Doyle, Richard Judson
Inventor, Entrepreneur ~ 1834-1903
R.J. Doyle, as he was known, was born in 1834, in Nova Scotia. He married Mary Stephens from a prominent Owen Sound family. He was an entrepreneur of boundless initiative, an inventor, a land speculator, vitally interested in politics and a staunch prohibitionist. He owned a plot of land in South Grey, across which the Toronto, Grey & Bruce Railway would pass in the early 1870s, laying out a town plan upon the plot and it became the town of Dundalk. He had contracts for supplying wood to the railway. He made fruit barrels, with a patent for a fruit basket (c. 1882), founded the Dominion Grange Mutual Fire Insurance Company in March 1887 with head offices in Owen Sound, and established a newspaper, the Grange Bulletin. In 1879, he purchased a small dried-up lakebed, called Shallow Lake, determined to develop a new cement-making process with marl and clay. With help from the province, the municipality and an association of businessmen he attracted, he formed the North American Chemical, Mining & Manufacturing Company. This partnership eventually disintegrated and Doyle retained the cement operation at Shallow Lake, which became known as The Owen Sound Portland Cement Company. Scientific American accredits Doyle, as the first to manufacture Portland cement from native marl. He was awarded prizes at the Paris and Philadelphia Expositions for the best fire brick and fireproof paints of the day. The cement operation employed two hundred people and the Village of Shallow Lake grew from it. R. J. Doyle served on council and as reeve for the Township of Sarawak for many years. He died in 1903 at his home in Sarawak, north of Owen Sound.
Additional information: Sharon Cake Ed. Eminent Women of Grey County, Grey County Historical Society, Richardson, Bond, Wright Ltd., Owen Sound, 1977.
Ruth Cathcart. How Firm a Foundation, Red House Press, Stan Brown Printers, Ltd. Owen Sound, 1996.
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