November 11

 

Today is Remembrance Day

Something that American’s don’t mark with the rest of us.

As is done in Britain, in Canada.

At a time when people south of me wearing red hats are yelling about FREEDOM, while they are blaming everyone who does not look or think like they do. And taking those same freedoms they brag about away from those ‘others’.

We remember that Freedom is never ‘free’.

Someone always has to stand up.

And we Remember...

“And the band plays Waltzing Matilda

and the old men answer the call.

Year after year, more old men disappear.

Soon no one

will march there

at all. “

 

November 1 - 'Grompy Old Men'

Bloomery Iron Smelt
November 1
the Wareham Forge
9 am start to (expected) about 6 pm +

This will mark my (kind of) 100th bloomery iron smelt, my 70th birthday. Neil Peterson's 60th smelt.

Our intent is to process the semi-refined iron gromps collected from the previous 24 years of smelting tests and experiments. This will be a bit of a diversion for us, we have only attempted this specific process once before (smelt #81), and hope to create a higher carbon 'steely' bloom (and not cast iron like the first time). In this the furnace will be functioning more like an oversized hearth refining method. As a reflection of historical practice, the re-smelting of gromps was first suggested by Arne Espelund at the 2008 'Iron in Thy' symposium.

The Wareham Forge
307377 Centre Line A
Proton Station ON - N01L0
https://www.warehamforge.ca/directions/index.html

This event will be out of doors, held rain or shine.
So come prepared for the weather conditions.
Parking is best along one side (west) of side road 41 (runs N-S from our corner)

This is an OPEN INVITATIONAL event
I would ask any wanting to come to observe or participate please first send me a confirmation e-mail (mainly so I can keep track of potential numbers

Those hoping to get directly involved :
There will be plenty of materials prep work to be done - breaking charcoal and 'ore'
Opportunity for a limited number of people to work at the furnace, help with initial bloom compaction.
Please wear leather boots that come up over the ankles.
All natural clothing (cotton jeans and hoodies ideal)
Safety glasses will be required in the work area - and will be available.

Folks are advised that the smelt activities works through lunch time, due to distances folks are reminded to bring a bag lunch if they are coming for the day.

(Commercial Note - copies of my recent books and reports will be available, cash please)

Darrell Markewitz
the Wareham Forge
www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting
info@warehamforge.ca

Upcoming at CAMELOT

the CONFERENCE on ARCHAEOLOGY, the MEDIEVAL,
and EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING of TOMORROW

C.A.M.E.L.O.T. is a medieval and experimental archaeology conference happening on Sunday 21 September 2025 (8:30 - 5:30) at St. Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo.

https://www.dragenlab.ca/camelot-conference

 

Session SJ2 2001 - 11:45

'20 Years Before the Blast' - Experimental Bloomery Iron Smelting 2001-2024

"  Independent Researcher Darrell Markewitz will present a brief overview of his recently published book of the same name, considering what has been learned from 100 individual bloomery iron smelts. These experimental tests focus on  historic methods from Northern Europe, loosely post Roman through to the Early Medieval adoption of water powered equipment. Topics will include variations in furnace builds, the influences of air delivery systems and individual ores. There will be summaries of that was learned from projects based on specific archaeology; Vinland, Icelandic and Pictish furnaces, and a consideration of bloom quality into the final ‘bloom to bar’ stage.  "

 

Display Table (all day)

Experimental Archaeology by the Dark Ages Re-creation Company

"  Both forged iron objects and glass beads are well represented in Viking Age sites. But how exactly is ore turned into metal bars, or glass fused into patterned beads? It turns out the actual equipment used is not found, and the physical methods used are lost to time. For two decades, members of the Dark Ages Re-creation Company, a living history group focused on the Norse, have undertaken an extensive investigation into bloomery iron smelting and glass bead making furnaces. A combination of posters and display tables of physical objects illustrates this work.  "

 

'Tea Pot' type glass bead furnace test...

