A living reminder of our past - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

A story on CTV London caught my attention last week as people toured the old Logan’s Mill in Brussels before a fundraising effort to turn the water-powered mill into a museum.

 

The power of water to drive mills was responsible for the development of our towns, in the days before electricity or gas-fueled engines. Powerful rivers like the Maitland helped grow villages like Brussels, Wingham and more. I dug out my reprint of the old 1879 Beldon Atlas to see how many communities like Sunshine and Bodmin in Morris-Turnberry were originally established in the days when farmers travelled by horse and wagon so they sought nearby mills to grind their grain for feed or wheat for flour.
Some of the mills were more successful than others and with them the communities that grew up around the mills. We have family in Cranbrook which is sprouting new homes for people who most likely work in Listowel or some other urban centre. Meanwhile the general stores that once were the centre of the community have disappeared in villages like Auburn, Belgrave and Cranbrook.

 

Today Blyth has a major industry because of Howson and Howson Limited, which only came to Blyth after fire destroyed their mill in Wingham in 1949. That mill had a huge mill pond that Wingham residents got used to using for fishing, boating and recreation, even after the mill disappeared.

 

One of the communities that only existed because of its mills was Benmiller. I remember developing a friendship with the artist Jack McLaren who lived there in the 1970s. He was vocally opposed to the purchase of the old woolen mill and the old grist mill by a London millionaire who turned both into the Benmiller Inn. Both had been waterpowered and surrounded a mill pond. The developer harnessed the water power of the former grist mill to provide electricity for his development.

 

Water-powered mills have a close relationship with my past. When I was a teenager, my parents finally turned over our farm to my sister and her husband and purchased a house in Lucknow which had been owned by a milling family before the whole family was tragically killed in a car accident.

 

The house was part of a water-powered mill property, with its own mill pond and a sawmill powered by the water. Originally there were two mills in the same building, including a feed mill. We got used to swimming in the mill pond, as did other young people. One night, some of the teenaged boys apparently got the idea that setting fire to the mill would be great fun. The fire burned the building down. Soon those using the mill pond got the idea that taking the boards out of the mill’s dam would be fun, so they did, and the old pond disappeared.

 

Though the Nine Mile River that flowed through Lucknow was far smaller than the Maitland, Lucknow had other mills that depended on water power. A larger dam created Trealeven’s Pond and generated power to run Trealeven’s Mill, which, at one time, both created feed for farm animals (for which my family used the mill) and flour. Downstream from our mill property was Anderson Flax Products which, in those days, milled flax from their own and other farmers’ flax crops.

 

So a museum about water-powered mills, such as the proposal for Logan’s Mill in Brussels, would be a good memorial for one of the prime factors in the development of our towns and villages. The mill was built in 1859. It survived two fires but eventually closed in 1965 and has sat vacant ever since.

 

Nearly all the other water-powered mills have disappeared, along with the communities that they helped to grow. Some of the towns that began because of water-powered mills have grown because of other industries that grew up, like the factories that took advantage of the multitude of trees cut in order to make farming possible; I’m thinking of Kincardine and Listowel and similar factories that, at one time,  made western Ontario synonymous with furniture production. It was milling that supported  Sir. Anthony Van Egmond, of Egmondville, for instance, before he died in jail after attempting to lead the forces of William Lyon Mackenzie in the rebellion of 1837.

 

In our age when we are used to electricity that comes from the nuclear power plant at Bruce Power or gigantic wind mills along Lake Huron or east of Seaforth, water power seems like such a forgotten part of history. A museum at Logan’s Mill would be a good reminder of our past and the way towns developed.

 

Life is rapidly changing with small, local stores closing and people travelling further to shop at internationally-owned super stores. We need reminders of why the communities we now live in are where they are.