As a kid, Jason Ploeger remembers people searching in the waters of Larder Lake for a taxi cab that had sunk beneath the surface decades before.
And of course, like everyone else in the small northern Ontario town near the Québec border that was once a major gold mining centre, he heard the stories.
“Growing up in the town, we all heard the legend,” said Ploeger.
“Everybody you talked to had a different story.”
The version of the story Ploeger heard the most was that the taxi went through the ice of Larder Lake on the way to a Christmas party, carrying liquor and holiday bonuses for local gold miners.
But there were other stories that the cab was hauling gold bars or gold ore, or that is was a bootlegger delivering alcohol to mining camps in the Larder Lake area.
Ploeger spent 35 years searching for the taxi and then while fishing in a local derby last year, he saw something come up on the screen of his side imager, that he uses to look deep into the lake for fish. Or sunken treasure.
“Is that what I think it is?” he said to himself, seeing the outline of the back window and tires, knowing it was “obviously a car.”
“I was excited. I almost gave up fishing for the day.”
But instead he marked the spot and went back later with some fellow divers, going down 15 metres into the pitch black waters of Larder Lake.
“I had one of the other divers right beside me and I’d have to shine my light right on him to see him,” Ploeger said.
“It was a spooky dive.”
There was no gold, but they did spot six bottles in the back of what they now know is a 1929 REO Flying Cloud.
He says he later spoke with the daughter of one of the five men who rode in the taxi that day and learned they were heading to a Christmas party at the Martin-Bird Mine when the car started to go through the ice and everyone got out safely.
Ploeger says they brought one bottle to the surface and it “promptly exploded on my boat from the pressure,” but he dipped a finger it and said it tasted like “very, very smooth” rye whiskey.
This summer, they went back down and brought up five more bottles, two of which also blew their cork on the way to the surface.
“I do not believe it was a good whiskey when it was bought,” Ploeger said of drinking from one of the bottles.
“I’m not blind yet so that’s a good sign.”
One of the intact bottles recovered from the bottom will be auctioned off on Sept. 28 at a steak dinner and charity auction to benefit a community group called the Friends of Larder.
“I’ve been thinking for a while, if I ever found it, it’s not my story, it’s the town’s story. So I figured I would donate it back to the town,” Ploeger said.
He says the car is “too fragile to remove” so it will stay at the bottom of Larder Lake for other divers to enjoy.
“It’s a weird feeling, because I’ve been looking, looking and looking,” said Ploeger.
“And now I’ve seen it. I’ve been there. And it’s over.”
But he says he is still chasing down other local mysteries, including some boats sunk in the lake and a military plane that crashed in the bush nearby during the Second World War.