Hypothetical Norse glass bead making furnace

Over the weekend of June 29-30 I undertook a participant demo of one of many possible furnace designs constructed primarily by Neil Peterson, who is the project lead for DARC's research into Norse glass bead making. 

see Neil's research documentation on the DARC web site : https://www.darkcompany.ca/beads/index.php

There is considerable evidence of the use and form of Viking Age glass beads themselves, common in most Norse archaeology. There are a number of well documented bead production sites, the one at Ribe, south Denmark quite extensive. Debris at Ribe includes starting raw glass, various production elements, flawed and broken beads.

Recovered raw glass, partial products, broken beads - Ribe Museum (2008)

The bulk of our research work has focused not as much on the creation of duplicate patterns from specific artifact beads, but on the equipment actually used to work the glass in the first place. As it turns out, there are only a very few 'hearths', potential furnace base plates, and no surviving actual furnaces. (1)

One of the furnace designs we have repeatedly tested is what is called a 'tea pot', basically a dome shape with a top spout. Filled with charcoal and provided with bellows air, this creates what in effect is a charcoal fired 'torch', where you work the glass just above the spout.

Original hypothetical layout for a 'tea pot' furnace

Builds using this layout have proved successful in terms of proving adequate heat, a continuing problem has been with ash from the charcoal marring the surface of the beads. Also this ash scarring is seen on some artifact beads, our attempts have most commonly have considerably more of this flaw.

Details of the specific build used over June 28-29 

This furnace had been constructed earlier by Neil. Composition was a mix of powdered clay, course sand and dry shredded horse manure (a variation on our standard mix, but exact proportions unknown).

The overall size was determined by the refractory plate used as a base, cut to 35 cm diameter and about 1 cm thick. Part of the experimental test was determining the resulting burn pattern on the base after repeated firing cycles. 

(images below taken after use cycle)

outside diameter = 32 cm

top port diameter = 4 cm

overall height = 35 cm (irregular)

base section height = 22 cm (rear) by 18 cm (tuyere) 

chimney top height = 14 cm

base to centre tuyere = 13 cm

charcoal fill above centre tuyere = 7 cm (within base section) 

furnace sections inverted to show interiors

interior diameter at base = 25 cm 

average wall thickness = 3 cm

interior diameter at base top = oval 13 wide by 14 deep (from tuyere side)

A similar sized 'Aristotle' furnace, mounted much the same as the bead furnace under discussion was, showing bellows position on the sand table forge. Rey Cogswell seen operating the bellows

 

Generally this furnace is somewhat on the small size, at least in terms of overall height. A particular problem proved to be the location of the tuyere mounting hole. This was cut fairly high up on the furnace wall, with proportionally more room for charcoal bellow the tuyere centre point (13 cm) than above this (only 7 cm) when the base section was filled with fuel. In past small furnaces it has been found that with the (also largely hypothetical) Norse twin chamber 'blacksmith's' sized bellows used, (2) the effective 'ball of heat is about 10 - 15 cm diameter. Because the bellows / sand table forge combination that was used to mount the furnaces is intended for a much lower tuyere point (flat angle into a bellows stone at about 8 cm), it proved necessary to set the bellows up on a pair of 14 x 14 square wooden blocks. This gave the tuyere a starting down angle of roughly 15 ° down angle (rough, measured by eye). Because the bellows could not be tied down as normally done, coupled with the relative inexperience of the various participant users, the air blast was actually constantly shifting. All combined, this meant that the volume of ignited charcoal above the air blast was significantly less than with other previous furnace builds.

The charcoal fuel used was an on hand but previously untested brand : Extra Charcoal, a company based in Laval Quebec. This material has source and type only given cryptically as "Made in South America". (3) The charcoal was significantly denser and physically harder (more difficult to break) than the oak (Royal Oak) or maple (Maple Leaf) normally used in the past. This fuel had not been previously broken for size down to 0.5 - 2.5 cm pieces as done for other tests. Instead it was used 'right out of the bag', although some attempt was made to take only the smaller pieces. A smaller amount of previously sized oak charcoal was on hand, and mixed in with the Extra brand. 

