of Canadian indigenous societies included permanent settlements, complex societal hierarchies, trading networks; some of these cultures had collapsed by the time European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and have only been discovered through archeological investigations.
The indigenous population at the time of the first European settlements is estimated to have been between 200,000
Municipal corporation
To cities, towns, charter townships and boroughs. The term can be used to describe municipally owned corporations. Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located; this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter. A city charter or town charter or municipal charter is a legal document establishing a municipality, such as a city or town. In Canada, charters are granted by provincial authorities; the Corporation of Chennai is the oldest Municipal Corporation in the world after UK. The title "corporation" was used in boroughs from soon after the Norman conquest until the Local Government Act 2001. Under the 2001 act, county boroughs were renamed "cities" and their corporations became "city councils". After the Partition of Ireland, the corporations in the Irish Free State were Dublin, Cork and Waterford and Drogheda, Sligo and Wexford. Dún Laoghaire gained borough status in 1930 as “The Corporation of Dun Laoghaire".
Galway's borough status, lost in 1840, was restored in 1937. The New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 allowed municipal corporations to be established within the new Provinces of New Zealand; the term fell out of favour following the abolition of the Provinces in 1876. In the United States, such municipal corporations are established by charters that are granted either directly by a state legislature by means of local legislation, or indirectly under a general municipal corporation law after the proposed charter has passed a referendum vote of the affected population. Under the enterprise meaning of the term, municipal corporations are "organisations with independent corporate status, managed by an executive board appointed by local government officials, with majority public ownership"; some MOCs rely on revenue from user fees, distinguishing them from agencies and special districts funded through taxation, although this is not always the case. Municipal corporation follows a process of externalization that requires new skills and orientations from the respective local governments, follow common changes in the institutional landscape of public services.
They are argued to be more efficient than bureaucracy but have higher failure rates because of their legal and managerial autonomy. Unincorporated area German town law Municipal incorporationA Brief Summary of Municipal Incorporation Procedures by State - University of Georgia Characteristics and State Requirements for Incorporated Places - United States CensusMunicipal disincorporation / dissolutionDissolving Cities - University of California, Berkeley Municipal Disincorporation in California - California City Finance
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom, their respective allies from June 1812 to February 1815. Historians in Britain see it as a minor theater of the Napoleonic Wars. From the outbreak of war with Napoleonic France, Britain had enforced a naval blockade to choke off neutral trade to France, which the US contested as illegal under international law. To man the blockade, Britain impressed American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy. Incidents such as the Chesapeake–Leopard affair, which happened five years before the war, inflamed anti-British sentiment in the US. In 1811, the British were in turn outraged by the Little Belt affair, in which 11 British sailors died. Britain supplied Native Americans who raided American settlers on the frontier, hindering American expansion and provoking resentment. Historians debate whether the desire to annex some or all of British North America contributed to the American decision to go to war. On June 18, 1812, US President James Madison, after heavy pressure from the War Hawks in Congress, signed the American declaration of war into law.
With most of its army in Europe fighting Napoleon, Britain adopted a defensive strategy, with offensive operations limited to the border, the western frontier. American prosecution of the war effort suffered from its unpopularity in New England, where it was derogatorily referred to as "Mr. Madison's War". American defeats at the Siege of Detroit and the Battle of Queenston Heights thwarted attempts to seize Upper Canada, improving British morale. American attempts to invade Lower Canada and capture Montreal failed. In 1813, the Americans won the Battle of Lake Erie, gaining control of the lake, at the Battle of the Thames defeated Tecumseh's Confederacy, securing a primary war goal. A final American attempt to invade Canada was fought to a draw at the Battle of Lundy's Lane during the summer of 1814. At sea, the powerful Royal Navy blockaded American ports, cutting off trade and allowing the British to raid the coast at will. In 1814, one of these raids burned the capital, but the Americans repulsed British attempts to invade New York and Maryland, ending invasions of the northern and mid-Atlantic United States from Canada.
Fighting took place overseas in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In neighbouring Spanish Florida, a two-day battle for the city of Pensacola ended in Spanish surrender. In Britain, there was mounting opposition to wartime taxation. With the abdication of Napoleon, the war with France ended and Britain ceased impressment, rendering the issue of the impressment of American sailors moot; the British were able to increase the strength of the blockade on the United States coast, annihilating American maritime trade, but attempts to invade the U. S. ended unsuccessfully. Peace negotiations began in August 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24. News of the peace did not reach America for some time. Unaware of the treaty, British forces invaded Louisiana and were defeated at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815; these late victories were viewed by Americans as having restored national honour, leading to the collapse of anti-war sentiment and the beginning of the Era of Good Feelings, a period of national unity.