Results

Over the two days, new workers made/attempted roughly 8 beads, with two previously skilled workers (Rey Cogswell and myself) made another four. There was only about a 50% 'finished success' rate (whole bead removed from mandrel). This primarily due to the lack of any significant annealing process on forming (simple air cooling). 

Two finished beads made by myself - 1/4 inch grid

 

In use this combination furnace - and charcoal fuel was found to just barely produced the temperatures required for working the soft glass on hand. Although it did prove possible to wind up the starting core spirals, getting the glass hot enough to contract into spheres and controlling centering via gravity slumping proved tedious. Attempts to add decoration (lines and dots were applied) proved 'just possible' and difficult to control. All of this because the temperatures produced were found to be marginal for the glass working.

The surfaces of all the beads made were severely marred with ash scarring, the worst level seen for any of the (considerable) previous work using various charcoal fired bead furnaces. When the top spout/lid section was removed after a firing sequence, the charcoal was found to be covered with a very heavy ash layer. Although this was a light powdery ash, the effect visually was similar to what is seen with the use of charcoal briquettes. 

The combination of the reduced charcoal burn load (volume above air input), combined with the extremely high ash content of this specific charcoal brand, resulted in less than ideal operating conditions for effective glass bead making. When combined with the unacceptable level of ash scarring, the aspect of actual production is not considered successful.

The furnace base, scarring after use. Tuyere location was to middle, left hand side.

The most important result of this test was the effect on the refractory plate base. The total firing time during bead making attempts was very roughly 6 hours (figuring roughly 30 minutes per making cycle x 12 beads) This would have been the burning using bellows forced air. The furnace also underwent two burning down sets, one each day, when any remaining charcoal was allowed to combust naturally to 'cold' overnight. 

Although there are most certainly major problems (charcoal effects, overall furnace layout) in assessing the resulting burn pattern on the base plate, hopefully this experiment may be of some value in assessing the burn scarring observed on the very few artifact bead furnace bases recovered?

Notes:

1) for Neil's collected list of described archaeological remains : https://www.darkcompany.ca/beads/arch.php?submenu=B

2) For a description of this bellows unit - and the logic behind the re-construction, see : https://warehamforgeblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/bellows-reconstruction-2.html

3) The supplier's web site (in French, via translator) does not provide any information as to the actual wood species or country of origin. An attempt was made (ongoing ? 3 days) to contact them directly via e-mail for this information. A major concern, given the vague 'made in South America' is that this charcoal is actually the result of Rain Forest clearing - a major environmental problem.

Building an Aristotle re-melting furnace

 This photo essay details the construction of a small re-melting furnace for iron materials, originally named the 'Aristotle' furnace by Skip Williams and Lee Sauder, who originated the design in 2008. It was tested extensively at Sauder's 'Smeltfest' workshop by the Early Iron Group in 2009 (over 30 cycles).

There are two PDF descriptions available :

Lee Sauder (2010), Aristotle's Steel, paper for the Historic Metallurgy Conference

Darrell Markewitz (2012), The Aristotle Re-melting Furnace, the Wareham Forge 

In simple terms, the Aristotle is a small, table top furnace made of clay, about 10 cm internal diameter and 30 cm tall. Through a burning cycle that consumes roughly 2 kg of charcoal over about 25 - 30 minutes, it will convert 600 - 800 gms of iron alloy bar into a 'puck' of modified carbon content at 500 - 600 gms. Depending on the set up of the base distance below the air blast, it may either add or subtract carbon from the starting material.

Base: 

Ideally the furnace should be built on a piece of heat resistant material, both to prevent damage to the working surface, but also to allow or ease of moving. In the past I have used refractory plates, stone slabs and the piece of glazed ceramic tile seen here. Once fired, the furnace will be stable enough to be lifted with out a supporting plate. 

Form:

A length of standard black PVC drain pipe at 4 inches interior diameter works ideal as a form. Because of the thickness of the plastic walls, this will give you a finished (wet) interior diameter of 11.5 cm. Alternately, you can use a 2 l plastic pop bottle, fill this with water first and cap it off. Wrap a sheet of newsprint around the form first to keep the clay from sticking (making removal of the form almost impossible). I use a sheet from our local weekly for this - which is 30 cm tall. If you use a full sized newspaper, mark a line at the desired 30 cm height.

Plastic pipe form, paper wrapped, on the tile base.

Clay :

You can use straight clay for the build, but better would be the addition of plain beach / playground sand. Sand adds resistance to high temperatures, but at the cost of making your mix less sticky, so more care needs with blending the individual additions of material. We have had excellent results with a combination of equal amounts by volume of clay, sand, and dry (last season's) horse manure, shredded in the hands. For this specific build, I used a combination of locally dug clay (a low firing red earthenware) with pulverized walls from previous iron smelting furnaces, half and half by volume. (1)

Dry clay (red) and furnace wall (grey) before mixing.

The first step is bending the loose dry material as evenly as possible through your fingers. I used an 800 ml (crushed tomato) can for measuring, using a total of 4 cans (so 3200 ml) of each of the two main ingredients. I have a large plastic tub with low walls, about 60 cm diameter, that I use for mixing clay for furnace builds. This is large enough to allow 'wedging' the mixture as water is gradually (!) added. This could easily be done (with a bit of care) on a spread out garbage bag or piece of plastic tarp. 

Blended material, first water added as a well in the centre.

Anyone who has ever made bread from scratch will be familiar with the basic technique required. Make a depressed 'well' in the centre of the mound of dry ingredients. Pour a quantity of water into that well, and start to fold the mass together from the outsides. My initial addition was two of the same cans = 1600 ml. This proved not enough moisture, so again I pushed the material towards the middle and added a third can full of water, so the initial total was 2400 ml. As you bend the material under your hands, make sure you you are incorporating the dry mix that will be remaining underneath and to the edges. The material is pushed together, then you squish down under your palms, pushing from the shoulders. (This method just like kneading bread dough, called 'wedging' for clay work.) 

You are likely to require some additional water as you do this. You are well advised to just cup a small amount in your hand and sprinkle over the top, NOT to add a large volume at once. If you add too much, your mixture will become far too wet and impossible to effectively build with. Unfortunately, knowing just what the best exact consistency is a matter of experience. A mix too dry will be difficult to blend together as the furnace builds, too wet and the material sticks to the hands and slumps as you try to work upwards. I judge this as I press the mix under my hands, ideally the clay pulls fairly cleanly away from my palms. I ended up adding smaller amounts of water as described several times before I had a consistency I liked.

The final blend of clay mix, ready to build.

I would end up with three fairly similar sized balls of material, each about 15 cm in diameter. This would prove almost the perfect amount for the furnace build, with a bit left over. 

Build:

Placing the furnace base.

 

The first step is to make a base pad for the furnace. A ball of material about 10 cm in diameter was pulled off and flattened into a thick pancake, about 16 - 18 cm wide and 3 cm thick. This placed on the centre of the supporting plate, then the pipe form positioned on top. 

Ball / 'brick' / added to the wall.

It may be worth noting that the steps described next also apply to building larger sized smelting or casting furnaces : see 'Stacking Up'.

Pull off individual balls of material (2), for this build I found a size like a large orange or small grapefruit (7 - 8 cm) worked well. Again wedge the ball between your hands to ensure it is consistent. Then take it and form it into a rough 'brick' shape, which will be roughly 15 cm long, 7 cm tall and about 3 cm thick. Tap the edges roughly square, then bend to curve it slightly. Each brick is then added to the base / each other as the walls are built up. Care is taken to blend the seams between individual bricks well together. Pressure needs to be applied with one hand over the outside surface while force is being exerted to the seams. Otherwise the whole structure will be pushed down and outwards, rather than being built higher with consistent wall thickness. (Again, experience with clay building comes to play!)

End of the second course.