News of the treaty arrived shortly thereafter. The treaty was unanimously ratified by the US Senate on February 17, 1815, ending the war with no boundary changes. Historians have long debated the relative weight of the multiple reasons underlying the origins of the War of 1812; this section summarizes several contributing factors which resulted in the declaration of war by the United States. As Risjord notes, a powerful motivation for the Americans was the desire to uphold national honour in the face of what they considered to be British insults such as the Chesapeake–Leopard affair. H. W. Brands says, "The other war hawks spoke of the struggle with Britain as a second war of independence; the approaching conflict was about violations of American rights, but it was about vindication of American identity." Americans at the time and historians since have called it the United States' "Second War of Independence". The British were offended by what they considered insults such as the Little Belt affair.
This gave the British a particular interest in capturing the United States flagship President, which they succeeded in doing in 1815. In 1807, Britain introduced a series of trade restrictions via the Orders in Council to impede neutral trade with France, which Britain was fighting in the Napoleonic Wars; the United States contested these restrictions as illegal under international law. Historian Reginald Horsman states, "a large section of influential British opinion, both in the government and in the country, thought that America presented a threat to British maritime supremacy."The American merchant marine had nearly doubled between 1802 and 1810, making it by far the largest neutral fleet. Britain was the largest trading partner, receiving 80% of U. S. cotton and 50% of other U. S. exports. The British public and press were resentful of commercial competition; the United States' view was. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy expanded to 176 ships of the line and 600 ships overall, requiring 140,000 sailors to man.
While the Royal Navy could man its ships with volunteers in peacetime, it competed in wartime with merchant shi
Niagara Escarpment
The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment, or cuesta, in the United States and Canada that runs predominantly east/west from New York, through Ontario, Michigan and Illinois. The escarpment is most famous as the cliff over which the Niagara River plunges at Niagara Falls, for which it is named; the Escarpment is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It has the oldest forest ecosystem and trees in eastern North America; the Escarpment is composed of the Lockport geological formation of Silurian age, is similar to the Onondaga geological formation, which runs parallel to it and just to the south, through western New York and southern Ontario. The Escarpment is the most prominent of several escarpments formed in the bedrock of the Great Lakes Basin. From its easternmost point near Watertown, New York, the escarpment shapes in part the individual basins and landforms of Lakes Ontario and Michigan. In Rochester, New York, three waterfalls over the escarpment are where the Genesee River flows through the city.
The escarpment thence runs westward to the Niagara River, forming a deep gorge north of Niagara Falls, which itself cascades over the escarpment. In southern Ontario, it spans the Niagara Peninsula following the Lake Ontario shore through the cities of St. Catharines and Dundas, where it takes a sharp turn north in the town of Milton toward Georgian Bay, it follows the Georgian Bay shore northwestwards to form the spine of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island, as well as several smaller islands in northern Lake Huron, where it turns westwards into the Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan, south of Sault Ste. Marie, it extends southwards into Wisconsin following the Door Peninsula through the Bayshore Blufflands and more inland from the western coast of Lake Michigan and Milwaukee, ending northwest of Chicago near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. Study of rock exposures and drillholes demonstrates that no displacement of the rock layers occurs at the escarpment: this is not a fault line but the result of unequal erosion.
The escarpment's caprock is dolomitic limestone, more resistant and overlies weaker, more eroded shale as a weathering-resistant "cap". The escarpment thus formed over millions of years through a process of differential erosion of rocks of different hardnesses. Through time the soft rocks erode by the action of streams; the gradual removal of the soft rocks undercuts the resistant caprock, leaving a cliff or escarpment. The erosional process is most seen at Niagara Falls, where the river has quickened the process, it can be seen at the three waterfalls of the Genesee River at Rochester. In some places thick glacial deposits, such as the Oak Ridges Moraine, conceal the Niagara Escarpment, such as north of Georgetown, where it continues under glacial till and reappears farther north; the dolostone cap was laid down as sediment on the floor of a marine environment. In Michigan, behind the escarpment, the cuesta capstone slopes to form a wide basin, the floor of an Ordovician-Silurian-age tropical sea.
There the constant deposition of minute shells and fragments of biologically-generated calcium carbonate, mixed with sediment washed in by erosion of the lifeless landmasses formed a limestone layer. During the Silurian period, some magnesium substituted for some of the calcium in the carbonates forming harder sedimentary strata in the same fashion. Worldwide sea levels were at their all-time maximum in the Ordovician; this dolostone basin contains Lakes Michigan and Erie. The Welland Canal allows ships to traverse the escarpment between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario on the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario; the escarpment was a major obstacle in the construction of the Erie Canal in New York and was traversed by a series of locks. In southern Ontario, the Bruce Trail runs the length of the escarpment from Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula. Highway 401, Canada's busiest crosses the Niagara Escarpment, beginning its long descent through rolling hills and towns west of Milton.