As you build upwards, it is important that you both make sure the lines between individual bricks are well blended, but as well keep placing your hands flat against opposing sides and press both inwards and slightly upwards. This will keep the diameter of the furnace uniform, and keep the soft clay from being pushed downwards, thickening the lower walls while reducing your desired height.

End of the basic build.

With the paper indicting a rough interior height of 30 cm, the interior form is gently pulled up and clear. The paper wrap should make this easy. 

Just after removing the form, note impression of the pipe lower edge.

Now, you want to check and see if the pipe has been pressed into the base clay. ( If you have used a pop bottle, there may be lumps into the base. ) You will want to smooth out any depressions. Ideally the base pad should be slightly bowl shaped, a bit lower in the centre than around the joint to the walls. You should also be checking the interior surface, to see if here are any flaws in the blending of the applied bricks. In this case you can see some flaws at about the three o'clock position. These should be blended smooth, again working with your second had flat and bracing the outside wall surface at the same location.

Showing the bevel at the top edge.

 I measured the important interior height at this point, and between being just short of the desired mark (by the paper) and the amount the pipe had sunk into the base, I found the distance to be 25 cm. As it is better to have the furnace a bit too tall than reducing performance by being too short, I decided to add another half wide course of clay to the top. I finished the top edge by slopping that with my thumb to about a 45 degree bevel. This is more effective than a flat edge, as it makes a slightly larger target for applying charcoal, and makes sure that all falls into the furnace.
 

Showing bracing rope wrapping.

Experience has shown that putting a spiral wrap of rope around a damp furnace will help keep the body from slumping after the build. In this case I used some on hand hay bale binder twine, with gaps at about 2 cm apart. 

The finished furnace was a total of 33 cm tall and 18 cm in diameter on the outsides. The interior working 'stack' was 28 cm, leaving the base at 3 cm thick, with an internal diameter of 11.5 cm. The walls were about 3 cm thick. 

The unit was put aside, to start with outside (exposed to wind) but under cover from the sun, at least to start. In this case the build was done on Monday, for a furnace required for six days later. This will allow time for considerable air drying (again the ideal situation. 

(three days later)

The furnace at this point was 'leather hard', so it could be lifted and read for the last step, cutting in the air ports.

You can see that this is a bit different than the illustrations on the two handouts. I have omitted the secondary air mixing chamber. That chamber serves an important function when you use a powered blower, for this demonstration furnace the air would be provided by a Norse blacksmithing sized twin chamber bellows. There would be no need to vent off excess air. 

Setting the tuyere hole.

 For the Aristotle, the ideal tuyere hole is 1 cm diameter. For this I used a 3/8 inch twist drill (by hand) which easily bores through the still damp clay. There is a trick here, as the ideal angle for the air blast is roughly 20 degrees. You can establish the angle by taking half of 90 = 45 and half of 45 = 22 ° as an approximate. There is an estimation on the location of the starting point on the outside, as you want the hole to hit the inside with it about 6 - 8 cm above the interior floor. You can see from the image, with wall thickness at roughly 3 cm, I started my angled cut at about 11 cm (taking account the base thickness as well).

Measuring the interior position of the tuyere.

You can see the final position of the tuyere hole is roughly 6 cm above the solid floor of the furnace. It is always better to have more depth than you need. The final depth below the air blast can be modified by putting some wood ash down first and tapping it tight. It will be the distance below the air blast that will determine the amount of carbon absorbed by the process. This position would also leave 22 cm as the 'stack' (above tuyere) height.

Positioning the air supply pipe.

As mentioned, the air supply for this demo was going to be a smaller bellows (see below). For that reason I wanted to mate up to a short piece of steel pipe, with an ID about the same size as the outside diameter of the existing bellows exhaust. This needed to slope downwards (exaggerated in the image) to match the height of the bellows unit. 

Finished mating port for the air supply.

I used the pipe itself as a simple drill to cut in the diameter I needed, about a cm in depth into the furnace wall. I then cut the clay away at the bottom of the port. Last I used a piece of 3/8 round rod to slightly taper the inside of the tuyere hole itself. This same rod will be used to clear the tuyere of any slag that might accumulate during the firing cycle later. 

The last step before using the furnace is to dry out the moisture remaining in the clay. This can be done by leaving it in the sun for several days, plus using a very small fire with twigs / kindling splits inside. Remaining moisture presents two problems. The most significant is that with the extremely high working temperature of the furnace (in the range of 1300 + C) and water will greatly expand into steam, potentially causing cracking to the walls. Water will also significantly rob energy, so for simple efficiency / reducing charcoal consumption alone, you want to work with a baked dry furnace. (3)

Previous demo of the same process / equipment.

1) Depending on the quality of your local clay, working this naturally sourced material may prove far more work than worth the cost of purchasing a dry powered potter's clay from a supplier. I had dug the clay, dried it, broken this up with a mallet, then pulled out any obvious stones. The material was then placed in a small cement mixer with dozen short metal bars inside for about 45 minutes to pulverize it. This was sifted through a 1/4" 'hardware cloth' screen to remove any larger pieces of gravel remaining. Given the clay bank was 30 km from Wareham, and all the work involved, against the current cost of a higher temperature potter's clay at $40 (CDN) for a 22.5 kg sack? (This would be for EKP, what we normally use for smelting furnace construction.) 

2) It is worth noting that the ideal method is to take the mixed clay material and form it into individual balls (as described) and leave them to sit, covered with a plastic sheet, overnight. This will even out the moisture inside each ball, which will result in more even drying of the finished build, so in the end reducing the development of cracking when fired. Time often limits the inclusion of this step.

3) Another way to fast dry the furnace is place it in your home oven at no more than 100 C for several hours to let the moisture bake out. Not ideal if you use the horse manure mix by the way!

Signs

Signs! Signs! Everywhere a Sign.

Blockin' out the scenery, blowin' my mind.

Do this, Don't do that...

Hey! Can't you read the sign?

(5 Man Electrical Band)

Over the last two weeks I have been traveling through small town and rural Southern Ontario from Wareham :

Three major / side trips / return routes

West to Stratford via a diagonal through Arthur, back through the edge of Kitchener - Waterloo. 

To Stirling via 10/410, through Toronto and along the 401, then returning by going north to 7, through Peterborough, past Lindsay, side roads over to Bradford, then over past Alliston and along 89, then 10 at Shelburne.

To Morrisburg, largely a repeat of the to home section above down to the 401 near Trenton (along 45 when I missed a turn) then along the 401. This included a side trip up to a small village just south of Smith's Falls. The home leg was north from outside Belleville, (again a bad turn) through Campbellford, (eventually) up to 7 again, with a repeat of the legs from Havelock. 

So a lot of road miles. This last (and longest) trip completed Sunday - the day before the election itself.

What I observed, basically the last two weeks of the 2025 Canadian Election, at least for a big chunk of Southern Ontario :

There were very few party election signs placed on private home properties. The vast majority of signs were placed on public road allowances (1) Most typically this was easy to judge, as election signs were usually placed just where the gravel of the shoulder turned to grass. On a very rough count, only about 1/8 Conservative signs were clearly on private home properties, for Liberal is was about 1/5.

Conservative party signs were clearly the largest number, more than the rough total of all other parties combined.

Conservative party signs were most often the largest, often double the size of other parties.

Conservative signs were often placed in multiple groupings, although single signs for Conservative were seen (and usually as larger size).

If there was a sign for an alternative to Conservative, there almost always would be a Conservative sign as well. Often at a larger size.

Through these largely rural areas, perhaps predictably, signs for NDP and Green were uncommon. In some places there would actually be more signs for the Peoples Party (2) than these other two significant parties combined.

I did see a number of (offensive) Anti-Liberal signs and flags. These always mimicking Conservative signs (colours, fonts, slogans). Both 'Fuck Trudeau' and 'Fuck Carney' versions. (Worth noting I saw not a single anti-Conservative type).

 

And what was my take away from these observations?