Rock exposed on the face of the escarpment can be seen along Highway 26 from Owen Sound eastwards towards Meaford, Ontario. Hamilton, Ontario, is on the escarpment in such a way that the north end of the city is below and the south part above. Affectionately referred to as "The Mountain" by its residents, many roads or "mountain accesses" join the urban core below with the suburban expansion above. High Cliff State Park in Wisconsin shows how modern and prehistoric humans used the escarpment for not only cultural reasons, but economic gains, as well. A number of different animal and geometric effigy mounds and the remains of an early 20th-century limestone quarry and kiln are within the park; the relief and exposed edge are used by several wind farms stretching from Pipe, Wisconsin, to Brownsville, Wisconsin. Wind speeds average 18 mph along this stretch; the Niagara Escarpment is a prominent feature just east of Fond du Lac, it is known there as "The Ledge". Some local organizations take their name from it, including The Ledgers, the sports teams at St. Mary's Springs Academy, perched on the side of the escarpment.
Many resorts and ski areas in Ontario, Wiscon
Tanning (leather)
Tanning is the process of treating skins and hides of animals to produce leather. A tannery is the place. Tanning hide into leather involves a process which permanently alters the protein structure of skin, making it more durable and less susceptible to decomposition, possibly coloring it. Before tanning, the skins are unhaired, degreased and soaked in water over a period of 6 hours to 2 days; this process was considered a noxious or "odoriferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name; the use of a chromium solution was adopted by tanners in the Industrial Revolution. The English word for tanning is from medieval Latin tannāre, deriv. of tannum, from French tan, from old-Cornish tann. These terms are related to a hypothetical dʰonu meaning fir tree in Proto-Indo-European.. Despite the linguistic confusion between quite different conifers and oaks, the word tan referring to dyes and types of hide preservation is from the Gaulic use referencing the bark of oaks, not fir trees.
Ancient civilizations used leather for waterskins, bags and tack, armour, scabbards and sandals. Tanning was being carried out by the inhabitants of Mehrgarh in Pakistan between 7000 and 3300 BC. Around 2500 BC, the Sumerians began using leather, affixed by copper studs, on chariot wheels. Tanning was considered a noxious or "odoriferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul smelling, tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. Skins arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to soften them, they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Next, the tanner needed to remove the hair from the skin; this was done by either soaking the skin in urine, painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or allowing the skin to putrefy for several months dipping it in a salt solution. After the hairs were loosened, the tanners scraped them off with a knife.
Once the hair was removed, the tanners would "bate" the material by pounding dung into the skin, or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Bating was a fermentative process. Among the kinds of dung used were those of dogs or pigeons; the actual tanning process used vegetable tanning. In some variations of the process, cedar oil, alum, or tannin were applied to the skin as a tanning agent; as the skin was stretched, it would absorb the agent. Following the adoption in medicine of soaking gut sutures in a chromium solution after 1840, it was discovered that this method could be used with leather and thus was adopted by tanners; the tanning process begins with obtaining an animal skin. When an animal skin is to be tanned, the animal is killed and skinned before the body heat leaves the tissues; this can be done by the tanner, or by obtaining a skin at a slaughterhouse, farm, or local fur trader. Preparing hides begins by curing them with salt. Curing is employed to prevent putrefaction of the protein substance from bacterial growth during the time lag from procuring the hide to when it is processed.
Curing removes water from the skins using a difference in osmotic pressure. The moisture content of hides and skins is reduced, osmotic pressure increased, to the point that bacteria are unable to grow. In wet-salting, the hides are salted pressed into packs for about 30 days. In brine-curing, the hides are agitated in a saltwater bath for about 16 hours. Curing can be accomplished by preserving the hides and skins at low temperatures; the steps in the production of leather between curing and tanning are collectively referred to as beamhouse operations. They include, in order, liming, removal of extraneous tissues, bating or puering and pickling. In soaking, the hides are soaked in clean water to remove the salt left over from curing and increase the moisture so that the hide or skin can be further treated. To prevent damage of the skin by bacterial growth during the soaking period, biocides dithiocarbamates, may be used. Fungicides such as 2-thiocyanomethylthiobenzothiazole may be added in the process, to protect wet leathers from mold growth.
After 1980, the use of pentachlorophenol and mercury-based biocides and their derivatives was forbidden. After soaking, the hides and skins are taken for liming: treatment with milk of lime that may involve the addition of "sharpening agents" such as sodium sulfide, amines, etc; the objectives of this operation are to: Remove the hair and other keratinous matter Remove some of the interfibrillary soluble proteins such as mucins Swell up and split up the fibres to the desired extent Remove the natural grease and fats to some extent Bring the collagen in the hide to a proper condition for satisfactory tannageThe weakening of hair is dependent on the breakdown of the disulfide link of the amino acid cystine, the characteristic of the keratin class of proteins that gives strength to hair and wools. The hydrogen
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