- In this election, people are NOT illustrating there party affiliations. There may be a number of reasons for this, but I expect concern over bad reactions from neighbours with opposing views is the reason. (This certainly why our household chose not to place a sign) 

- The Conservatives clearly had the largest budgets for signage (indicated by size and numbers).

- The Conservatives clearly were the most aggressive in terms of placement. This seen by the tactic of multiple signs at one location, the placing of a sign next to others.

All this leads me to believe the use of political signage is clearly NOT any indication of actual public voter support. Signs placed on what is clearly * public * land are no indication of what the actual voters think.

1) In rural areas, the road set back amount varies (here in lower Bruce, the distance is '30 feet measured from the centre of the road). Typically however you can trace the line by the distance farm fencing has been placed. In communities with side walks, I judged anything beyond the household side of the walk to be private. If there were also real estate signs, I judged those to be on private, and used that spacing.

Axe the Tax? - some numbers

Axe the Tax!

(WtF?)

The hysteria will be setting in, with an Ontario snap election in a month and a certain spring National election. Poilievre has been shouting ‘Axe the Tax’, meaning the Federal Carbon Tax, for months (if not years at this point). You can be sure his Conservative Party will be rejoicing at the absence of Justin Trudeau (because everything that has impacted Canadian’s personal cost of living is entirely that one person’s fault). There is already statements being made from Poilievre that Canadians just can not afford any measures that would combat Climate Change.

But what is it REALLY costing you?

Caveat : I am now a senior, living on fixed income (OAS). I am rural (no transit). As of 2023, my artisan blacksmith business had effectively collapsed.

I gathered data here from two sources :
Statistics Canada
CBC - ‘ Is the carbon tax an easy scapegoat for high food prices?’ Aaron Wherry, October 7, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carbon-tax-food-prices-wherry-analysis-1.6989547

That article, although admittedly from a year back, does have hard numbers from reliable sources - and a simple ‘plug in your own numbers’ estimation you can run against your own household expenses.

My own 2024 household expenses

Food    $4717     (two adults)

The CBC article gives the increase due to carbon tax at 0.05 %    $235.85

Gasoline    $2500    (two vehicles)                        $300 (E)

Gasoline is an extremely rough estimate, as I have numbers for my purchases (6 months with a Jeep 3.6 L x 6, 6 months with an Outback 2.5 L x 4). The other vehicle is a Fit 2 L x 4, for which I guess-timated as 2/3 my own amount) The number from Stats-Can is based on cost per litre of $0.18. I only had the total I spent, so used an average cost at $1.50 per litre to come up with a total of 1667 litres.

Other Expenses $7917                            $11.88

This includes the fixed amounts of Hydro / Property Taxes / Home Insurance, plus spending on repairs. Our home is electric heat, which ALL comes out of Bruce Nuclear. How much property tax and insurance could be effected by Carbon Tax is questionable. For this number I used the figure quoted in the CBC article, sourced from RBC economists, that the amount of inflation caused directly in Canada by the Carbon Tax specifically is at 0.15 % (i.e., almost nothing).

Communications $2024                            $3.03

This includes Telephone and Internet. Again applying the general inflation contribution explained above.
        
Total Carbon Tax Payments                        $551

Total Carbon Tax Rebated                        $638

Balance                                        + $87

Obviously I did in fact spend some other money outside of household expenses.
I rarely eat at restaurants. Almost no clothing purchases (and those commonly at value village). Gifts are most typically books. Given that any of those purchases would only have 0.15 cents on the dollar applied to them, they are not worth including.
I did purchase a used vehicle this year, but as this was a 2017, so manufactured well before the Carbon Tax was started, that number is not included.

Axe the Tax?

Mr. Poiliere, the now proven impact of Climate Change ensures we can either pay a small amount now, or a massive amount later. Your song only resonates to those people bemoaning increases on the gas cost for running their massive pickup trucks or the air fares on their frequent holiday flights.
 

Or those too stupid to understand the real culprit is, as it almost always is, pure Corporate greed.